Knowledge, Specialisation and Social Order

University Curriculum Reforms in Vietnam 1986-2015: Knowledge, Specialisation and Social Order

Thi Kim Quy NGUYEN

(ORCID ID: 0000-0001-6028-0321)

Submitted in total fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

February 2018

Melbourne Graduate School of Education

The University of Melbourne

Abstract ABSTRACT

This thesis provides a new detailed curriculum focused account of an important reform period in Vietnamese higher education policy. It sets out to explore questions of knowledge, specialisation and social order in relation to changing iterations of education policy for higher education in Vietnam between 1986 and 2015, a period of significant changes of higher education policy, as Vietnam aimed to incorporate a stronger market economic agenda and outcomes in its higher education curriculum. More specifically, the study is concerned with knowledge and its relation to the problem of specialisation and social order in successive curricular reforms in Vietnam during the period under study. To achieve these aims, the study employs a particular approach in the sociology of education, one that is grounded in the Durkheimian tradition. In doing so, the thesis has attempted to address this issue in a fresh way from major approaches to curriculum analysis and reform in contemporary educational research. This approach, while acknowledging that the influences of socio-political factors are not to be downplayed in shaping curriculum discourse, argues that how curriculum knowledge is built and modified also depends on its epistemological basis. The evidence base for this research draws on official policy documents supplemented by semi- structured expert interviews. The thesis researches the details of three different phases of major policy change to analyse what the policies say about aims and key agendas of each reform phase and how they set up organisation and structure of curriculum. In doing this it attends to aims and tensions regarding issues of knowledge modernization on the one hand and social order on the other. The analysis approach is both interpretive and critical. Finally, the study draws on Emile Durkheim‘s argument on the moral nature of specialisation as one possible way of reflecting on the epistemic and moral tension evident in the reform period. Overall it is argued that successive university curriculum reforms between 1986 and 2015 involve (1) an uneasy attempt on the part of the policymakers to try to put together the American-European style while maintaining a consistent ‗red‘ approach, each with unsatisfactory results; (2) an epistemic paradox between a neo-conservative ‗red‘ approach in which knowledge from certain disciplines was treated as fixed on the one hand, and, on the other hand, a set of generic approaches in which any forms of knowledge were assumed to be as valid or invalid as any other as long as they served the pragmatist goal of economic development, and (3) a regulative paradox between moral authoritarianism and industrial authoritarianism, both of which deny the sui generis moral nature of specialisation in the Durkheimian sense. One of the key implications from the study is that the reforms did not seem to generate curriculum approaches, both epistemic and moral, that truly reflect an increasingly differentiated society both in terms of work and values. Through this, the study problematizes any curriculum reform attempts that disregard the intrinsic autonomy of education and knowledge by equating these categories with socio-economic interests.

Declaration

DECLARATION

This is to certify that

(i) the thesis comprises only my original work towards the PhD,

(ii) due acknowledgement has been made in the text to all other material used,

(iii) the thesis is less than 100,000 words in length, exclusive of tables, bibliographies and appendices.

Thi Kim Quy Nguyen

Melbourne 2018

Preface PREFACE

Some texts in this thesis were drawn from my earlier publications that are my own work and directly related to the topic of this study. Specifically:  Some paragraphs in Chapter 2 on the historical overview of higher education in Vietnam were based on the following peer-reviewed journal article:

Nguyen, Thi Kim Quy. 2011. Globalisation and higher education in Vietnam. Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, 23, pp.117-136.

 A part of Chapter 7 on the Profession-Oriented Higher Education was published in the following peer-reviewed book chapter during my candidature:

Nguyen, Thi Kim Quy. 2016. The Profession-Oriented Higher Education project in Vietnam: when curricular knowledge is at stake. In S. Bohlinger., et al. (Eds.), Education policy: Mapping the landscape and scope (pp. 97-123). Frankfurt: Peter Lang.

 During my candidature, I have also presented the following conference papers, the abstracts of which were incorporated in the proceedings: Nguyen, Thi Kim Quy. 2015. A Durkheimian critique of the Profession-Oriented Curriculum Project in Vietnam. A Paper presented at the Asia and Education Conference, University of Otago, New Zealand, 11-13 December 2015.

Nguyen, Thi Kim Quy. 2015. Durkheim‘s critique of pragmatism and its implications for the recent university curriculum reform in Vietnam. A paper presented at the 45th Annual conference of the Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia (PESA), Melbourne, 5-8 November 2015.

Nguyen, Thi Kim Quy. 2015. Knowledge, Specialisation and Social Order: Higher Education Curriculum Policies in Vietnam after 1986. A paper presented at the second international symposium on social realism. Cambridge University, UK, 29 June- 1st July 2015.

Nguyen, Thi Kim Quy. 2014. Key curriculum policy moments in Vietnamese Higher Education between 1986 and 2013. A paper presented at the mini-conference for Vietnamese PhD candidates in education, Southern Cross University, Gold Coast, 13th -14th July 2014.

Nguyen, Thi Kim Quy. 2013. An Analysis of Durkheim‘s ‗Pragmatism and Sociology‘ and its implications for curriculum research in Vietnam. A paper presented at the first symposium on social realism in the sociology of education. Hormeton College, Cambridge University, UK 12-15 April 2013.

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Acknowledgements ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

When I started this life-changing journey, I was so eager to embark on a process of becoming a doctoral student, expecting that academic activities would be the only thing I would engage in. By the end of the journey, I have realized that the whole experience has been much richer than that. Looking back, the overwhelming feeling in my heart is a deep sense of gratitude for many people who have stood by me in both good times and bad. I wish to extend my special appreciation to the following people and institutions for helping me to reach the destination of this journey.

I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to the University of Melbourne and the William and Kate Herschell Scholarship for generously funding my doctoral studies. The scholarships are true blessings to me since financial constraints would have prevented me from even thinking about starting a PhD.

My deep and special gratitude goes to the following people who have contributed significantly to this project in their role as supervisors. First, I am deeply grateful to my main supervisor, Professor Lyn Yates, and my co-supervisor, Dr Peter Woelert, for their invaluable comments on my texts throughout the years. I benefit greatly from their expert judgments and professional guidance, their constantly dedicated and practical support and kind forbearance, without which this thesis would not have been completed. Specially, I owe a tremendous debt to Professor Lyn Yates, who has always played a key role in coordinating this project and keeping it on track, for her scholarly wisdom, her meticulous comments and constructive critiques during the writing phase and for her inexhaustible patience during the correction phase of this thesis. Second, I am deeply indebted to Associate Professor Leesa Wheelahan and Dr Glen Savage for their stimulating conversations and invaluable guidance in their role as my supervisors during the first year of my candidature. Finally, my utmost appreciation goes to my external supervisor, Emeritus Professor Michael Young, whose commitment to the success of his student has truly been an inspiration. I cannot have enough words to express my thanks for his scholarly wisdom, his tireless encouragement and unwavering trust and support, all of which have gone a long way toward the realization of this project. In their own ways, they each have contributed invaluable insights to this project as well as helped to shape me as a student and a researcher.

My sincere thanks also go to the members of my supervisory committee: Prof Fazal Rizvi, Dr Jessica Gerrard and Dr Glen Savage, for their constant support, insightful comments and sustained encouragement. I am most grateful to Prof Fazal Rizvi for his expert assistance and advice on policy analysis during the initial phase of my study.

My deep appreciation also goes to Emeritus Professor Johan Muller for the invaluable chance to talk and exchange ideas with him during the initial phase of my research. His scholarly wisdom and his gentle and perspicacious insights have served as a driving force in my work.

I was most fortunate to have met Dr Elizabeth St George, who generously shared her research experience, provided me with policy documents and data as well as meaningful conversations about Vietnamese higher education. I am sincerely thankful for her generosity and kindness. I would also like to greatly thank the interviewed participants for generously giving the time to answer my questions and providing me with invaluable documents for the thesis.

