Teaching Education

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Changing views of teachers and teaching in

Vietnam

Huong Nguyen Thi Mai & Christine Hall

To cite this article: Huong Nguyen Thi Mai & Christine Hall (2017) Changing views of teachers and
teaching in Vietnam, Teaching Education, 28:3, 244-256, DOI: 10.1080/10476210.2016.1252742

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Teaching Education, 2017
VOL. 28, NO. 3, 244–256
https://doi.org/10.1080/10476210.2016.1252742

Changing views of teachers and teaching in Vietnam

Huong Nguyen Thi Maia and Christine Hallb
a
Faculty of English, Hanoi National University of Education, Hanoi, Vietnam; bSchool of Education, University
of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

In order for Vietnam to seek better international integration into Received 12 April 2016
an increasingly globalised world, the Vietnamese Government has Accepted 21 October 2016
launched educational reforms requiring teachers to adopt ‘Western’
KEYWORDS
constructivist pedagogies. This paper reports on an action research Vietnamese teachers;
study in a Vietnamese teacher training institution which found that teaching; learning;
Vietnamese student teachers were willing to accommodate and educational change; reforms;
accept change and were often very enthusiastic about the ‘Western popular culture
ideas’ of teaching and learning, but that their unquestioning respect
for the authority of their tutors remained firmly fixed. The data also
showed that the students’ tutors had a relatively limited exposure to
the ‘Western theories’ and their implications and therefore did not
model or demonstrate the theories effectively. The paper draws on
these findings to argue that the focus for transforming Vietnamese
teachers’ practice should be on promoting the responsibility of
teacher educators to introduce student teachers to new ideas about
the processes of teaching and learning. This strategy is likely to be
more supportive of student teachers’ development as it allows them
to separate the processes of teaching from culturally dominant beliefs
about roles which are part of their established identities.

Introduction
In the current period of globalisation, which provides both opportunities and challenges
for Vietnam, reform of the education system has been identified by the government as a
matter of urgent national importance. The Vietnamese Government’s strategy for education
and training stipulates: ‘The development of education must, without doubt, be a national
priority and the cause of the Party, State and entire people’ (Prime Minister, 2012). Government
rhetoric therefore encourages teachers in Vietnam to feel that they have been assigned an
important mission by the whole nation. Their role is to educate a labour force, equipping it
with the necessary knowledge and skills for integration into the globalised world. The
following goals were set out by the Prime Minister (2012):
By 2020, to carry out root and branch reform of national education toward standardization, mod-
ernization, socialization, democratization and international integration; to improve the quality
of education comprehensively, including education of morals, life skills, creative ability, ability to
perform practical skills, foreign languages and information technology proficiency; to meet the
demand for human resources, especially highly skilled positions, for national industrialization

CONTACT  Huong Nguyen Thi Mai  huongnm@hnue.edu.vn

© 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
 TEACHING EDUCATION   245

and modernization and formation of a knowledge-based economy; to assure social equality in

education and lifelong learning opportunities for everyone, to systematically create a learning
society.
Curriculum, teaching methods, testing and assessment methods and textbooks, which are
fundamental aspects of education, are in the process of being reformed. The focus is on the
development of ‘life skills, creative ability, ability to perform practical skills’, abilities which
are seen as basic requirements for Vietnam to participate in the world market and to attract
foreign investment into the country.
Whilst commentators have noted the ambitiousness of the reform programme (Hayden
& Lam, 2015), within Vietnam these reforms have often been received somewhat negatively.
Some Vietnamese teachers and educators consider that the fundamental assumptions of
the reforms are based on Western notions of progress and efficiency which conflict with
traditional Vietnamese perceptions of teaching and learning (X. T. Nguyen, 2013, p. 78).
Others argue that imitating the West will not serve the country well: ‘[the Vietnamese
Government] cannot merely borrow the original version of innovation’ (Pham, 2008, p. 3).
These views resonate with wider debates about the value of attempting to ‘export’ Western
pedagogies to Eastern contexts, the cultural insensitivity of policy borrowing and the increas-
ing convergence of educational rhetoric at the policy level (e.g. Green, 1999; Rizvi & Lingard,
2009; Tan & Chua, 2015).
The aim of this paper is not to debate the rights and wrongs of the Vietnamese reform
programme but to contribute to discussions about the implementation of educational reform
in Vietnam through consideration of an action research project that focused on introducing
constructivist pedagogies to Vietnamese teacher education students. The authors argue
that the findings have implications for the implementation process in the context under
consideration and perhaps more widely. The paper begins by reviewing that context, firstly
by considering existing research on the implementation of the reforms in Vietnam, and
secondly by offering a brief review of the popular cultural attitudes to teaching and learning
which both underpin and express existing understandings of teachers’ work and status in
Vietnamese society.

