Vietnamese Education System Research Articles

Transformative Impact of Teacher Activity Groups on Vietnamese K-12 Teachers’ Professional Growth: A Study of Satisfaction

This study aims to examine the satisfaction of Vietnamese K-12 teachers with the impact of Teacher Activity Groups (TAGs) on their professional development (PD). In the context of a rapidly evolving education system, PD plays a crucial role in enhancing teachers’ knowledge, skills, and effectiveness in the classroom. Collaborative approaches, such as TAGs, have gained attention as promising strategies for fostering teacher growth and satisfaction. However, limited research has explored the specific impact of TAGs in the Vietnamese context. To address this gap, a quantitative approach was employed, and data were collected using a questionnaire from 147 K-12 teachers. The questionnaire consisted of 21 items measured on a 5-point scale, assessing various aspects of participants’ satisfaction with the TAGs program. The results reveal high levels of overall satisfaction with the TAGs program, indicating positive perceptions of its interest, value, usefulness, and impact on professional development. Notably, variations in satisfaction levels were observed in relation to learner attendance and dropout rates. These findings provide valuable insights for educational policymakers and school administrators in designing and implementing effective PD initiatives tailored to the specific needs of teachers and students. By promoting teacher satisfaction and growth, TAGs have the potential to contribute to the continuous improvement of the Vietnamese education system.

Challenges of the Vietnam education system from 1986 to 2000s: A historical analysis

The paper focuses on researching the obstacles that the Vietnamese educational system witnessed from 1986 to 2000s. In this research, qualitative methods are my main methodology. This research investigates various materials from policies, articles, books, and several relevant components. As a result, the Vietnamese educational system underwent a dramatic change, mainly influenced by policies and economics back then. In other words, the government has claimed several achievements while facing some major difficulties.

The Current State of Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality Adoption in Vietnamese Education: A Teacher’s Perspective on Teaching Natural Sciences

Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) technologies are increasingly applied across various fields, including education. However, in the Vietnamese education system, their use is still in its nascent stages. This article aims to analyze the current state of VR and AR adoption in the Vietnamese education system by evaluating two key aspects: the factors influencing the integration of VR and AR in teaching, and their roles in the Vietnamese educational context. The analysis is based on a survey conducted among 427 natural science teachers to assess the extent of technology adoption for instructional support, focusing on five factors: job positions, work locations, expertise levels, internet infrastructure, and English language proficiency. The research results reveal that, although VR and AR technologies have made their way into education, their adoption in Vietnam remains somewhat limited. The surveyed teachers indicate that the use of VR and AR enhances students’ learning experiences, making them more immersive and engaging when compared to traditional teaching methods. However, they do not have a comprehensive understanding of the full potential and roles of VR and AR in education. The findings obtained from this study serve as a foundational insight for future research, aimed at proposing solutions to leverage VR and AR technologies to improve student learning outcomes in a developing country like Vietnam.

Physical Education Activities in Universities: A Survey and Evaluation

Physical education is a compulsory subject in the Vietnamese education system in general and in universities in particular. It has the role of improving health, exercising the body, helping learners have a healthy body, meeting for learning, and other social activities. A survey of 143 people (n=143), including 107 students (n1=107), and 36 lecturers (n2=36) shows the position and role of this subject in universities. However, the survey results also show that a part of teachers and students underestimate the importance of this subject. On the basis of understanding and evaluating the results of scientists and previous research; based on practical surveys, this study recommends solutions to improve the quality of education in this subject at universities.

Innovating Vietnamese Education in the Context of Industrial Revolution 4.0: A Systematic Review

The rapid advancements in technology brought about by the Industrial Revolution 4.0 are driving the need for significant changes in education systems worldwide. In this comprehensive review, we have analyzed the effects of Industry 4.0 technologies on education and examined the challenges faced by the Vietnamese education system in embracing innovation. Our search of major databases has yielded 12 relevant studies conducted between 2015 and 2022. The findings reveal that technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data analytics, the Internet of Things, and mobile learning have transformative potential. However, Vietnamese education is currently lagging behind in terms of digital integration and innovation. Challenges exist in areas such as curriculum development, teaching methods, infrastructure, teacher preparedness, and management mechanisms. To address these challenges, we recommend reforms to learning objectives, contents, and methods, as well as the training of teachers in digital competencies. Additionally, upgrading facilities and equipment, decentralizing school governance, and fostering international cooperation are crucial steps. It is imperative for Vietnam to comprehensively prepare for Education 4.0 in order to enhance its human capital and competitiveness. Furthermore, further empirical studies are needed to explore the implementation of educational innovations.