Acknowledgements I am also very grateful to be a member of level 7 at Melbourne Graduate School of Education. I would like to express my deep appreciation especially to Prof David Beckett for being always willing to give me support and encouragement; to Prof Julie McLeod for her cheering conversations; and to my good friends Pan He, Sanaz Narispour, Emma Buchannan, Nasim Janfada, Elizer Jay de los Reyes, and especially to Mahtab Janfada for their beautiful friendship, their cheering and caring, which have made level 7 a warm corner in my memory. My deep appreciation also goes to Dr Nigel Lutertz for being an excellent editor of many chapters of my work. I am so much indebted to his friendship and unconditional help.

While I acknowledge the contributions of all who have assisted me with this study, I am wholly responsible for my own arguments and any mistake made in this thesis.

Appreciation is extended to my colleagues at the School of Foreign Languages, Hanoi University of Science and Technology, for their generous help and support in dealing with all the paper work needed during my leave of absence.

I am truly blessed to have met the following people, who have stood by me both in good times and in bad, particularly during the days I suffered from the painful loss of my beloved mother, and have taken care of me as a family member during my stay in Melbourne: Dr. Nguyễn Xuân Thu, Ms. Lê Thị Ánh Hồng, Mr John Drennan and Dr. Đặng Thị Kim Anh. I owe my deepest gratitude to Dr Thu and Ms Lê Thị Ánh Hồng for their caring and support, particularly to Dr Thu‘s stimulating conversations, his kindness and his tireless engagement with Vietnamese higher education, which has been an immense source of inspiration and strength for me. I am deeply grateful to Dr Kim Anh for giving me endless care and unfailing support, trust and encouragement, all of which have been a tremendous driving force for my journey. Last but not least, I am greatly indebted to Mr John Drennan for his constant support not only through countless little acts of kindness every day but also his unconditional support in the editing of my thesis. To them all, I owe a lot.

I acknowledge the several friends and well-wishers along the way, whose name are not mentioned in black and white on this page yet whose best wishes have always encouraged me. Their encouragement and support have not gone unappreciated.

Last but not least, to my family in Vietnam: my deepest gratitude has always gone to my parents, specifically to my late beloved mom whose enduring love and sacrifice will last forever in my heart; to my beloved dad for being there for me to give me all the strength I need to deal with challenges in life. I also owe an important debt to my brother and my sister-in-law, my adopted mother Dr. Lương Phương Thảo, my best friend Hằng Cua and my darling Trần Tuấn Tú, for their unconditional love, their tireless support and cheering from afar.

Dedication

DEDICATION

In memory of Mom, whose unconditional love and sacrifice will stay forever in my heart,

To Dad, whose unconditional love and support, like Mom’s, have made me what I am today,

To my brother and my sister-in-law, cô Phương Thảo, chị Kim Anh, my Tuấn Tú and Hằng Cua, for their unfailing support during my hard times,

To Michael and Joe, for showing me the way and taking the Durkheimian journey with me,

To Lyn and Peter, for doing all they can to help me reach the destination,

To thầy Thu and cô Minh Phương, for their inspiration and stimulating conversations on Vietnamese higher education.

Table of Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT...... I DECLARATION ...... II PREFACE ...... III ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS...... IV DEDICATION...... VI LIST OF FIGURES...... X LIST OF TABLES ...... X LIST OF ACRONYMS ...... X CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION ...... 1

1.1 RESEARCH PROBLEM, BACKGROUND AND AIMS ...... 1 1.2 CONCEPTUAL AND METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH ...... 5 1.3 STRUCTURE OF THE STUDY ...... 6 CHAPTER 2. UNIVERSITY CURRICULUM IN VIETNAM: CONTEXT AND LITERATURE REVIEW .. 7

2.1 HISTORICAL OVERVIEW OF HIGHER EDUCATION IN VIETNAM ...... 7 2.1.1 The Confucian ‘tang’ ...... 7 2.1.2 The French ‘tartness’ ...... 9 2.1.3 The Soviet Union ‘flavor’ ...... 12 2.1.4 The American ‘dash’ ...... 14 2.2. THE ‗RED‘ AND ‗EXPERT‘ DISCOURSES AND THE PRE-1986 UNIVERSITY CURRICULUM IN VIETNAM ...... 14 2.3 HIGHER EDUCATION AFTER 1986 ...... 18 2.3.1 The change of socio-economic order since 1986: the ‘marriage of convenience’ between authoritarianism and neoliberalism of the Vietnamese State ...... 18 2.3.2 University education in Vietnam after 1986: A New ‘face’ and a ‘site of contradiction’ ...... 20 2.3.3 The global context ...... 22 2.4 RESEARCH ON UNIVERSITY EDUCATION IN VIETNAM SINCE 1986 ...... 24 2.4.1 Lack of research on university curriculum in Vietnam ...... 24 2.4.2 Some rare research on university curriculum in Vietnam after 1986 ...... 26 2.4.3 Concluding remarks ...... 30 CHAPTER 3. CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK ...... 31

3.1 INTRODUCTION ...... 31 3.2 SOME DOMINANT APPROACHES TO CURRICULUM ANALYSIS AND THE CASE FOR A SOCIAL REALIST APPROACH . 32 3.2.1 Technical-functionalist approaches ...... 33 3.2.2 Approaches in some critical social theories ...... 34 3.2.3 Social realist approach to curriculum analysis ...... 36 3.3. KEY CONCEPTS FOR THE STUDY ...... 38 3.3.1 Durkheim’s theory of the sociality and differentiation of knowledge; sacred and profane knowledges .... 38 3.3.2 The instructional discourse and regulative discourse ...... 40 3.3.3 The instructional discourse in the university curriculum: contribution from Michael Young and Johan Muller ...... 44

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3.3.4 The regulative function of university curriculum ...... 52 3.4 DURKHEIM‘S THEORY OF SPECIALISATION ...... 54 3.5 AN ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK: KNOWLEDGE, SPECIALISATION AND SOCIAL ORDER IN THE VIETNAMESE UNIVERSITY CURRICULUM ...... 56 CHAPTER 4. APPROACH AND METHOD ...... 59

4.1 RESEARCH DATA AND COLLECTION PROCEDURES ...... 59 4.1.1 Research data ...... 59 4.1.1 Data collection procedures ...... 61 4.2 DATA ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION ...... 67 4.3 ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS ...... 70 4.4 CONCLUDING REMARKS ...... 70 CHAPTER 5. ‘ĐÀO TẠO THEO DIỆN RỘNG’: THE 1987 ‘BROAD- BASED’ CURRICULUM ...... 71

5.1 INTRODUCTION ...... 71 5.2. REGULATIVE DISCOURSE ...... 72 5.2.1 A dominant technical-functionalist view of curriculum reform ...... 73 5.2.2 The discordance over the ‘socialist man’ ...... 74 5.2.3 The swing in the political curriculum ...... 79 5.3 INSTRUCTIONAL DISCOURSE ...... 83 5.3.1 Education for breadth and the idea of the ‘multi-disciplinary university’ ...... 83 5.3.2 Modularising knowledge and its conflict with pedagogical legacies ...... 88 5.3.3 Re-organising knowledge: the two-phase university education ...... 91 5.3.4 Reconstruction of the list of disciplines and the selective knowledge orientation ...... 100 5.4 THE END OF THE 1987 REFORM ...... 103 5.5 CONCLUDING REMARKS ...... 106 CHAPTER 6. ‘CHƯƠNG TRÌNH KHUNG’: THE 1998-2005 REFORMS AND THE ‘CORE CURRICULUM’ ...... 109

