Transcript Teaching Profession

Thanh Van Pham
1. Historical background
 In the past, in Vietnamese society, a teacher's position was
higher than that of parents and only lower than that of the
king
 For nearly one thousand years, Vietnamese people learnt
Chinese characters and used them for writing, but
pronounced them in a distinct, Vietnamese way
 At the end of 19th and first half of 20th centuries, FrenchVietnamese education mainly focused on training people
to serve the colonial apparatus
 Under such an education system, 95% of Vietnamese
people were illiterate
2. Teacher training system
2.1. Aim
 Train high-quality human resources
 Foster talents for the national education system and
society
 Research basic science, applied science in the fields of
Natural Sciences, Social and Humanities Education and
bring them to advanced level.
 Provide educational services and science and technology
to serve the industrialization and modernization of the
country and international integration.
2. Teacher training system
2.2. Types and Governance
 90 teacher training institutions for all levels of education
Type
Quantity
Supplying Teachers for
Level of Management
- Lower and upper secondary
MOET and provincial
University Education
10
schools
governments
- Kindergartens
Most of them under
provincial governments and
- Lower secondary schools
Teacher Training College
45
some under MOET (e.g.
(and some primary schools)
Central Music and Painting
Teacher Training College)
- Provincial and district
Educational Traning
2
department of education
MOET
Management College
- General schools
Primary Teacher Training
35
Institutions (normal schools)
-Primary schools
Provinces and cities
2. Teacher training system
Training continuum:
 Initial training or pre-service training is a period of training in teachertraining institutions whose duration depends on each level of teacher
education.
 Induction training is a statutory probationary period for novice teachers.
 Staff development begins on the first day as a teacher and continues to the
last day
 Appraisal not only provides a statement of a teacher's effectiveness in
delivering the agreed elements of a job description but also helps the
appraisee and the appraiser to identify the staff development and training
needs of the person being appraised
 Teacher development: Together with teacher training, teacher development
is also a process in which teachers can develop themselves professionally in
a way different from teacher training.
3. Pre-service teacher training:
 Teacher training institutions continuously organise
programs to provide professional training for teachers
pedagogical universities, colleges' school, National
University of Hanoi.
3. Pre-service teacher training:
3.1. Object training
 a. Lecturer in universities, colleges untrained pedagogical.
 b. Those with university degrees or more, experienced
practitioners, who wish to become teachers of universities
and colleges.
 c. Those who are working in scientific research institutes,
the state management agencies, businesses, production
entities college degree or above, who wish to make a guest
lecturer at universities and colleges.
 d. Graduates with good and excellent universities; good
quality, with aspirations to become university lecturers and
college.
3. Pre-service teacher training:
3.2. Programming
 Total volume of knowledge Minimum 15 credits. Among
them include:
 - Knowledge mandatory minimum of 10 credits
 - Knowledge elective Volume: 5 credits
 * Note:
 - The object is a lecturer at universities and colleges to
study full content mandatory minimum knowledge of the
program.
 - The object is not to teach in universities and colleges to
study full share knowledge both compulsory and elective
programs.
4. Teacher qualification
 A teacher in primary and lower secondary education is
expected to have graduated from a college-level teacher
training institution, and in the case of an upper secondary
school teacher, to have graduated from a university.
 It is in pre-primary education that the proportion of
qualified teachers is at the lowest, about 51.1%, as
compared with 77.16% in primary education 82.76% and
94.88% in lower and upper secondary education,
respectively.
 The proportion of qualified teachers tends to be lower in
the South than in the rest of the country.
4. Teacher qualification
 Additional training for general teachers:
 Standard-targeted training is aimed at enabling those under-standard (underqualified) teachers to reach the standards as set by the MOET for each level. For
example, the standard training level is normal school education for kindergarten and
primary school teachers; college education for lower secondary school teachers and
higher education for upper secondary teachers.
 Periodic training is a kind of training periodically provided to update teachers on
new information about educational policies, plans or new knowledge of the
curriculum or teaching methodology.
 New textboook targeted training is a form of additional training provided for
teachers when there are changes in the curriculum, subject matter content, textbooks
or teaching methodology. This additional training is mainly given before a new
school year to enable teachers to acquire new skills and update their knowledge of a
new curriculum, textbooks, teaching methods and pedagogical competencies.