An Analysis of the Influence of French Colonization on the VietnameseEducation System

At the end of the 19th century, to consolidate their colonial domination, the French colonists adopt various means, tryingto disintegrate the Vietnamese traditional Confucianism value system and establish the French-Vietnamese educationsystem. Crude colonial methods exacerbated the loss of Vietnamese national culture and the fission of social classes,but objectively speaking, they also contributed to the establishment of modern education in Vietnam. This paper triesto present the evolution process of Vietnamese education under French colonization, and on this basis, to analyze theimpact and influence of the F

PERCEPTIONS OF VIETNAMESE PRIMARY SCHOOL TEACHERS OF ENGLISH ABOUT ACTIVE TEACHING AND LEARNING

Vietnamese educational system, including primary level, has experienced a renovation towards Active Teaching and Learning (ATL) approach, which aims at creating a friendly environment for students to fully develop their creativeness and pro-activeness to become independent learners. The application of ATL also fulfills the desire of education in Vietnam to move from traditional pedagogy to a student-centered approach to suit the needs of globalisation era. In this transformation journey, teachers play a prime role since they are policy implementers. This qualitative case study with seven teachers of a private primary school in Hanoi explores the perceptions of these teachers of ATL and point out the challenges that they face in employing ATL in their teaching practice. In-depth interviews with seven open-ended questions based on Weimer’s (2002) five theme framework of ATL characteristics were conducted and analysed under Casual Layered Analysis (Inayatullah, 2004). The results disclose that while the participants show a sense of support ATL, they still insist on their exclusive centre in the classroom. Moreover, the study discovers that teachers have a basic understanding about ATL, however, they are confused about how to adopt this approach in practice. Barriers prevent teachers from taking ATL into account come from many directions such as pressure from educational system, pressure from students’ parents or the lack of training. Implications of the study are categorized into three main types, which consist of theoretical, practical and policy implications. It is highly recommended that future studies can be conducted to investigate students’ perceptions of ATL to compare with teachers’ perceptions. This will help to reveal if there is any mismatch between teachers’ and students’ beliefs to contribute to the implementation of ATL in primary schools in Vietnam.

The Modernization Resolution of Vietnam’s Education System by the Francophone Road in the East-West Cultural Conflict of the Late Nineteenth Century and the Early Twentieth Century

Even though the colonial authorities tried to use education as a political tool to serve their ruling purposes, the francophone education system was an important bridge between Vietnam’s traditional Confucian education and mankind’s modern one. One of the greatest achievements of the francophone education system in Vietnam was the training of a modern westernized intelligentsia different from traditional Confucian intellectuals. Although the Soviet and other socialist educational models later replaced the francophone education system, the cornerstones of all existing modern educational models of Vietnam have originated from the very first settlements of the francophone education in the Far East Country. The fundamental elements of the francophone education therefore play an important role in the integration and development of the Vietnamese education into the modern world education system. The modernization of the Vietnamese education system in the colonial period under the decisive influences of the francophone model could, to some extent, be seen as a historical resolution to modernity of Vietnam’s schools in the circumstances of the East-West dispute that nearly all Asian countries experienced in the second half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century.
 Received: 19 May 2022Accepted: 18 July 2022

The Current Status of Secondary School Teacher’s Perception of Happiness in Nam Dinh Province during the Implementation Period of the 2018 General Education Program

In the current context of a major revolution in the Vietnamese education system, teachers’ perception of happiness makes an important criterion in evaluating effectiveness of the changes made to educational programs. The initial investigation of the positive effects of this renovation was conducted on the scale of Nam Dinh province and the results show multidimensional sources of information. In addition to positive information, there is still information that raises many questions for leaders to pay attention to. The outcome of the investigation suggests the evaluation of “The job is meaningful” is 3.10 out of 5 points, which is the lowest in assessment criteria. Meanwhile, the rates for “Completely disbelieve” and “Slightly disbelieve” in happiness of their profession in the future take up a large proportion (24.4%). However, other criteria namely “Being satisfied with current position” and “Feeling motivated with the job” received higher evaluation scores, respectively 4.05/5 points and 4.11/5 points. Via the results of the research, the author is looking forward to appropriate actions taken by the Ministry of Education and Training of Vietnam with a view to enhancing the perception of happiness among teachers.

Students and Lecturers’ Perceptions of Pre-service Teachers’ Geography Education Competence Level and Influencing Factors in Five Initial Teacher Training Programs in the Southeast and Mekong Delta Regions of Vietnam

Developing learners’ qualities and competence is the main orientation and central goal of the Vietnamese Education System in the current period. Therefore, quality teacher training plays an important role in achieving these goals. This study assessed the geography education competence level of pre-service teachers and the factors affecting them. This study adopted a quantitative approach. It was designed as a cross-sectional investigation in which 40 lecturers and 167 pre-service teachers at 5 initial teacher training programs/courses in Southern Vietnam were randomly sampled by the stratified random and simple sampling. The results indicated that there was a significant difference in the assessment of the student teachers’ competence by the two groups. Further, the strongest influencing factors on the development of the competences were learning facilities and students themselves. The study discussed the implications for faculty members and those involved in designing initial teacher education programs for students majoring in geography.