Teachers and teaching in Vietnam

Recent studies of teachers and teaching in Vietnam suggest that there is a mismatch between
the requirements of globalisation and current Vietnamese teaching and learning approaches
(Harman, Hayden, & Nghi, 2010). One study considered by these scholars was the ADB –
MOLISA (Asian Development Bank – Ministry of Labour-Invalids and Social Affairs) estab-
lishment survey in 2008. This study was conducted by the World Bank to determine what
skills Vietnamese tertiary graduates were bringing to the workplace. The survey suggested
that university level teaching and learning tends to be out of sync with employers’ needs: it
reported that ‘employers are most often concerned about soft skills or attitudes rather than
technical knowledge’ and that ‘workers may come across as too theoretical’ (p. 172). This
mismatch stems from the manner in which knowledge, the teacher and the learner are
positioned within the Vietnamese national curriculum. Tran et al. (2014) support this point,
arguing that ‘the present higher education curriculum is laden with pure disciplinary theories
and political indoctrination and places insufficient emphasis on the dimension of practice’
(p. 105). These scholars discuss the tensions caused by the traditional curriculum, pedagogy
246   H. T. M. NGUYEN AND C. HALL

and assessment, which position the teacher as ‘the transmitter of knowledge’, and learners
as ‘passive recipients of knowledge’, while the real world requires the teacher to be the
‘facilitator of learning, the nurturer of creative thinking’, and learners to be ‘active, practical,
flexible and creative agents’ (p. 105). Luu (2006) argues that whilst the rapidly changing
world needs citizens with independent learning strategies for lifelong learning and the con-
fidence to be autonomous learners, education in Vietnam ‘hinder[s] students’ independence,
creativity, and problem solving capacity’ (p. 4). (T. T. Nguyen, 2005) argues that the process
of changing from teacher-centred to student-centred approaches is very slow. This claim is
further supported by Japanese scholars, Saito, Tsukui, and Tanaka (2008), who worked with
Vietnamese teachers in a teacher training project intended to promote the government’s
reforms. They found that despite the apparent influence of the learner-centred approach
that the Vietnamese ministry of education and training is trying to encourage, the classrooms
they studied were oppressive to the extent that they considered the teacher’s role closest
to that of a bureaucrat. These findings reflect the concern expressed by Duggan (2001) that
the reform process might be more a matter of continuity than of change.
The shift in the methods of teaching and learning that the reforms are seeking to bring
about relates fundamentally to new methods of instruction (Hamano, 2008) and a shift in
the roles of teachers and students. Traditionally, as Pham (2010) points out, ‘the teacher is
always seen as having much better knowledge than students’ (p. 31) and students are
expected to respect the teacher at all costs. T. [Thanh] Nguyen (2011) comments that this
leads students to ‘stay away from debating bluntly and straightforwardly’ for fear that they
may be considered rude, discourteous or disrespectful (p. 6). Nguyen and Griffin (2010)
observe that students avoid exchanges with teachers that may appear to imply criticism
(p. 7). Nguyen T. Q. T. (2015), reporting an interview study with teachers themselves, concludes
that cultural attitudes towards ‘face saving’ play a significant part in teachers’ resistance to
change. Lewis and McCook (2002) were slightly more optimistic about the willingness of
teachers to implement new learning from in-service training if they felt that it incorporated
features of traditional approaches. However, Ta (2012), who studied the roles of teacher
trainers and student teachers at a Vietnamese university, found that despite considerable
effort to promote the innovations, teacher trainees ‘still wanted to listen to the trainers
because they appreciated the teachers’ knowledge and experience’ (p. 7) and there was a
tendency amongst trainers towards ‘presenting … knowledge instead of giving space for
trainee partners to contribute’ (p. 7).
The durability and deeply embedded character of these attitudes towards teaching and
learning can be traced back through Vietnamese popular culture. In the pre-revolutionary
period (before 1945), a review of proverbs and folklore reveals that the prevailing image of
the teacher is of a moral guide to students and a source of unlimited wisdom. Students in
turn were expected to be grateful, admiring and respectful of their teachers – not just in
school, but for life. A large number of proverbs demonstrate respect and gratitude for
teachers, such as, ‘Muốn sang thì bắc cầu kiều, muốn con hay chữ thì yêu kính thày’ which
translates as ‘If you want to come to the other shore, you have to make a beautiful bridge
over the river; if you want your child to be knowledgeable, you must first respect the teacher’.
Proverbs like this were the vernacular, everyday means of preserving the tradition of
respecting teachers and maintaining the social order ‘king-teacher-father’. The proverb
‘Không thày đố mày làm nên’ [Without a teacher, you will surely not be successful] offers an
example of respect for the absolute authority of teachers to determine a student’s success.
 TEACHING EDUCATION   247

