Abstract
This paper describes the perception of a social constructivist approach to teaching and learning among Vietnamese teachers in a Confucian heritage culture and the changes these teachers undergo through their interaction with a new science curriculum that was designed culturally appropriate. A framework of teacher professional development combining state-of-the-art knowledge on professional development and knowledge on curriculum design was adapted and applied to the establishment of a learning community with a facilitator and the teachers as critical co-designers. Through the spiral approach of the development programme, the teachers showed certain changes from a traditional way of teaching to a more social constructivist way of teaching. The teachers proposed concrete teacher activities that can be applied to complete the design of the curriculum and make it a better teaching guideline. The teachers perceived the challenges for applying the newly designed science curriculum in primary education in Vietnamese Confucian heritage culture. This study reveals opportunities to improve the curriculum design and emphasises the need to facilitate teachers in applying the designed curriculum into practice with the stress on the roles of teacher input and professional development.
Highlights
There are differences in teaching and learning across cultures and cultures have significant influences on education (Hofstede, Hofstede, and Minkov 2010; Nguyen et al 2005)
Research question Based on the arguments above, this study aims to answer the following research question: In a programme of Teacher Professional Development (PD), how do Vietnamese teachers interact with a primary science curriculum that is based on a social constructivist perspective and made appropriate for a Confucian heritage culture (CHC)?
This study presented how the Vietnamese teachers in a programme of Teacher PD interacted with a primary science curriculum designed according to a social constructivist perspective and made appropriate for Vietnamese CHC
Summary
There are differences in teaching and learning across cultures and cultures have significant influences on education (Hofstede, Hofstede, and Minkov 2010; Nguyen et al 2005). Despite having been increasingly applied in Western science education since the 1980s, it is challenging to implement a social constructivist approach (Beck and Kosnick 2006) in a Confucian heritage culture (CHC). In a CHC, teachers cannot be convinced of the effectiveness of active learning and student-centered pedagogical approaches which encourage students to actively construct knowledge through discussion, debate, and experimentation (Huang and Asghar 2016). Our earlier empirical study revealed that CHC teachers maintains a traditional approach of teaching and learning, in which the teacher is the central authority and students are passive in constructing and grasping knowledge (Hằng et al 2015). That study showed that a CHC provided both hindering and fostering factors to the implementation of a social constructivist approach in primary science education (Hằng et al 2015)
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