6.1 INTRODUCTION ...... 109 6.2 THE 1998 KEY AGENDA ...... 109 6.2.1 The Law of Education and the ‘Core Curriculum’ concept ...... 109 6.2.2 The construction of the Core Curriculum ...... 112 6.3 REGULATIVE DISCOURSE ...... 118 6.3.1 Recommitment to the socialist order ...... 118 6.3.2 Strengthening Marxist-Leninist curriculum ...... 122 6.3.3 The ‘red’ discourse in social sciences and humanities ...... 125 6.4 INSTRUCTIONAL DISCOURSE ...... 127 6.5 CONCLUDING REMARKS ...... 132 CHAPTER 7. ‘CHUẨN ĐẦU RA’: THE 2005 OUTCOME-BASED CURRICULUM ...... 133

7.1 INTRODUCTION ...... 133 7.2 REGULATIVE DISCOURSE ...... 136 7.2.1 The dominance of economic instrumentalism ...... 136 7.2.2 A nuanced shift between the ‘red’ and ‘expert’ discourse ...... 138 7.2.3 The reduced legitimacy of the ‘red’ knowledge ...... 139

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7.3 INSTRUCTIONAL DISCOURSE ...... 146 7.3.1 The course-credit approach and its clash with the Core Curriculum ...... 147 7.3.2 The Outcome-based curriculum and its attendant tensions ...... 151 7.3.3 When the Bologna Process met Vietnam: The case of the POHE curriculum ...... 161 7.4 CONCLUDING REMARKS ...... 178 CHAPTER 8. THE ENDURING DILEMMAS IN VIETNAMESE UNIVERSITY CURRICULUM: SOME REFLECTIONS ...... 180

8.1 INTRODUCTION ...... 180 8.2 CHANGES AND CONTINUITIES IN THE THREE PHASES OF UNIVERSITY CURRICULUM REFORM ...... 181 8.2.1 Summary of the three phases ...... 182 8.2.3 Some comparative notes across the three phases of reform ...... 186 8.3 REFLECTIONS ON SOME ENDURING EPISTEMIC AND REGULATIVE PARADOXES ...... 188 8.3.1 Technical-functionalism and the epistemic paradox ...... 189 8.3.2 The regulative paradox ...... 196 8.4 THE DURKHEIMIAN INTERPRETATION OF THE REGULATIVE PARADOX IN CONTEMPORARY VIETNAMESE CURRICULUM POLICY ...... 200 8.4.1 Durkheim’s critique of August Comte’s moral authoritarianism ...... 200 8.4.2 Durkheim’s critique of Saint-Simon’s industrial authoritarianism ...... 207 8.5 SOME CONCLUDING THOUGHTS ...... 213 CHAPTER 9. CONCLUSION ...... 216

9.1 THE JOURNEY SUMMARISED AND KEY INSIGHTS ...... 216 9.2 LIMITATIONS OF THE RESEARCH ...... 219 9.3 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE RESEARCH ...... 219 9.4 LOOKING AHEAD ...... 221 REFERENCES ...... 223 APPENDICES ...... 241

APPENDIX 1 – PLAIN LANGUAGE STATEMENT ...... 241 APPENDIX 2 – LETTER OF CONSENT ...... 242 APPENDIX 3 – KEY INTERVIEW QUESTIONS ...... 243

List of Figures, Tables and Acronyms LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1. The sample curriculum at Da Lat University in 1996 ...... 98 Figure 2. The outcome-based curriculum development at system level ...... 157 Figure 3. Curriculum development process for POHE program ...... 168 Figure 4. Comparison of POHE curriculum and replaced curriculum ...... 171

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1. Sources and types of official documents ...... 62 Table 2. List of key curriculum policy documents 1986-2015 ...... 63 Table 3. Interview participant matrix ...... 65 Table 4. The structuring of the policy analytic memo used in this study ...... 68 Table 5. Comparison of the 1952 Soviet curriculum and the Vietnamese counterpart prior to 1987 ...... 94 Table 6. Extract from Decision 2677/GD-DT of 3/12/1993 ...... 95 Table 7. Extract from Decision 2678/GD-DT dated 3/12/1993...... 96 Table 8. The 1998-2005 political curriculum ...... 124 Table 9. The political curriculum after 2008 ...... 141 Table 10. Comparison of Regulation 25/2006/QĐ-BGD&ĐT and Regulation 43/2007/QĐ-BGD-ĐT ...... 150 Table 11. Extract from learning outcomes statement for sociology ...... 156 Table 12. The construction of learning outcomes in a university curriculum ...... 158 Table 13. Recommendations for modifying POHE regulations ...... 175

LIST OF ACRONYMS

HE: Higher Education

MOET: Ministry of Education and Training

POHE: Profession-Oriented Higher Education

CPV: Communist Party of Vietnam

HERA: Higher Education Reform Agenda

Chapter 1. Introduction

UNIVERSITY CURRICULUM REFORMS IN VIETNAM 1986- 2015: KNOWLEDGE, SPECIALISATION AND SOCIAL ORDER

CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION

1.1 Research problem, background and aims

[E]ach society sets up a certain ideal of man, of what he should be, as much from the intellectual point of view as the physical and moral; that this ideal is, to a degree, the same for all the citizens; that beyond a certain point it becomes differentiated according to the particular milieu that every society contains in its structure.

(Emile Durkheim, 1956, p.70)

Durkheim‘s comment above expresses a view that has been widely recognized today in educational thinking in general and in sociology of education in particular: that is, education (hence the curriculum) is closely related to social order on the one hand and specialisation on the other. As Moore (2007b, p. 3) puts it, curriculum and social order are always closely related because curriculum reforms and debates are always enmeshed with broader social changes and education is generally attributed with the ‗transformative‘ mission of cultivating the individual in ‗a particular socially desirable way‘. In a similar vein, Bell and Stevenson (2006, p. 55) argue that education policy is not only about economic policy, but also about social policy, because education plays ‗a crucial role in promoting a sense of individual and collective welfare and through this a sense of social cohesion‘. The question of what is worthwhile to teach in the curriculum will inevitably be tied to the question of ‗preparing learners with the knowledge and skills to be engaged members of their community, with the capacity to exert influence and agency‘ (ibid, p. 55). Moore (2007b, p. 3) also adds that curriculum is immanently social because the organisation of knowledge in the curriculum is often ‗read‘ or treated as ‗a representation of social order incorporating principles of inclusion and exclusion, of hierarchy and power‘.

Another dimension of Durkheim‘s quoted statement is that the purpose of educational curriculum is not only about the assimilation of an individual to a particular form of society deemed legitimate at a particular time, but also that this is related to the issue of specialisation, i.e., the individual‘s acquisition of specialised knowledge and access to

Chapter 1. Introduction specialised careers more or less connected with such knowledge. As Yates and Young (2010, p. 4) argue, official curriculum policies involve a number of ‗overlapping goals‘ including the fostering of individual intellectual development as well as the formation of a country‘s citizens. Such ‗overlapping goals‘, particularly those associated with the sociological tension between specialisation and social order, are challenges that have faced many educational reformers in the world today, as can be captured in Muller‘s (2006, p. 73) words:

All countries in their design of their education system grapple with the tension between contending social goods: between freedom of choice and social prescription, sometimes couched in terms of a trade-off between what is good for democracy and what is good for development, between allowing burgeoning inputs and consequences and managing those inputs and their social impact.

(Muller, 2006, p. 73)

The twin pulls of the political-pedagogical agendas in education reforms have become more intense as a society transitions into a new socio-economic order defined by increased specialisation. The issue of control in education in general, and in curriculum in particular, becomes problematic. What knowledge, both moral and epistemic, should be incorporated into the curriculum to mediate the tension so as to avoid contradiction and crisis becomes a crucial task. The role of education in general and university education in particular in socializing the individuals into the economic and socio- political structure of the society is ‗both complex and contested‘, for it expresses the tension between ‗economic individualism and social collectivism‘ inherent in educational policies in both developed and developing countries today (Slonimsky, 2016, p. 44).