QUAN ĐIỂM DẠY HỌC PHÂN HOÁ: ĐẶC TRƯNG VÀ NGỘ NHẬN

The New General Education Curriculum (2018) was developed in the context that the whole Vietnamese education system is facing a change in the approaching mindset from content-based instruction to competency-based education for learners. Accordingly, differentiated instruction (DI) is an approach to make the process of achieving the aforementioned aim more manageable. However, in the reality of DI implementation, many teachers still feel afraid to organize teaching following this point of view because they think that there are too many challenges and difficulties that teachers will face, and at the same time, realize that teachers' knowledge about the nature of DI is still limited, leading to misunderstandings and poor implementation. In order to add a view for the theory of DI in Vietnam, this article focuses on describing the characteristics of DI as well as explaining certain misconceptions regarding DI.

Inverse Frontier-based Benchmarking for Investigating the Efficiency and Achieving the Targets in the Vietnamese Education System

This paper extends the theory of inverse frontier-based benchmarking to address the issue of effectiveness when investigating the efficiency of household expenditure in the case of the Vietnamese education system. Enhancing the conventional efficiency measurement approach by Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), our study focuses on the derivation of meaningful benchmarks – in terms of the required level of inputs and outputs – for performance improvement. The proposed inverse optimization problem identifies the essential household education expenditures for 63 provincial education systems at different efficiency levels while the university entrance threshold for exam results is satisfied as an effectiveness constraint. The results strongly recommend including this constraint into the action plans of improving the educational achievements in all provinces across Vietnam. Besides revealing policy implications in the specific case, the proposed approach adds to current DEA literature by suggesting complementary measures such as effectiveness and feasibility to strengthen performance assessment.

The effects of teaching and learning political economy in Vietnamese educational system

This study aims to understand and test the factors influencing the effectiveness of learning and teaching political economy among Vietnamese universities. Over 1500 students from different majors and different school years have taken part in this study. The data collected from questionnaires was analyzed by SPSS version 2016 and EVIEW 10. From this study, it can be said that learning motivations and teaching methods are the most important factors driving the success of teaching and learning the political economy. Furthermore, males seem to be more interested in studying this subject and getting a higher GPA compared to females. Students from higher school-year, by contrast, have lower levels of interest in studying this module, leading to the lower effectiveness in teaching and learning this module. Finally, while teaching methods and teaching quality are positively correlated with the dependent variable, the administration service and infrastructure negatively influence the teaching and learning objectives.

Constructing Social Cohesion in Vietnamese Public Schools: The Methods, and Students’ Forgotten Identities

There are four main areas through which education can foster social cohesion, these are: curriculum design; an appropriate classroom climate of dialogue and respect; equal opportunities for all learners; and diverse school programmes that encompass the interests and experiences of the learning community. In this paper, by intersecting these concepts with the lead author's experiences as a student in Vietnam's primary and secondary public schools, we explore how social cohesion in constructed within the Vietnamese school system and the impact this has on student identity. Further focus is provided by analysing in-depth three fundamental aspects of the Vietnamese education system. These are: moral education; Vietnam's national rite of saluting the flag; and didactic, teacher-focused teaching. The latter section of the essay then critically evaluates some shortcomings associated with the teaching of social cohesion in Vietnam. The purpose of this paper is to add meaning to those cultural features of schooling that have been taken for granted by Vietnamese people and also to highlight the need to find a balance between social cohesion and individuality in the Vietnamese educational system, so that in future current flaws can be erased. This paper is a conceptual paper informed by research literature. However , it also embraces an auto-ethnographic approach and in doing so extends the parameters of academic writing within a Vietnamese context.

Determining characteristics of teachers, students and educational managers in the 4.0 educational context

The objective of the study is to identify the characteristics of school administrators, teachers, and students in the 4.0 educational context. The study used research method from a qualitative perspective, using a basic qualitative research model. The study participants consisted of 10 lecturers selected according to the snowball method. The study data were collected through a semi-structured interview. Content analysis techniques will be used to analyze the data. We hope that the Education 4.0 revolution can be realized in Vietnamese education system. As a result, open access, personal education, idea transformation, digital integration into education, open learning environments, lifelong learning, discovery education, and multidisciplinary education are the main components of educations 4.0. It has been found that the key qualities expected from the students of Education 4.0 are interpersonal skills, technology skills, study skills, and personal style. The main qualities expected from the teachers in educations 4.0 are technology skills, instructional skills, lifelong learning skills, and personal style. Finally, the main qualities expected from school administrators in Education 4.0 are instructional skills, technology skills, learning skills.