It suggests that students will always rely on the teacher throughout their lives, but it also
includes a moral lesson about the need for modesty.
After the revolution, the image of teachers was further enhanced with the establishment
of Vietnamese Teachers’ Day, a festival that involves a range of activities to show honour and
respect to teachers. Since its inception in 1958, and particularly since its re-naming in 1982,
Teachers’ Day has been important in generating modern Vietnamese poetry about teachers,
to sit alongside the proverbs and folklore, which are still popular. In the post-revolutionary
period, alongside images of mothers and soldiers, images of teachers were particularly pop-
ular in poetry and songs. The prevailing image in modern poetry and songs is of a teacher
who has lifelong commitment to teaching, a surrogate parent who can expect to be admired,
respected and appreciated. The previous, rather more aloof, representation of the teacher
whose knowledge conferred lifelong authority over the student, gives way to a more nur-
turing image of the teacher sitting alongside their students as a grower, an engineer of souls,
an artist, a ferryman or a father/mother. However, the prevailing image of the student’s
dependency remains the same. For example:
Muốn qua sông phải có đò. [Everybody has to rely on the ferry to go to the other side]

Con đò trí thức thầy đưa bao người. [The teacher takes you to the shore in the ferry of knowl-
edge]. (T. [Thao] Nguyen, n.d.-a)
The river is the metaphor for the life-line; the ferry is associated with a body of knowledge,
the means for the teacher to guide students to success. This poetic image which seems to
have originated from a proverb, is documented in a huge number of popular Vietnamese
poems. (Le, n.d.; L. C. Nguyen, n.d.-b; Q. D. Nguyen, n.d.-c; T. [Thao] Nguyen, n.d.-a).
There is evidence of both continuity and some change in the image of teachers in recent
popular films, which emphasise the respect due to younger teachers, rather than to the older
teachers (‘with chalk dust in their hair’) who assume pride of place in the proverbs and poems
of earlier periods. Films such as Thung lũng hoang vắng [Desolate Valley], directed by Phạm
Nhuệ Giang, released in 2002, Chiến dịch trái tim bên phải [The Right-Side Heart Campaign],
directed by Đào Duy Phúc, released in 2005, Cầu vồng tình yêu [The Love Rainbow], directed
by Vũ Hồng Sơn, released in 2011 and Rừng Chắn Cát [Protecting the Forest], released at the
end of 2011 portray teachers as eminently worthy of respect, though not at all costs and in
any circumstances, as in previous times. This teacher figure is an adviser and, often, a hero
protecting the children from evil, but this image disintegrates if the teacher cannot keep it
up. For example, Thung lũng hoang vắng [Desolate Valley], revolves around the lives of two
young teachers assigned to a school to teach poor mountain children; the teachers lose
both the respect and admiration of the community and their jobs when their amorous
activities are witnessed by one of the children. The role of the teacher as a moral guide
persists, but the film also encourages the audience to feel some sympathy for the teachers
who are under pressure to live up to the role.
Both elements of this brief review therefore point to the deeply entrenched nature of
cultural attitudes to the role and status of teachers within Vietnamese society. This is not a
cultural context which readily encourages teachers to want to change and accept new ideas.
As such, it presents a particular set of problems for the implementation of educational
reforms, but also fundamental strengths, which need to be acknowledged and built upon.
248   H. T. M. NGUYEN AND C. HALL