This thesis sets out to explore these questions of knowledge, specialisation and social order in relation to changing iterations of education policy reform associated with university education in Vietnam between 1986 and 2015. This period encompasses a number of significant changes of university education policy, as the country saw ‗Doi Moi‘ (renovation), a sweeping economic reform since 1986 that has allowed for the development of the private economic sector, the country‘s integration to the global economy and legal reforms in diverse social fields (Đặng Văn Huân, 2013; London, 2009). The reform also saw change in the political model from a ‗state socialist‘ to a ‗market-Leninist‘ regime, in which

communist parties pursue their political imperatives through market institutions and market- based strategies of accumulation while maintaining Leninist principles and strategies of political organization.

(London, 2009, p. 374)

Chapter 1. Introduction

One of the enduring tensions within the Vietnamese socialist regime has been between maximizing production and maximizing control, between ‗education for the sake of a state-building utilitarianism, and education for the sake of cultural and social salvation‘ (Woodside, 1983, p. 414). In Vietnamese education in general and university education in particular, this tension has been couched in the enduring ‗struggle‘ between the ‗red‘ (hồng) and ‗expert‘ (chuyên) dyad that continues to haunt curriculum thinking in Vietnam up to the present. The ‗red‘ dimension refers to the political order of socialism. The ‗expert‘ dimension refers to the need to generate specialised individuals to perform well in the economy. The university curriculum reform began with a vision of an ideal ‗new socialist man‘ and a broad notion that such an identity could be moulded through the curriculum and that the curriculum could be held together based on this vision. The search for an appropriate curriculum to shape the identity of this new graduate raised a number of tensions for curriculum policymakers. In the immediate years after Doi Moi, as trust in the existing curriculum model waned, the policymakers and educators sought a future curriculum that would prepare students to engage more strongly with the increasingly differentiated economy.

While curriculum policies have undergone successive reforms in both structural and theoretical underpinnings, the forms of these changes and their implications for the future have not yet been systematically investigated. Despite an increased number of publications about various aspects of Vietnamese university education since 1986, there has been a lack of systematic accounts of university curriculum policy during this period. Some rare recent studies on Vietnamese university curriculum tend to view the curriculum either as a function of socio-economic forces (e.g., St. George, 2003, 2006, 2010; Trần & Marginson, 2014) or as power struggles between factions within the Communist party (e.g., Trần Hiền, 2009). Without a doubt, such research works have provided some valuable insights into the existing picture of university curriculum in Vietnam. The problem with such approaches is that they tend to take the question of knowledge for granted, reducing it to a ‗relay‘ of either economic or political interests. This, as Moore (2007b) argues, is also a problem with dominant approaches to curriculum and analysis in contemporary educational research. Young (2008) adds that the result of this neglect of knowledge in curriculum analysis is likely to blind us to the question about the content and purpose of education, and it is for this reason that the issue of knowledge in curriculum needs a serious examination.

Chapter 1. Introduction

Accordingly, there exists a need to bring together reflections on the Vietnamese university curriculum and its role in the significant experience of contemporary Vietnam: the Leninist vanguard party‘s attempts to create a modern state under the broad ‗market-Leninist‘ modernization project. A systematic exploration into the way the political and pedagogical tensions were treated in university curriculum reforms would seem to provide a worthwhile contribution to the literature on university education in Vietnam, where the topic of knowledge and the curriculum is still underdeveloped. Specifically, the existing issue with the university curriculum research is that it requires a fresh approach, one which foregrounds the issue of knowledge in relation to the problem of specialisation and order, in a way that recognizes the sociality of curricular knowledge while at the same time not denying its intrinsic autonomy.

The major question this thesis addresses is:

How did the Vietnamese State, throughout a sustained period of university curriculum reform (1986-2015), seek to reconcile political and pedagogical agendas concerning knowledge, specialisation and social order?

There are two major contributions this thesis seeks to make. On the first level, it is first and foremost an historical exploration into the university curriculum reforms in Vietnam after Doi Moi, focusing on the changes in the way curriculum is constructed and legitimised. In analysing the curriculum policies during the period between 1986 and 2015, I focus on making sense of shifts in curriculum policy initiatives, particularly the changing conceptions of knowledge as the policymakers sought reconciliation between the twin pulls of the political and pedagogical agendas.

On the second level, this study aims to engage with and contribute to the curriculum literature and theorization of curriculum by bringing together the empirical accounts of what has happened to knowledge in these reforms with some broader conceptual questioning about knowledge and the purposes of higher education institutions (HEIs) regarding specialisation and social order. In other words, the thesis attempts to shed light on the general question of curriculum and social order in a society, particularly to reflect on the value different iterations or policy frameworks place on specialisation and on the form of knowledge deemed worthwhile to realize a particular social ideal. In

Chapter 1. Introduction doing so, the thesis aims to contribute to the literature about university knowledge, specialisation and order in relation to current times.

In summary, this study aims

 To provide a socio-historical analysis of recent and current developments in university education in Vietnam through the focus on the relation between knowledge, specialisation and order.  Through this to contribute to the theorizing of the relationship between knowledge, specialisation and social order relationship in current times.

1.2 Conceptual and methodological approach

This study draws on some key insights and analytical concepts developed by educational sociologist Basil Bernstein (1971, 2000) and others in Durkheimian sociology of education to analyse curriculum changes in relation to the question of knowledge, specialisation and social order (e.g., Moore, 2007b; Muller, 2009; Muller & Young, 2014; Young, 2008). Bernstein argues that inherent in any educational context is a tension between two orders or discourses: one that attempts to impart knowledge and skills for an individual learner‘s specialisation in a particular career, and the other that attempts to impart collective values common to any individual in a certain society. These two discourses refer to the two roles of education: the transmission of knowledge and the transmission of values and its attendant morality in relation to a particular social order. Such pedagogical and political dynamic is conceptualized by Bernstein as the tension between the ‗instructional discourse‘ (the transmission of knowledge and skills) and the ‗regulative discourse‘ (the transmission of moral collective values), which shape the curriculum (and curriculum policy) in public universities in Vietnam. Through these analytical concepts, the study explores the interplay between knowledge selection principles and regulative principles between the three phases of the reform period. The data involve both primary and secondary documents, which will be further discussed in the method and approach chapter (see Chapter 4). The study also draw on Durkheim‘s analysis of specialisation to reflect on the implications of the changes regarding the relationship between knowledge, specialisation and social order in contemporary university curriculum reform in Vietnam (and beyond).

Chapter 1. Introduction

In this study, unless otherwise indicated, the term ‗university‘ can be defined as the level of education that spans at least 3 years in higher education (equivalent to American ‗undergraduate education‘).

1.3 Structure of the study

This thesis is structured as follows. After this introduction, which discusses briefly the background, aims, research questions, significance and the approach of the thesis, Chapter Two presents the context of university reforms in Vietnam since 1986 and a brief overview of the literature on Vietnamese university education and university curriculum. Chapter Three elaborates the conceptual background and framework of the study, before presenting the specific methodological approach in Chapter Four.

Chapters Five, Six and Seven provide accounts of three phases of the curriculum reforms in Vietnamese university education between 1986 and 2015. Specifically, Chapter Five analyses the first phase of university curriculum reforms in the years 1987 and 1997, focusing on the agenda of a ‗broad-based‘ curriculum and the attempt to flexibilise curricular knowledge; Chapter Six analyses the second phase in the years 1998 and 2004, focusing on the agenda to re-assert a pre-1986 socialist commitment and the traditionalist knowledge base through the idea of the ‗Core Curriculum‘; and Chapter Seven analyses the third phase in the years 2005 and 2015, focusing on the agenda to strengthen economic instrumentalism and a remarkable change in knowledge conception. In each case I discuss the specific context of the reform, using documents supplemented by interviews to review key curricular emphases and arrangements. I conclude each chapter with a specific reflection on the tensions of the political and pedagogical agendas (or between specialisation and social order) evident in that reform. Chapter Eight summarises and critiques the trends of curriculum reforms and draw out the implications of the reforms for the specialisation and order issues in Vietnam. Chapter Nine concludes the research with some reflection on the research journey and its future implications.