Unravelling Vietnamese Students' Critical Thinking and Its Relationship with Argumentative Writing

Critical thinking has been recognized as a key academic skill due to its role in the learning process, especially in higher education, and particularly in second and foreign language teaching and learning of writing. This thinking pattern is crucial in Vietnamese tertiary education since in the globalized world of information. There has been increased demand for students to gain greater depth of subject-specific knowledge and develop their ability to synthesize, process, and evaluate different sources of texts for the sake of meeting the needs of their own academia and future studies. However, it is quite a new concept in Vietnamese educational system and few studies have been conducted to examine critical thinking in relation to argumentative writing. This paper, henceforth, reports a descriptive study that investigates the critical thinking ability of Vietnamese EFL (English as a foreign language) university students and its relationship with their writing argumentative essays. Data collected in this study include a questionnaire and an essay writing test. Participants were 126 EFL students at three universities in the Mekong delta, Vietnam. The findings reveal that Vietnamese EFL university students’ critical thinking is at high level while it was statistically insignificant that a relationship between their critical thinking and their argumentative writing existed. The obtained results indicate that instructional methods and activities employed by Vietnamese EFL teachers in universities of the Mekong region may well promote cognitive development of their students. It also suggests urgent actions from EFL teachers and stake-holders to seek for feasible solutions to foster students’ implementation of their cognitive skills into their writing and other language skills.

Factors Influencing Technology Adoption in Vietnam’s Educational System

This research aims to shed light on the technology adoption process and its drivers in the Vietnamese educational system. Research data was collected with an online questionnaire from more than 600 teachers in primary schools, secondary schools, high schools, colleges, and universities in Vietnam in 2020. Based on a holistic literature review, we develop a model of two extrinsic factors (global needs and school-infrastructure), and two intrinsic factors (teachers' technological literacy and their beliefs), which are correlated with the teachers' technological adoption. We measure the dependent variable by asking the teachers' ability and their efficacy to implement technology in teaching according to a Likert scale. With the support of SPSS_22 and STATA_2015, we find that over 70% of changes in technology adoption are explained by the changes in four independent variables and three control variables related to age, gender, and teaching-level of the teachers. Furthermore, these independent variables are significantly and positively associated with two dependent variables. However, a significant difference in technology integration ability can be seen among teachers' gender, age, and school-level. Specifically, male teachers seem to adopt technology at schools than female teachers better, and university teachers have the lowest level of technology adoption compared to other school-level teachers.

Vietnamese Education System and Teacher Training: Focusing on Science Education

Abstract This article introduces the reader to past, current, and future trends in science teacher preparation and professional development in Vietnam. The authors rely on document analysis for data collection and focused analysis to describe the general education system and the mechanisms for teacher training in Vietnam from the past to the present. Research questions focused on exploring changes in the organization of the education system over time, identifying advances that have been made, and describing what challenges teacher education faces today. In addition, this paper offers a special focus on how Vietnamese pedagogy institutions are working to prepare new teachers. Finally, the authors describe how Vietnam is preparing to implement a new national general education program that will strongly affect all aspects of education, including training and retraining of teachers. The authors conclude by raising some important questions for future research and development.

The Development of Critical Thinking for Undergraduate Students: A Case Study in Vietnam

In several decades recently, critical thinking is a high-ranked cognitive ability which plays a very important role in improving the effectiveness of teaching and learning activities. With the peculiarity of tertiary education which provides training and preparation for students before entering the career world of their choice, the development of critical thinking becomes more necessary and inevitable in order to perfect the students' learning and working ability. The development of critical thinking for students has been paid attention in Vietnamese education system to support students to better their thinking capability.

Another textbook project? The implementation of Escuela Nueva in Vietnam

This qualitative case study examines the implementation of Escuela Nueva, a rural multigrade schooling model, in Vietnam from the perspectives and experiences of local teachers and school administrators. Escuela Nueva first emerged in Colombia in the 1970s as a scalable low-cost educational innovation model that can be disseminated to other under-resourced regions around the world. Indeed, to date, the model has travelled to fourteen countries around the world, impacting the lives of over five million children. On the surface, the implementation of Vietnam Escuela Nueva (VNEN) appears to be a close reproduction of the original model. However, some aspects of VNEN in practice in fact directly contradict the principles and philosophies of the original model. Rather than encouraging more teacher autonomy, child-centered pedagogies, and local adaptation, the implementation of VNEN has reproduced the rigidity, conformity and textbook dependency that have been core features of the traditional Vietnamese education system. This points to the difficulties that can arise when attempts at scaling up educational change across borders come into conflict with local systems of reasoning, which impede the achievement of the intended outcomes.