The study
The study took place in a central teacher training institution in Vietnam. The current gov-
ernment reforms, which require teacher education institutions to encourage student teach-
ers to understand and adopt ‘Western’ methods, provided the background and context for
the project. The immediate context for the research was a 15 week course for a group of 30
undergraduate student teachers at the age of 19, comprised of 29 females and one male,
called ‘Learning to Teach English’, which had been assigned by the training institution to the
lead author when she planned her teaching schedule. An action research methodology was
adopted because the research aimed both to pose, and begin to answer, questions about
barriers to change, as well as the potential of any changes that might prove possible (Kemmis,
McTaggart, & Nixon, 2014). The lead author, who was seconded from the training institution
and planned to return to teach there, had a particularly keen interest in developing both
theory and practical pedagogical knowledge that would be useful to her colleagues and
institution, and beyond. Ethical issues relating to the researcher being an insider in the action
research were discussed thoroughly with the teaching team, who were interested in what
the action research might throw up. The researcher had not worked with the student par-
ticipants before. The work reported here constitutes one full cycle of the action research;
the intention is to build on and extend this work in the next phases.
The design of the study followed the five stages of action research set out by Tripp (2003).
The reconnaissance, or pre-intervention, stage at the start of the research involved consul-
tation with the team of teacher educators (henceforth ‘tutors’) and information gathering
from the student teachers to inform the design of the intervention. The data collected at
this stage consisted of questionnaires administered to the tutors and student teachers, and
a staff meeting discussion and follow-up email exchanges with the tutors. Thematic coding
was used to identify the key concepts and ideas, then Hofstede’s cultural framework
(Hofstede, Hofstede, & Minkov, 2010) was used as the analytical framework to scrutinise the
data in relation to constructivist learning theories, popular culture, and the contextual back-
ground of the research. The data were systematically scanned for the key concepts high-
lighted from each of the Hofstede’s cultural dimensions. This scanning was designed to find
out which key concepts emerged from the data and to observe any changes related to one
or more of Hofstede’s dimensions that might occur during the intervention.
Analysis of these data confirmed that the general practice and expectation was that there
should be a hierarchical order in the classrooms with the tutors taking a dominant role and
the student teachers taking a passive role. The findings from the questionnaires showed
that both the tutors and the student teachers felt contented with these hierarchical roles,
despite the fact that a student-centred learning approach was being promoted by the
Ministry of Education and Training and, nominally, being introduced into the training insti-
tution at that time. The tutors, for example, acknowledged their dominant role, but said that
they did not feel that they in any way deprived the student teachers of opportunities to
engage or to learn. Similarly, the student teachers did not feel the learning environment was
in any way oppressive, although as many as 94% of the informants reported that their tutor
often told them precisely what to do to improve their teaching and up to 76% of the inform-
ants said they spent most of their time listening to their tutor. The consultation with the
tutor cohort indicated that there was a mismatch between what the tutors said about the
learning theories they used and what they actually did in the classroom, which suggested
 TEACHING EDUCATION   249