Chapter 2. University Curriculum in Vietnam: Context and Literature Review

CHAPTER 2. UNIVERSITY CURRICULUM IN VIETNAM: CONTEXT AND LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter provides an overview of the socio-economic changes in Vietnam after 1986, an historical outline of the Vietnamese university education as well as its reshaping of the system since 1986, which involves fundamental changes in diverse aspects and is, according to Welch, a ‗site of contradiction‘ (Welch, 2010, p.204). The chapter also reviews recent research on the higher education system in Vietnam through which it seeks to situate the focus and contribution of this study.

2.1 Historical overview of higher education in Vietnam

The university in Vietnam in the modern sense has its roots in the Western model, but these roots have been ‗twisted‘, as Altbach (1989) alleges, due to Vietnam‘s complex history of different external contacts. In this section I will show how diverse external influences have shaped the Vietnamese university right from its formation, and as Welch (2010) argues, an historical perspective is necessary to understand why institutions are what they are, and how they may change and be influenced by policies.

The section starts by providing an overview of the historical development of university education in Vietnam from the Confucian Ly Dynasty (1010-1225) to the introduction of the Doi Moi reform in 1986. The period 1986-2015 is the time-span for the present study and it is contextualized with reference to the forces of globalization and curriculum policy trends in university knowledge.

2.1.1 The Confucian ‘tang’

Like Japan, Taiwan, Korea and Singapore, Vietnam belongs to the Confucian tradition spreading from China. The influence of Confucianism on Vietnamese society was significant, both in social structure and learning, because for almost a thousand years Vietnam was ruled by China, from 111 BC to 938 AD. In Welch‘s (2010, p. 198) account, in China during the Tang era (618- 907 AD) a strong government was established, bureaucracy and rationalisation began to replace

Chapter 2. University Curriculum in Vietnam: Context and Literature Review the hereditary aristocratic system. The substantial influence of the Tang legal code on Vietnam manifested in ‗the rise of some great Vietnamese scholars and interpreters of the revered Four Books and Five Classics, which so influenced Vietnamese culture and learning‘ (ibid).

After gaining independence in 938 AD, Vietnam was the first country in South East Asia to build a higher learning institution in 1076 (called Quốc Tử Giám), originally used to educate sons of emperors, but soon later becoming an incubator for bureaucratic scholars, or mandarins, who would work for the State. Quốc Tử Giám is considered to be the first Confucian-based higher learning institution that is associated with the 1000 year feudal agrarian civilization in Vietnam.

Through a civil service examination that involved several rounds, from regional to central levels, male scholars, or Confucian literati in Weber‘s terms, from all over the country, of any walks of life, competed at Quốc Tử Giám in the final exam to be chosen as ruling elites. This is why historian Alexander Woodside writes that ‗no ruling class in any medieval or early modern Western state ever owed its exalted position to its educational achievements as conspicuously as did the old Chinese and Vietnamese scholar-gentry‘ (Woodside, 1983, p. 404). In his study of the Chinese literati, Max Weber (2009, p. 418) suggests that the power of these scholars lay in their classical literary education, which provided them with profound knowledge of the calendars, stars and horoscopes. This body of knowledge enabled them to ‗mediate between the sacred and the profane‘(Moore, 2004, p. 76), that is, the relationship between the earthly events and the speculative signs from above so that the ordering of events that regulate the irrigation system for crops could run smoothly. The mastery of such understanding required an induction process of at least fifteen to twenty years into a highly specialised knowledge area that carried with it a specific identity (Hayhoe, 1989). This enduring learning process, tested through participation in a series of centrally organised examinations at local, provincial and imperial level, gave the literati access to ‗an indispensable, but also esoteric, expertise‘ (Moore 2004, p.76).

According to Hayhoe (1989), the Confucian curriculum was characterised by an absolute boundary between the pure classical knowledge canonised in the Four Books and Five Classics that are abstracted from everyday life and all other knowledge areas such as medicine, mathematics, and engineering. The boundary, institutionalised by the civil service examination,

Chapter 2. University Curriculum in Vietnam: Context and Literature Review was so strong that teachers and students were not entitled to make even the slightest change to the absolute and unquestioned body of knowledge. Unlike the European idea of ‗pure knowledge‘ associated with theoretical abstraction, purity in the Confucian tradition represented an abstention of mental labour from the material world and was associated with ‗practical principles concerning the government and administration of society, interlinked with maxims of personal and family morality‘ (Hayhoe, 1989, p.12).

The influence of Confucianism reached its peak in Vietnam in the early Ly dynasty (1010-1225) but it had to compete with Daoism and Buddhism, and it was also ‗assimilated into the Vietnamese culture through the dictates of indigenous thoughts‘ (Welch, 2010, p.199). In contemporary Vietnamese society, its ethos on harmony, dignity and morality is still found to be influential, although, as argued by Welch (2010, p.199), the influence is ‗in perhaps a more syncretic fashion than in China‘.

Confucian education in Vietnam lasted even after the Chinese domination because of voluntary borrowing. This, however, does not mean it was necessarily submissive, as pointed out by Woodside (1976). The innovative Chinese inventions, from paper to gunpowder, and other creative ideas were too appealing to resist. However, even with several thousand years of development, as Hayhoe (1996, p.10) argues, the Chinese traditional university possessed neither autonomy nor academic freedom that paralleled the Western model, and ‗there was no institution in the Chinese tradition that could accurately be called a university‘. This is interesting because while rationalisation and bureaucracy, the central elements of modernity, had long preceded the West by Medieval Confucian states like China, Korea and Vietnam, other modern values of university education such as autonomy and academic freedom did not follow in those countries.

2.1.2 The French ‘tartness’

Vietnamese university education was also influenced by European colonialism, especially from the latter half of the nineteenth century. Prior to this, Western contacts already existed via trade and religion interchanges. In 1651, Alexander de Rhodes, a talented Portuguese missionary and lexicographer, had devised a Roman script form for the Vietnamese language. When the French established its colony in Vietnam in 1858, this script was used to extend their hegemonic power,

Chapter 2. University Curriculum in Vietnam: Context and Literature Review while the older Chinese script was still popular among the indigenous people as an expression of resistance.

The French colonial time was considered to be the first industrial phase in the history of Vietnam, marked by the development and construction of processing industry within the colonial policy framework. This period also marked a turning point in the development of university education in Vietnam by ending the Confucian education. In 1919, King Khải Định decided to eliminate all Confucian schools and the system of local and provincial examinations, facilitating the consolidation of the Vietnam-French educational model and the access to Western sciences and technologies at the time. Besides Catholicism, another French import was, according to Welch (2010), the ‗paler imitation of the French Grandes Ecoles‘, or the European university, that bore some resemblances to the codified and centralised Confucian higher learning that already existed in Vietnam. However, it should be borne in mind that, as Moore (2004) observes, despite a strong link to the State, education in France was associated with a radical social and political event that brought a whole new revolutionary spirit to this people: the 1789 Bourgeoisie Revolution. Thanks to this, French intellectuals developed an ‗intellectual distance that monitored the State‘s delivery of the entitlements of citizenship‘ (Moore, 2004, p.83). Such a situation was alienated in the Vietnamese context, not only because of historical reasons, but also because of the France‘s intentional plan to inhibit the educational development in the colonised State. In contrast to the French university operating in Europe at that time, the university in the colonised State did not enjoy any such values as academic freedom or autonomy. Students were trained only with basic skills to support colonial bureaucracy, access to powerful knowledge of scientific and technological innovations was denied, as was the right to question the colonial monopoly on power.

The Indochina University, established under the Decree signed by Paul Bert on 16 May 1906, was considered to be the first university in the modern sense in Vietnam (and the whole Indochina region) under the French colony. Due to significant initial obstacles, the university was forced to close, and it was not until 1917 that it was re-opened and consolidated with additional colleges in Law, Trade, Agriculture, Teacher Training and Public Administration.