 Above-standard training is provided for those teachers who have the need to be
upgraded above the standards set by the MOET and it is mainly aimed at meeting
the need of pioneering training for 10-15 years to come.
5. Recruitment
 1 out of 5 in the state labor force of about 4,000,000
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people is in the teaching profession.
There were 298,407 teachers at the primary level (70.72%
female)
154,416 junior secondary level teachers (83.88% female)
39,398 senior secondary teachers (93.31% female);
25,562 vocational education teachers (51.8% female);
34,117 college, university, and professional school faculty
in higher education, (19.4% female)
6. Responsibility
 Teachers need to impart knowledge of their subject
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matter to students
Teachers need to be able to meet the needs of students
of varying abilities within the same classroom
Teachers need to have common sense
Teachers have the responsibility to be a good role
model in and out of the classroom
Teachers must be organized
Teachers are expected to keep student information
private
7. Career path
 Teachers' salaries are not high
 Because of the low salaries, however, the profession fails
to attract the best minds particularly at the primary and
lower secondary school levels.
 Moreover, the salaries, in general, have failed to keep up
with the inflation rate.
 Teachers often need to hold more than one job.
8. Development of teachers and
Educational Managers
 Vietnam has made many efforts to develop its teacher
training system, and it has operated intensive teacher
training courses (9+3, 12+1, etc. where 9 or 12 is the
number of years of schooling and 3 or 1 relates to the
intensive teacher training courses)
 Among the total number of teaching staff, there were more
than 7,000 vocational trainers30, 155,699 pre-school
teachers, 360,624 primary teachers, 295,056 lower
secondary teachers, 106,586 upper secondary teachers,
13,937 professional secondary trainers, 13,677 college
lecturers, and 33,969 university lecturers
8. Development of teachers and
Educational Managers
 Vietnamese educational policy makers and managers feel
that the human factor -teaching staff and educational
managers- plays a decisive role.
 Vietnam pays special attention to enhanced professional
ethics and knowledge of teachers and educational
managers.
 Teaching staff and educational managers are also
increasingly faced with a requirement for computer skills
and improved foreign language skills, primarily in
English.
8. Development of teachers and
Educational Managers
 With respect to incentives and policies for teachers, the
Education Law states that in addition to salary, teachers shall
receive allowances and other preferential rewards while
working in: areas with extreme socio-economic difficulties,
specialized schools, schools for gifted students, boarding
schools for ethnic minorities, and schools for people with
disabilities.
 In the short-term, in order to improve education quality, the
Ministry of Education and Training requires teacher training
institutions and the educational manager training college to
strongly renew teaching and learning methodologies.
9. Issues and problems
 A great surplus of well-trained teachers in urban and delta areas
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(developed areas) and teacher shortages in remote, highland
and inaccessible areas (under-developed areas).
The problem of poor qualification of teachers (under-standard
teachers) comes in the following forms:
Poor self-knowledge, subject knowledge and knowledge of
students in a multicultural, multi-religious and context
Low managerial skill
Poor pedagogical competence
Lack of reflection and ability to be selfcritical, the hallmark of
teacher professionalism.
9. Issues and problems
 Teacher education suffers from the following problems:
o Teacher training institutions are poorly equipped with outdated facilities and training
methods and lack systematically and scientifically written training materials.
o Great mismatch between the demand for expansion in size and improvements in
quality.
o Contradiction between training needs and the existing capacity of the training
system.
o Lack of policy for supporting deserving students and a suitable mechanism for the
recruitment of high-quality students into the teaching profession.
o Slack management of graduates (who were provided with scholarships during the
learning process). Some graduates quit the teaching profession.
o Location of teacher education programs.
o Poor and non-diverse content of teacher education programs.
o Main focus of training programs on theory but not on practical skills.
o Failure to diversify training forms (induction training, school-based in-service
training and teacher development).
9. Issues and problems
 Major solutions in teacher training
o Develop a network of about 90 teacher training institutions with
sufficient number of good teacher educators and modern facilities
and equipment.
o Build two key teacher training universities to train high quality
teachers and undertake research in educational and training science.
o Allot more funds for the strengthening and upgrading of existing
teacher training institutions in ethnic and highland areas and make
sure that each province or city will have one multi-system teachertraining college with professionally-upgraded lecturers.
o Continue to study and formulate remuneration systems and policies
toward teachers.