that the tutors’ understanding about the ‘Western’ constructivist learning and its implications
was relatively limited. We discuss this finding in the final section of this paper.
The second stage of the cycle involved the design of a teaching intervention using the
principles of constructivist learning theories. The intervention included opportunities for
students to offer peer feedback, to evaluate one another’s work and to engage in experiential
autonomous learning. The researcher’s aim was to enact this plan, capture the student teach-
ers’ responses and reflections on this mode of learning and evaluate their readiness to work
with new theories and pedagogies in the Vietnamese context. At a fundamental level, the
course set out to challenge the hierarchical roles of the tutors and the student teachers, to
move towards a more equal relationship and to promote a more dialogic, discursive
approach.
Two main learning activities were included in this course. The first activity involved analysis
of filmed lessons. Specifically, the student teachers worked together in groups of three to
search through resources and choose a particular lesson on the assigned topic from a bank
of filmed lessons. The student teachers were then asked to work together to identify, through
inference, the plan the lesson was based upon and to reconstruct that plan. They discussed,
negotiated ideas, and used inference skills to analyse the lesson and produce a plan that
identified the main ideas and information in the lesson, the lesson’s structure, main objec-
tives, target skills and chronology. The inferred lesson plan, together with the film clip, was
then sent to the tutor for feedback and further discussion.
The second activity was videotaped micro-teaching. The goals of this activity in the inter-
vention were to build the student teachers’ confidence, their support for one another and
readiness to both offer and receive peer feedback by providing space for them to try out
among friends and colleagues what they would have to do with their students in the future.
These activities provided opportunities for the student teachers to work together in an
informal, supportive and discursive environment. The same three student teachers who had
worked on the lesson inference activity collaborated again to build a plan for a 45 minute
lesson that they would have to teach. The completed plan was sent to the tutor for feedback
and discussion, revised by the students in the light of the feedback and then taught by one
member of the group who was chosen by drawing lots. The teaching of that lesson was
video recorded and the video together with the lesson plan was sent to both the tutor and
to a peer group to review for feedback and further discussion.
The data collected throughout and after this stage consisted of a further questionnaire
to the student teachers, student teachers’ reflective journals and the field notes of the tutor,
who was also the researcher.

Findings
The findings showed that the student teachers were eager and willing to work in these new
ways with more devolved, dialogic and experiential organisation of their learning mode. All
of the student teachers commented in the final questionnaires that they found the new
ways of learning helpful. In their journal entries they often reflected on both their own
teaching and that of their peers’. They recognised the limitations of the methods they were
accustomed to:
After practising of teaching, I see it is not easy to impart knowledge for students … I have knowl-
edge, but I don’t know how to get the students involved in my lesson. (Student 19)
250   H. T. M. NGUYEN AND C. HALL

And they began to see the value of practical experiential engagement:

When we practise, we realised that it’s difficult to teach. We usually forget something that we
wanted to say … I really think that it is very useful for us if we practise frequently. (Student 21)
Another student commented on the need to adjust to the demands of group work:
I noticed that when we worked in groups of three, I had to find out a lot of materials related to
lessons we taught. (Student 2)
However, the prospect of working in new ways was daunting:
This is the first time that we have to do a lot of practical work on our own, so we feel rather
stressful and nervous … I find it difficult to express my ideas clearly … I don’t know how to
communicate with students naturally … I find it hard to manage the time in practice stage.
Sometimes we are quite confused about how many exercises we should have, how long should
it last, or if we should explain the instructions in English or Vietnamese. (Student 1)
These kinds of concerns tended to occur in students’ journals midway through the course;
by the end of the course, the students acknowledged how much they felt they had changed
and were very pleased with what they felt they had learned:
Now I can see clearly the difference between before and now. I can stand in front of a lot of
people and speak quite fluently without stumbling like before. I have achieved the goals I set
at the beginning. (Student 5)
Alongside this growing sense of their own capacities and confidence, the students’ unques-
tioning respect for their own teachers remained firmly fixed. Arguably, this focus on the
stance and behaviour of their own tutors acted as a restraint on the speed with which they
adapted themselves towards the new, less teacher-centred, learning patterns. But at the
start of the course 83% of the student teachers were of the opinion that they simply would
not learn anything working in a group without a tutor. This belief had motivated the whole
group of students to write a collective email to the tutor near the beginning of the course,
when the proposed pattern of working became clear to them, to ask for more whole group
lecturing. This desire for direct instruction diminished as the course progressed but the
student teachers’ final reflections recorded both their pleasure in the progress they felt they
had made and the struggle they had in working in more devolved and experiential ways.
This difficulty was linked closely to the student teachers’ beliefs about the role of the
teacher in the class. They saw their teachers as having been assigned an important social
mission:
I think the tutor is very important. Tutors will train useful people for the society. During the
learning process, the tutor helps the student teachers improve, provides knowledge for students
so that student teachers understand and love the job they chose. (Student 8)
In accepting this role, tutors became the holders of mission-critical knowledge:
The tutor gives comments and evaluates every student, indicates what students have done well
and what they have not. The tutor is the person who organises and controls all the activities in
class. (Student 8)
However, alongside this acceptance of the importance of teachers’ social role was a desire
for a more open relationship between students and their tutors. They appreciated having
space to express their own opinions and be heard by the tutors whose opinions they deeply
valued:
I wish tutor would give me comments on my good points and shortcomings frankly, provide
me opportunities to speak out what I think even though it is correct or incorrect. The tutor will
orientate my thinking so that I can think in a positive way. (Student 7)
 TEACHING EDUCATION   251