Chapter 2. University Curriculum in Vietnam: Context and Literature Review

The French university model brought about significant changes to the existing knowledge system. Lectures were given in French and Western research methods were employed. For the first time in history, education was systematically organised in terms of administration, curriculum and research methods, taking both research and teaching as university missions. It comprised several majors in basic sciences, engineering, medicine, law and other courses in social sciences and humanities. However, As Pham & Fry (2004) note, the French legacy was very modest. The establishment of the first university in the modern sense in 1902, the School of Medicine and Pharmacy (antecedent of the Hanoi University of Medicine), was probably its greatest achievement. University education in Vietnam under colonial rule was in a fragile state, like a foster child, because French investment was merely politically motivated. The Indochina University was designed primarily to generate a new intellectual class, or the ‗pro-Western intellectuals‘ (tầng lớp tây học), to serve the goals of political domination and exploitation by the French. According to Welch (2010), the French university system in Vietnam only produced a small number of graduates.

Hayhoe (1989) remarked that the French university curriculum during the early 20th century was characterised by a rigid hierarchical knowledge structure, a common feature shared by other European universities between 1850 and 1950. This was present in the rigidity of the knowledge structure and organisation with little internal changes. The curriculum was disciplinary and authoritarian, to the extent that science was almost reduced to mere tradition.

The August revolution in 1945 marked the first line in the ending chapter of French colonialism. The Vietnam Democratic Republic was born with the declaration of independence. However, shortly after that the war continued as the French came back. University education was in disarray until 1954 when the Điện Biên Phủ victory brought an end to Western colonialism in Northern Vietnam. The Geneva Treaty in 1955 marked the temporary division of Vietnam into North and South, and unification was to be realised under the condition that a general election be held. But, alas, it never happened. This was because the political machineries between the two regions vied for supremacy by seeking international allies, with the Soviet Union and China in the North, and the USA in the South, with the USA‘s intervention characterised by the escalation of violence. As a result, between 1955 and 1975, there existed two different university systems in Vietnam: the Soviet model in the North and the American model in the South.

Chapter 2. University Curriculum in Vietnam: Context and Literature Review

2.1.3 The Soviet Union ‘flavor’

Vietnamese universities in the North were caught between the Soviet-style communist curriculum and the French colonialist curriculum after the revolutionaries seized power in 1954. The universities became centres for the propagation of socialist orthodoxy, a product of the West that gave the new regime its legitimation. In this new regime, according to Woodside (1983, p.427):

a new expectation came to dominate Vietnamese education: that in a society where production materials were publicly owned, in which the economy could be planned on a nation-wide basis, education and the economy, through such planning, could be made to harmonize with each other, unlike the situation in capitalist countries.

The Soviet university was strongly influenced by the German and French model during the 1917 Revolution in Russia, probably more so with the French one (Hayhoe, 1996). Academic freedom and autonomy was heavily tied to French tradition, which emphasised the independence from governments but at the same time asserting that this must be ‗in loyalty to the higher moral and intellectual interests of the state‘ (ibid, p.6). Meanwhile, the German model, exemplified by the University of Berlin founded by Humbolt in 1810, enjoyed greater autonomy than their French counterpart because it was predicated on Hegelian view of the State. German academic freedom was based on Immanuel Kant‘s view that ‗reason‘ is the unifying idea of the university, serving as a source of criticism, reflection and governance and a tool protecting the university from the hegemony of the authority (Peters, 2007; Readings, 1996).

Such values were transformed in Russia in such a way that suited its socio-cultural and political context. For example, while Marxist epistemology of dialectical holism embraced intellectual freedom as an implication, academic freedom and institutional autonomy in the Soviet style were limited due to the Leninist view of the State. Soviet leaders believed in a strong specialisation of knowledge as a way to promote scholarship standards, which was achieved through stricter classification of knowledge than that of German‘s model while ‗causing minimal threat to political order‘ (Hayhoe, 1996, p.8). Another feature of the Soviet model that departs from its original source of influence lies in the separation of teaching and research, which stands in contrast to the Humboldtian tradition. Research was monopolized by a system of academies, and

Chapter 2. University Curriculum in Vietnam: Context and Literature Review this resulted in a ‗derogation of the universities, as the faculties had been derogated by the Napoleonic system in France in the preceding century‘ (Hayhoe, 1996, p.9).

Both China and North Vietnam adopted the Soviet university model during the 1950s. With this system in Vietnam, the rigidities of both the Confucian literati era and French colonialism arguably found their resonances in the socialist era. This is because, as shown in Hayhoe‘s (1989; 1996) account, the structure and organisation of knowledge was much closer to those features of the European knowledge tradition, in which pure and applied fields of knowledge were institutionally separated, with the former holding higher prestige than the former. Besides, despite sharing some features with Chinese socialism, the Vietnamese form was strongly imbued with nationalist aspirations, represented in the use of Vietnamese language as a means of teaching and learning (Welch, 2010). Thus, as in earlier periods, modern knowledge was structured and organised within the traditional patterns essential to political order, although another no less important purpose of the system was to impart both specialist and professional skills for socialist economic modernisation in Northern Vietnam.

In the late 1950s, Mao Tse-Tung, the Chinese government leader, decided to turn against this model in search of a system that relied on ‗cultural authenticity‘ and ‗creativity‘, which culminated in the notorious Cultural Revolution that lasted more than a decade. In this process, the boundary between school and society became blurred, and teachers were the target of attack because academics were considered distant from the lower classes such as the peasants. The same thing did not occur in the Vietnamese context. It appears that Vietnam was more ‗conservative‘ than China in this direction, and one could easily draw the conclusion that the Vietnamese university was merely a mechanical, unimaginative copy of the Soviet model. However, as Woodside (1976, p.662) points out, the reason for Vietnam‘s decision was not simply the different weight of Confucian tradition, different tastes of leaders or the ‗mentality of servitude of foreign countries‘. Rather, it was the different historical and social conditions in Vietnam at that time, especially the immense need for specialists to serve both the construction of the Northern region while fighting for the country‘s unification. In pointing out why Vietnam decided to continue the narrowly specialised Soviet curriculum, Prime Minister Pham Van Dong made it clear in 1973 that

Chapter 2. University Curriculum in Vietnam: Context and Literature Review

a ‗regular‘ and ‗contemporary‘ school system required ‗discipline‘ and ‗hierarchy‘ in which ‗teachers are teachers, pupils are pupils, schools are schools‘ and in which even the spirit of revering graduation-honours and the various ranks of university teachers had a necessary and ‗positive‘ side, which meant that it could not be dealt with in a ‗mechanical way‘.

(Pham Van Dong, 1973, as quoted in Woodside, 1976, p.659)

The contribution of the former socialist states, notably the USSR, in the form of aid, knowledge transfer and technical assistance, to the development of human and institutional resources was significant for Vietnam‘s planned-economic system during this time, represented in the swift increase of total university enrolments from 8,000 to at least 50,000 between 1959 and 1975, with the establishment of many new specialist institutions (Welch, 2010).

2.1.4 The American ‘dash’

After the collapse of the French influence in 1954, in parallel with the ‗sovietisation‘ of university education in the North, there was a rising US influence on Southern universities, which had been centred on the French model. In Welch‘s (2010) account, there were at least four large universities located in big cities, namely Sai Gon, Hue, Can Tho and Thu Duc Polytechnic University, that were run in typically American style. He noted that despite their Vietnamese distinctiveness, they exhibited ‗a more comprehensive organisational pattern‘ (ibid, p.202) than the narrowly specialised institutions in Northern Vietnam. The pragmatic ethos of American culture was reflected in the integration of theoretical and practical knowledge in the course-credit curriculum used in South Vietnamese universities. Few records, however, were left of university education in the South of Vietnam between 1955 and 1975, partly because after the country was unified, the whole education was made consistent with the Soviet model applied in the North.

