Technology used in lower secondary classrooms in Vietnam - Challenges persist!

• In Event: Roundtable Session 4
  In Refereed Roundtable Session: Navigating complexity: Key challenges and trends of comparative and international education across Southeast Asia

Proposal

The Industrial Revolution 4.0 has transformed entire systems of production, management and government in countries around the world, and hence, has changed many aspects of human life and activities (Schwab, 2016 ). In response to these changes, Education 4.0 has emerged as a comprehensive approach to preparing a future workforce that is able to work in the rapidly evolving period of new technologies (Bonfield et al., 2020). As a country with a low-skilled labor force (WB, 2022), despite its high ranking in international standardized tests such as PISA, Vietnam has determined to prepare its education system for the Industry 4.0. The country launched the “Year of Information and Communication Technology (ICT)” almost two decades ago and recently changed its general curriculum from focusing on knowledge to competency-based education which aims to equip students with competencies for the 21st century. The country is also focusing on developing digital storage of online learning resources that are accessible for students and teachers from the 1st to 12th grades.

While how ICT is used in teaching and learning in Vietnam's higher education context is widely researched, fewer studies have explored how teachers use ICT to teach and develop students’ competencies in lower secondary classrooms and what their challenges are. Utilizing the qualitative case study approach, this study answers this question through analysis of teacher interviews and video recordings of their classrooms. The study participants were two teachers teaching in a public lower secondary school; specifically, one teacher taught Physics, and the other one taught Chemistry. Pre-lesson interviews were conducted with the teachers individually to understand how and why teaching and learning activities would be organized. After that, two of their lessons were video recorded. Post-lesson interviews were conducted to understand the teaching and learning activities in the recorded lessons. Each lesson recording was 45 minutes long, and the interviews were approximately one hour. An inductive qualitative coding approach was used to analyze the data.

Preliminary findings of the data show that teachers still prefer the old way of teaching, which is lecturing, while technology is occasionally used in class. Poor facilities in classrooms contribute to this decision. To use technology in class, teachers must take their laptops to classrooms and connect them to the sound system and the screen before each lesson. With only 45 minutes for a lesson and too much knowledge to convey, this takes from them the valuable time they need to finish their lessons. When technology is used, it is mostly for teachers to show slides that summarize the knowledge delivered during the lesson or to show students experiments that they cannot do in the functional room. The use of technology is more prominent when teachers prepare their lessons. They search for online resources and share such resources with their colleagues. The findings confirm the challenges regarding the readiness of the facility and teachers to promote the use of technology to improve teaching and learning.

Author

• Vu Phuc Phuong Dao, University of Minnesota