In this sense, then, the student teachers accommodated both roles, as active learners and
as traditional knowledge receivers. Their interest in process and practice increased; they
were more prepared to share ideas and offer opinions to one another, but their beliefs about
the role of the teacher were so strong that they still put their total trust in the tutor and were
inclined to distrust their peers’ judgements:
We are students, so we always believe in experts than any others. If you give us comments, I
think we will do it better. (Student 10)
This belief in the importance of maintaining the teachers’ role as powerful expert, rather
than, for example, facilitator of exploratory learning, remained strongly held. As Phan and
Le (2013) comment, teachers in Vietnamese society are accorded the high status they cur-
rently hold because they are expected to be both ‘role models and knowledge guides’ (p.
244). So, although they enjoyed and expressed their gratitude for the teaching methods
used on the course:
I’d like to express my deep gratitude to you. Thank you for the time we had together. It’s amazing
… (Student 5)
and identified a different stance in the teacher:
Thank you a lot for your meaningful lessons, your caring attitude and your encouragement.
(Student 1)
the student teachers in the sample retained their expectations about the demeanour and
disposition teachers should adopt with their classes. Student 16, for example, reflected the
views of others in the group:
I know when the teacher stepping in front of class all her problems in life have to be put aside
or be oppressed to deal with them later. (Student 16)
Some sought to resolve the tensions and contradictions that were emerging in their views
by approaching their new tutor for an authoritative expert view:
Could you [the tutor] tell us some tips about your way to succeed as a teacher like you? (Student
14)
It seems to us that this response offers a way forward for further development amongst
Vietnamese teachers. We explore this further in the discussion that follows.

Discussion and recommendations

The outcomes of this study lead us to argue that, in the right circumstances, there is a cau-
tious willingness amongst the younger generation of Vietnamese teachers to accommodate
new ideas about teaching and teachers’ roles. Our analysis of popular cultural images of
teachers in Vietnam, which moves from the unquestioned wisdom and authority of the ideal
teacher in the pre-revolutionary era, to the more gentle nurturing topiarist of the post-rev-
olutionary period, to the younger, sometimes flawed, sometimes female, heroes of the mod-
ern day, suggests that there has been some readiness in Vietnamese society to accept change.
The changes are observable but gradual. The process of change amongst the group of stu-
dent teachers was analogous to this broader cultural change. The research findings sug-
gested that the old images and attitudes persisted alongside a cautious interest in exploring
the new ideas about teaching and new models of the teacher.
However, evidence from the current study also suggests that, despite widespread accept-
ance that there is an over-emphasis on the theoretical over the practical in the Vietnamese
252   H. T. M. NGUYEN AND C. HALL