2.2. The ‘red’ and ‘expert’ discourses and the pre-1986 university curriculum in Vietnam

The Vietnamese higher education in general and the university curriculum in particular have historically been the manifestation of two interrelated political and pedagogical agendas that are often in conflict and tension. The purposes of university education Vietnam have always concerned with not only the acquisition of knowledge and access to careers more or less

Chapter 2. University Curriculum in Vietnam: Context and Literature Review connected with such knowledge, but also the assimilation of individual to a particular form of society deemed legitimate at a particular time.

Vietnam, much like China (see Hayhoe, 1989), has had a distinctive trajectory as the ‗socialist‘ model of development based on the intellectual foundations of Marxism-Leninism have been reconstituted as part of a new type of administratively-oriented knowledge oriented toward the creation of a modern state after the open door policy in 1986. This foundation has also served as a ‗scientific‘ tool for the definition of social reality employed by power elites (in this case, the CPV policymakers). Socialist ideology in the tradition of Marxism has been considered the foundations for the CPV to build their policy and has been held as ‗truth‘ in successive Vietnamese policymakers (London, 2006; St. George, 2003). According to St George (2003):

VCP [Vietnamese Communist Party] theorists have continually referred to the scientific nature of Marxism to give validity to a wide range of policies, including innovations in education. The important legacy of these earlier theorists is evident in the writing of many contemporary Vietnamese thinkers, including the idea that the development is fairly a linear path on which states move, from poor to developed, through a series of progressive stages. These stages are distinguished by the mode of production predominating in each one – agriculture, industry, and most recently, the knowledge economy.

(St George, 2003, p.50)

Marx‘s analysis of politics and other social issues rests on his rejection of the role of knowledge and specialisation. In Marx‘s society, anyone could do anything without becoming involved in any function. To reclaim the dignity of human beings, Marx envisioned a ‗communist‘ society without specialisation and State:

[I]n communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.

(Marx & Engels, 1970[1845-46], p. 53)

Marx argued that in a society with economic classes such as a capitalist one, the State is nothing more than a tool of social control by the haves over the have-nots. In contrast, the role of the State would no longer be necessary in a communist society. Marx‘s solution was that the proletarian stood up and used the State to fight against and destroy the the ideology of capitalism

Chapter 2. University Curriculum in Vietnam: Context and Literature Review and the bourgeoisie, which were expressed in the famous ‗ten steps‘ of the Communist Manifesto.

Yet Marx‘s thought presented an inherent dilemma for later socialists, particularly the question of knowledge and development. While rejecting the role of knowledge for development, it is necessary to transform the working class into ‗higher awareness‘ in the future communist society. Lenin took up this challenge and resolved this contradiction by emphasizing vocational skills to support the industrialization of the country. Knowledge was considered first and foremost a tool for ideological control while other functions came second. Political knowledge was used as a means to form ‗socialist individuals‘ expected to fight for a socialist society. Stalin reinforced the role of technical knowledge, which also means a prioritization for physical sciences, engineering and medical science (St George, 2003, p.53). In mid-1930s, Stalin introduced the ‗new Soviet Man‘ which later became the ‗socialist man‘ in Vietnam.

This model emerged during the 1950s, as early Vietnamese socialist leaders attempted to reconcile dual loyalties to science (pedagogical) and the Communist Party (political) in North Vietnam under the influence of the Soviet higher education system. Borrowing from their Chinese communist counterpart at the time, Vietnamese political leaders like Hồ Chí Minh and Võ Nguyên Giáp took up the ‗red‘ (hồng) and ‗expert‘ (chuyên) formula as essential constitutions of the ‗socialist man‘. In this formula, ‗red‘ refers to the loyalty to the ideology of the Communist Party and Hồ Chí Minh thought. According to St George (2003, p.54), this structure was inherently in tension:

By definition training for highly specialised skills introduces a level of differentiation among students that contradicts the goal of equality in education. The need for 'experts' often contradicted the goals of a 'red' broadly based education, those of 'distributive justice, social welfare and political inclusiveness' (Epstein 1993: 131), a contradiction which has also created ongoing problems for Vietnamese Communist Party thinkers.

(St George, 2003, p.54)

In the university curriculum, the pedagogical and political tension also found its expression in the red and the expert discourses. In this formula, ‗expert‘ discourse represents the narrowly technical specialised knowledge needed for socialist industrialisation rather than generalist ideological knowledge. In contrast, ‗red‘ knowledge emphasizes practical, hands-on experience.

Chapter 2. University Curriculum in Vietnam: Context and Literature Review

It also refers to the ideological and moral purpose of education in general and university education in particular. It emphasized the need to inculcate loyalty to the ideology of the Communist Party, serving to legitimize the power of the dominant Party through its ideology to promise social equality in education through expansion and equal access. The ‗red‘ discourse, or the ideological and moral dimension here is not merely a set of beliefs; it is a form of macro moral and social discourse that structures subjects to establish themselves as subjects, the emphasis of which was to create the ‗socialist personality‘.

The ‗red‘ and ‗expert‘ tension continued to be part of the university curriculum discourse after 1975. In 1981, six years after the unification of the nation in 1975, the two former university systems of Northern and Southern Vietnam, which were based on different international influences, were merged into the Soviet model. Like other levels of education, university education was considered as one of the forms of the superstructure, dependent on the level of the mode of production and a tool of official ideology and macro-social planning. The individual is considered first and foremost a productive force. He or she was not considered an autonomous entity but an integral part of the State, party and work collective. Education in and by the collective is superior to individualistic forms of education. The aim of education in general and university education in particular was collectivist socialization.

Vietnam‘s university system between 1975 and 1986 confirmed a governance and organisation of knowledge of the Soviet patterns during the 1950s in North Vietnam, including a separation of teaching and research and a special emphasis on training professional manpower through specialised education, especially in engineering programs, for industry and for the ‗socialist‘ construction. As a strong centralised model, the State still took full responsibility in establishing and monitoring the system (St. George, 2010, 2011). Control over all curricular content was also centralised within the Ministry of Education to ensure adequate academic standards and to ‗reduce costs and streamline the process of training and labour allocation and ensure that labour requirements anticipated by forecasting projections were met‘ (S. George, 2010, p.33). Central education departments and central ministries and agencies had exercised rigid control and regulation over curriculum development and implementation through various ordinances and documents.

Chapter 2. University Curriculum in Vietnam: Context and Literature Review

2.3 Higher education after 1986

2.3.1 The change of socio-economic order since 1986: the ‘marriage of convenience’ between authoritarianism and neoliberalism of the Vietnamese State

In the early 1980s, Vietnam was still closed to the outside world with its centrally-planned economy. However, the country soon found itself in a severe economic crisis due to the lack of market incentives and a rigid centrally-planned economy (London, 2009). In 1986, inspired by the changes in China and the former Soviet Union, the Vietnamese Communist Party embarked on Đổi Mới/Doi Moi (a sweeping economic renovation), a decision made at the Sixth Party Congress in 1986, several years before the collapse of the Soviet Union, aligning Vietnamese political, economic, and cultural institutions with the global community and the world market economy (Hayden & Lam, 2007).

With Doi Moi, the Vietnamese economy became diversified to include the private economic sector development, the society being further integrated into the global system (mainly the economic aspect), all of which have led to legal reforms in various sectors. Despite the new socialist market orientation, Vietnam is run by a single party, the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV), which claims to be the only leading force in the country. The origin of the CPV dates back to the year 1930 when its founders imposed itself against the nationalist parties and organised the struggle for independence by receiving the aid of China during the Indochina war and that of the Soviet Union. In 1951, the Vietnamese Workers Party was created. From then, the Marxist-Leninist policy inspired in part by Maoism (such as the purification of the party, agrarian reforms, the fight against ‗feudalism‘ and the concept of the ‗new socialist man‘) was put in place. In 1955, as a result of the Geneva Accords, the country was split into two; to the north a socialist republic led by Hồ Chí Minh supported by the Soviet Union and to the south a nepotistic government dependent on US aid. After the war that pitted the northern regime against its counterpart in the South and the US, and after national reunification in 1975, the Fourth National Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) in 1976 decided to lead the whole country to ‗socialism‘ in which the thought of Hồ Chí Minh with the right line of Confucian morality was its main ‗compass‘.

