Managing the quality of pre-service teacher training in Vietnam: an institutional case study

The focus of this thesis is stakeholder conceptions of quality management in pre-service teacher training (PTT) and its practice in a Vietnamese university. The research is a qualitative case study underpinned by an interpretive paradigm drawing on the concepts of quality control, quality assurance and quality enhancement as a framework for evaluating the provision of PTT in the Vietnamese higher education context. A particular focus is PTT in the Social Sciences and Humanities, with a comparative analysis of the Geography and History departments in the selected university. The investigation provides critical insight into a topic that has been under-researched in the Vietnamese higher education context. There are four key findings. First, there is a convergence of conceptions of PTT quality that can be explained within the classic model of ‘input-process-output quality’, stakeholders regarding provision as satisfactory, while emphasising the importance of the relatively poor quality of the student input as an explanation for any deficiencies in output quality. Second, while there is a general consensus among the stakeholders about the existing policy of standards regarding quality in education, the evidence suggests that there are significant gaps in stakeholders’ knowledge regarding teacher standards, especially from an international perspective. Third, the research reveals the absence of a coherent quality assurance system at both institutional and departmental levels, provision depending largely on the professional initiative of individual staff. Fourth, the university lacks a graduate tracing system, thus a range of employability dimensions are outside its control, showing the systemic problem of quality management, not only at the institutional but also the national level. The study provides a number of recommendations for improvements in policy and practice. These include: (a) embedding a quality culture at national, institutional and department levels; (b) engaging both staff and students more in quality processes; (c) developing a ‘close-to-practice’ curriculum that generates a closer working partnership between the PTT providers and schools; and (d) developing greater awareness of global best practice and how this can be incorporated into the Vietnamese system, while avoiding the potential pitfalls of education transfer and policy borrowing. Such challenges will depend on visionary leadership and a long-term strategy at all levels of quality provision.