The Growth of Service-Learning in Vietnamese Higher Education: Catalysts, Characteristics, and Challenges

Abstract

Service-learning has appeared in Vietnamese higher education in recent decades and is among a range of pedagogical approaches that have been imported from the West. This article discusses features of service-learning in Vietnamese universities that have emerged from the distinctive ideologies of the socialist-communist country, the influence of traditional values and religious beliefs, and the conditions of a postcolonial society and modern global economy. The interpretive multisite case study discussed in this article investigated local service-learning courses in four public universities in the Middle and South of Viet Nam. Four catalysts for the growth of service-learning in Viet Nam were identified: employability, responsibility to the community, enhancing young people’s moral values, and teachers as bottom-up initiators of service-learning initiatives. The lessons from this study hold potential to inform future policies, institutional organization, as well as pedagogies and strategies to improve and sustain service-learning practices in Vietnamese higher education and similar contexts.