education system (Tran et al., 2014), a mismatch between current teaching and learning
practices and the requirements of globalised economies (Harman et al., 2010) and a need
to teach soft skills (World Bank, 2008), the ideas themselves were not well understood in the
university context in which the study took place. Whilst there is no conclusive evidence that
the research setting was representative of other similar settings, the new approaches to
teaching and learning were officially sanctioned in government policy and discourse and a
considerable amount of time and effort had been expended in providing staff workshops
and seminars focused on ‘student-centred approaches’, ‘active learning’ and ‘learner auton-
omy’ in the institution where they worked and they were aware of the fact that they were
expected to adopt these approaches. The tutors demonstrated in their responses that they
were aware of the fact that they were expected to adopt the new approaches. They also
made clear that they found the new ideas difficult to integrate into their own teaching.
Responses to a closed question about the importance of feedback, for example, revealed
that the tutors saw feedback sessions as opportunities not for exploratory dialogue but for
offering judgments about the students’ progress and behaviour:
With feedback given, students know what they have done is good or bad. (Tutor 1)

It [feedback] helps student teachers recognize their strengths and weaknesses to adjust them-
selves and improve their later teaching quality. (Tutor 2)
None of the tutors regarded micro-teaching feedback as offering an opportunity or a space
for student teachers to explore new ideas or to think about their new experience from their
own perspectives, or arrive at their own judgement and evaluation. Descriptions of small
group discussion sessions suggested that students spent most of the time listening to their
tutors, and that any discussion that did ensue was heavily directed by the tutor. Other tutors,
even one who apparently supported the use of peer feedback, avoided group work and said
they stuck to whole class approaches. One tutor interpreted group work as having individuals
writing alongside one another without necessarily sharing what they had written.
With this relatively weak grasp of what a ‘student-centred’ approach might entail, or how
constructivist learning theories might underpin particular pedagogies, the tutors did not
model or demonstrate the new theories effectively. The student teachers learned from the
models they were presented with and also had very hazy notions of what a ‘student-centred’
approach, ‘group work’ or ‘active learning’ might look like in practice. For example, 45% of
the participants said that they sometimes did ‘group work’ individually, then shared what
they had produced without discussion with other group members. Others saw the group
as being constituted electronically; one student teacher, for example, explained the reason
why they sometimes could not work in groups was ‘because we had troubles with computer
network’. Similarly, student teachers redefined the notion of ‘active learner’ as being active
in asking the tutor about things they did not know, or as quickly and ‘actively’ absorbing as
much as possible of the knowledge the tutor offered:
Students are not passive. They are active in group work. If there is anything they don’t know,
they can ask the tutor. (Student 8)

Student teachers should take part in lessons actively, understand and be aware of principles
and techniques, which tutor provides. (Student 16)
The terms ‘student-centred’, ‘cooperative learning’, ‘active learning’, ‘peer learning’, ‘group
work’ were therefore used positively by both the tutors and the students in the sample but
much of their meaning had been lost in the cultural processes of translation. This lack of
 TEACHING EDUCATION   253

conceptual understanding weakened the process of change and ensured that it occurred
only at the surface level. We suggest that this is an explanatory factor in the slow speed of
change (Duggan, 2001; Saito et al., 2008).
In the Vietnamese context, a teacher-centred culture where unquestioning respect for
teachers has long been a dominant attitude, students learn from the role models and ped-
agogies their teachers present. Would-be teachers currently inhabiting in the role of students
(student teachers) are likely to exhibit these attitudes of respect for their teachers even more
strongly than others in the population. For these reasons, the introduction of change though
the teachers’ teachers, (i.e. the teacher educators), has particular potency. The evidence of
this study suggests that when the teacher educator understands the new teaching ideas
sufficiently and models the changed pedagogies effectively, the students are interested and
open to new ideas.
The student teachers were at first puzzled and suspicious of a tutor who appeared close,
approachable and relatively non-directive. As they gained confidence and worried less – and
as they understood more about why the tutor was acting as she did – the student teachers
appreciated and were motivated by the changes and tried their best to accommodate the
new learning patterns. Typical comments emphasised the change in the climate of learning
and growth in self-confidence, as well as the usual gratitude towards the tutor:
I thank you very much. You have helped me as well as my classmates enjoy this subject. Especially,
you are very friendly, understanding, smiling to us, which creates a relaxing atmosphere. I like
it very much. (Student 19)

