Challenges in adopting effective pedagogy
The responses to the interviews indicated that although the Ministry of
Education provides schools with the ‘Guidelines for Task Performance of
Secondary Education’ at the beginning of each school year, including
instructions regarding the pedagogies to be used, teachers and schools
managers are still confused about how to apply them in practice.
One interviewee said, ‘We were introduced to new pedagogies such as
the ‘hands-on’ (VALOFRASE) method (introduced by the Meeting Vietnam
Association, France), the New School Model of the Global Partnership for
Education, and the Viet Nam Escuela Nueva- GPE-VNEN (introduced by the
Ministry of Education and Training); we need to have more time to learn these
methods and consider how they should be used in class’.
Another interviewee expressed support for the ‘philosophy’ of the New
School Model of the Global Partnership for Education ‘because it teaches
every individual student’ and this represents a fundamental change in
education. The respondent noted, however, that ‘It is hard because we have
big classes. How can we pay attention to every student in a class of 62?’ The
respondent nevertheless observed that ‘It does not mean we cannot change.
But we should consider what approach is relevant to our circumstances’.
He also noted that ‘Textbooks and the curriculum should be considered as
blueprints, based upon which a teacher should provide bricks, cement, doors,
hinges, etc., and students should then be able to build their “houses” under
the supervision of the teacher’.
Overall, the responses to the interviews suggested that teachers would
understand more specifically how to improve their teaching practices if they
had access to detailed guidelines and to more training opportunities on
pedagogical methods.
When teachers were asked in the questionnaire what hindered their
adoption of effective pedagogy, more than half responded that they did
not have sufficient teaching and learning materials to implement innovative
pedagogies (58.68 per cent), that it took more time to cover the required
curriculum content when innovative pedagogical methods were used than
when conventional methods were used (57.02 per cent), that the assessment
standards were not clear (52.89 per cent), and that there was a lack of
support from parents and other stakeholders (51.24 per cent). Almost half
of the teachers (48.76 per cent) pointed to a lack of collaboration among