Why do I risk my professional reputation to do it?” Exploring Vietnamese teachers’ motivations and identities in relation to private tutoring

• In Event: Presidential Invited Session: Shadow Education in Asia: Complexities and Dynamics in Access and Equity

Proposal

Private tutoring is a fact of life in the Vietnamese education system, and indeed many schools actively organize private tutoring sessions in the form of ‘extra classes.’ However, limited scholarly attention in Vietnam has been paid to this phenomenon from the perception of teachers who offer private classes to their own students. The assumption and discourse is simply that these public school teachers are ‘corrupted’ and only greedy for money.

Our study responds to this research gap, using a conceptual lens that focuses on teacher motivations, professionalism, and teacher identities as mediated by the neoliberalization of education. Private tutoring as a site of the neoliberalization of education in Vietnam can cause teachers to struggle between working to satisfy accountability indicators rather than to fulfill the traditional duty of care for others. We question:

• What are the external and/or internal motivations for teachers who offer private tutoring?
• How do teachers’ motivations for offering private tutoring reflect and/or challenge their broader sense of teacher identities?

Our qualitative case study examines the perspectives and professional identities of 10 teachers from rural high schools who currently offer private tutoring. The findings show how teacher motivations in private tutoring are driven by teacher-student bonds and students’ demands for high academic results, in addition to common rationales such as extra incomes and professional development opportunities. Teachers are fully aware of and can be disheartened by society’s discourses that blame teachers for being greedy and participating in this system. In other words, they acknowledge the clash between imperatives of equity in education and the potential for unethical issues in private tutoring. Yet Vietnamese teachers have their own ways to reconcile the issues. They emphasize that private tutoring is justified because it comes primarily from the demand of students and parents; and most participants state that even in private tutoring lessons they are should fulfill their duties as teachers. This pattern aligns with the Vietnamese conception of ideal teachers who, no matter what, devote their ‘tâm’ (heart-mind) to their teaching. It shows a particularly Vietnamese dimension of the ‘struggle for the teacher’s soul’ (Ball, 2003) currently waged around the world under the pressure of neoliberalism in education.

The study contributes to the literature by documenting the voices and views of school teachers who are involved in private tutoring. It shows how the private tutoring practice is perceived and experienced. It also highlights benefits in the tutoring sector from teachers whose identities have been made and remade by longstanding tensions of private and public education.

Author

• Hang Bich Duong, Arizona State University