Your encouragement always motivates us to improve and try our best. Thank you for that. Thank
you for everything you have done for us, from the knowledge you provided, to your belief in
us. (Student 7)
There may well have been a Hawthorne effect, in that students knew they were being
observed and they might have been more willing to adapt their responses because of this.
But it was also important to the process that this was a self-conscious, reflexive pedagogy
in which the teacher educator could lay bare the bones of the learning theories she was
using and the tasks and activities she had developed from those theoretical roots. This
required some depth of understanding of the conceptual changes that she was trying to
introduce so that she could, in Hattie’s terms, make the learning ‘visible’ and therefore acces-
sible to the student teachers in the development of their own practice (Hattie, 2009).
These findings are consistent with studies of teacher professional learning elsewhere in
the world. Prominent amongst these is the authoritative review of research on teacher learn-
ing and development conducted by Timperley, Wilson, Barrar, and Fung (2008) for the New
Zealand Ministry of Education, which was adapted for the International Academy of Education
and distributed through UNESCO. The 2008 digest, which aimed to identify ‘practices likely
to be applicable throughout the world’, identifies amongst its key findings:

• the importance of context-specific approaches that ‘systematically assist teachers to

translate those principles into locally adapted applications’ (p. 10)
• the importance of taking into account teachers’ prior knowledge and how they view
existing practice (pp. 10–11)
• the value of revisiting partially understood ideas to try them out in everyday contexts
(p. 15)
254   H. T. M. NGUYEN AND C. HALL

• that ‘opportunities to learn must occur in environments characterised by both trust

and challenge because change is as much about the emotions as it is about knowledge
and skills’ (pp. 15–16)
• that engagement which leads to deep learning is promoted by ‘worthwhile learning
activities and by opportunities to negotiate the meaning of existing and new theories’
(p. 16)
• that ‘teachers are likely to reject new ideas that conflict with their current ideas unless,
as part of the professional learning, their existing understandings are engaged’ (p. 17)
• that collegial interaction can be helpful to teachers’ learning but that ‘knowledgeable
expertise’ and active leadership are also required to develop the vision and the practice.
(pp. 19–23)

The conclusion we draw from this analysis is that the government’s aim of promoting
students’ ‘life skills, creative ability, ability to perform practical skills’ (Prime Minister, 2012)
needs to be contextualised, to begin by respecting and honouring the deep seated cultural
beliefs that permeate and define teaching and learning in Vietnam. The imposition of unex-
plained pedagogical change is counter-productive in a situation where respect for particular
models of teaching and learning runs so deep. Teachers and teacher educators need to be
engaged in the discussion about the characteristics that Vietnam wishes to see in its teachers
and education system in the future and to understand the debates that have convinced their
government of the need for change. In particular, we argue that the focus for transforming
teacher education should be on promoting and deepening the responsibility of teacher
educators to provide what Timperley (2008) calls the ‘knowledgeable expertise’: to introduce
student teachers to new ideas about the processes of teaching and learning, both at the
theoretical level and by modelling what the ideas mean in practice. The evidence of this
study suggests that this strategy is likely to be supportive of student teachers’ learning and
development as it allows them to experience and analyse new pedagogies and learning
theories in settings where their teachers open up new teaching practices for examination
and adaptation to the Vietnamese context. Skilled teacher educators will take their students
with them. But first there is the urgent work of engaging the teacher educators themselves
in gaining a much deeper conceptual and practical understanding of what the reforms
actually mean.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors
Huong Nguyen Thi Mai is the head of English Language Teaching Methodology Division at Hanoi
National University of Education. She obtained her PhD from the School of Education, University
of Nottingham. Her research interests focus on English teacher education and teacher professional
development.
Christine Hall is a professor of Education and former Head of the School of Education at the University
of Nottingham. Her research interests include teacher development and the arts, culture and creativity
in education.
 TEACHING EDUCATION   255

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