2012 Volume 21 Pages 128-137
This paper aims to clarify the challenges teacher training in Vietnam has, and how Vietnam has tackled those challenges since 1986, when the Doi Moi policy was launched, by focusing on reforms in higher education in Vietnam.
This research approaches the theme in the following way: first, outlining the challenges of teacher training by discussing the papers which the Ministry of Education and training has produced; second, taking the “Normal University in Ho Chi Minh City” as the classic type of normal university, and studying the reforms in the structure of departments and curriculums; and third, presenting the “University of Pedagogy” a member university of Hanoi National university, which directly reports to the cabinet and has more autonomy, as a new type of normal university and discuss the new models in teacher training.
The analysis in this paper concludes first that challenges of teacher training are the following:（1）normalization of teacher qualification,（2）adaption to social demands, and（3）a shift to teacher's professionalism: second that although non-normal universities can offer teacher training programs, the “Normal University in Ho Chi Minh City” has diversified the programs and offered non-teacher training oriented programs to adjust to social demands, but that traditional normal universities represented by “Normal University in Ho Chi Minh City” has not renovated the curriculum which has been focused on logic but on practice: and third that “University of Pedagogy”, contrary to traditional normal universities, re-examines traditional teacher training mode and makes more of teacher professionalism by introducing new models of “3+1”, “4+1”, the latter of which, in ideal, is potential to train teachers with knowledge and practice in master's course. This conclusion suggests that Vietnam attempts to tackle with the challenges above mainly in leadership of “University of Education” with its new model. The following issue, however, is left for future research: an examination of the curriculum of the new model and the possibility of it prevailing.