Chapter 2. University Curriculum in Vietnam: Context and Literature Review

With Vietnam‘s open door policy in 1986, market institutions and market-based strategies of political organization forms the principal part of the political agendas of the Party (London, 2009, p.374). In Camroux and Benoit ‘s (2 September 2016) words, this is a strategic move of the authoritarian Communist Party of Vietnam from ‗military legitimacy to economic performance legitimacy‘:

the CPV leaders are situated ‗on a continuum between ‗mandarins‘ (who see legitimacy as based on ideological purity) and ‗technocrats‘ (who are more concerned with performance legitimacy). Since 1986, each of the succeeding congresses ‗held once every five years has sought to provide it with a new momentum, while at the same time maintaining the objective of building socialism with Vietnamese characteristics. The contradiction between ‗renewal‘ and the promotion of a conservative socialist system has become increasingly difficult for Communist leaders to control as Vietnam has become, like China, a capitalist economy ruled by a one-party state.

(Camroux & Benoit, 2016)

This involved a critical transformation in the authoritarian rule of the Communist Party of Vietnam in the attempt to reconcile the ideology of the Party and State interests while ‗retaining a concentration of power within the State‘. The 1992 Constitution and the modified 2013 version of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam state in Article 4, point 1, that:

The Communist Party of Vietnam, the pioneer as well as the loyal representative of the interest of the working class and the Vietnamese people, which takes Marxism-Leninism and Hồ Chí Minh thought as its thinking foundation, is the leading force of the state and society.

(Quốc Hội, 1992, 2013)

According to Duchère (2017), this situation can be explained by the way in which the central power builds an image of national guardian of peace and guarantor of economic development by making use of symbolic violence (party paternalism, nationalism, etc.). Thus, in official discourse, anticipating the exasperation of citizens as a result of the absence of political pluralism, the state-party warns against the risks of unrest and questioning the hard-won peace that Doi Moi would represent and the democratization of political life. In Vietnam, preventing democratic debate is presented as a condition for peace to avoid internal conflicts.

Chapter 2. University Curriculum in Vietnam: Context and Literature Review

Subsequent Party documents in later National Congresses such as the 7th (1991), 8th (1996), 9th (2001), 10th (2006), and 11th (2011) show that the essential spirit of the ‗reform‘ process encompasses two aspects: (1) eliminating the centralised subsidy system to build up a socialism- oriented‘ market economy; (2) in the context of the 'irreversible' globalisation process, Vietnam integrates both intensively and extensively in all socio-economic, political and cultural spheres (see Đảng Cộng Sản Việt Nam, 1991b, 1996b, 2001, 2006, 2011).

The ideological hybridity of ‗socialism‘ and ‗neoliberalism‘ is at the heart of the period under study – an important feature of the complexity of the globalisation of social and political relations. It informs the path of modernisation in Vietnamese university education – the ‗global‘ pragmatist way, for example through the synergy between work and university, or the ‗national‘ way, through social control. This dramatic reorientation in outlook led to reforms in many different segments of society, and university education was no exception.

2.3.2 University education in Vietnam after 1986: A New ‘face’ and a ‘site of contradiction’

With Doi Moi in 1986, the scope and conception of higher education has also gradually changed. Prior to1990, the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Higher and Professional Education were separate. In 1990, these two institutions merged to become the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET), which has since served as the main national agency responsible for education matters, including higher education1 (London, 2011).

From 1991, higher education along with science and technology has been considered as a primordial state policy. The tighter coupling of higher education and the economy was set into motion in the early 1990s when the government was under pressure from the World Bank to alleviate poverty through human resource development. As Đặng Quế Anh (2009) shows, the World Bank, with its huge amount of funds and low interest loans as well as a set of ‗political technologies‘ (e.g., evidence-based reports, networking, meetings, conferences, dialogues with Vietnamese academics and policy makers), without any need for explicit and coercive actions, has also significantly contributed to changing the mindset and ideology of educational leaders in

1 Except for specialized institutes and HEIs falling under other functional parts of the State (e.g., medical schools, military, and maritime institutes)

Chapter 2. University Curriculum in Vietnam: Context and Literature Review

Vietnam, gearing them to an acceptance of its technocratic initiatives. It is still open to question as to the degree of ‗acceptance‘ of the World Bank prescriptions by the Vietnamese government, but the changing landscape of university education has shown that neoliberal thinking is underway (T. K. Q. Nguyen, 2011).

In many ways, the Vietnamese university system has been growing at a rate that was not anticipated after 2000 (Do & Ho, 2013). Indeed, the period between 1986 and 2015 witnessed unprecedented expansion and internationalisation of university education in Vietnam. According to the Vietnam Law on Higher Education in 2012, the Vietnam higher education system consists of the following categories of institutions:

 Public higher education institutions (HEIs) (over 400/500),  Private HEIs (less than 100), and  International HEIs2.

According to data compiled (dated 31 December 2015) by the Vietnam International Education Department (VIED, a Department within MOET), Vietnam has 82 HEIs (among over 500 institutions) which provide joint training programs with 273 HEIs in the world (Cục Đào Tạo Nước Ngoài, 2015). Among those there is one Vietnamese university which has joint training programs with 19 international universities, two local universities each with 17 overseas universities, eight local universities each with from 9 to 15 international universities. There are around 30 local universities each which signed partnership with from two to seven international universities. There are nearly 40 local universities (out of 82) each has a joint training program with one foreign HEI. Apart from increased expansion and diversification of HEIs, there have been many other incremental changes in university education including organizational structure and network planning; curriculum, pedagogy and evaluation; human resource management;

2 This category of HEIs is divided into three sub-categories of institutions: (a) International HEIs with an investment capital of 100 per cent owned by foreign investors (currently there are two universities: RMIT International University Vietnam and British University Vietnam; (b) International HEIs invested in Vietnam as a joint venture: This sub-category of institutions include Vietnamese-German University (VGU), the University of Science and Technology Hanoi (USTH) and Vietnam Japan University (VJU); (c) Joint training programs between a Vietnamese HEI with one or many foreign HEIs.

Chapter 2. University Curriculum in Vietnam: Context and Literature Review recruitment and reward system; student admission and quota setting criteria; financial usage and resource mobilization within the institutions; and state administration and management.

The socio-economic shift and the expansion of university education brought to the fore a new dilemma about the problem of specialisation of jobs and knowledge and the problem of social order, which had a significant influence on university curriculum reforms. After 1986, as trust in the existing Soviet university model retreated, the policymakers and educators sought an envisaged future curriculum that would prepare students to engage more strongly with globalisation. The search for an appropriate curriculum to shape the identity of this new graduate raised a number of questions and tensions for curriculum policymakers, which are also the focus of the subsequent chapters of this thesis. What was the most appropriate type of curriculum that could be developed to meet these objectives, how could it be structured and what kind of knowledge would be viewed as appropriate? Further, on what basis could a coherent curriculum be developed and held together to enable the production of competent students? How could the new individual be shaped through curriculum? How would the principles of knowledge policy in other countries such as US and EU be reconciled with the developmental objectives of the Vietnamese State? To answer these questions and to develop a curriculum appropriate for delivering on the key curriculum objectives, the curriculum policymakers turned to examining curricula both outside and inside Vietnam. They also engaged with educational theories influencing Vietnamese educational policy more generally (and university policy specifically).

2.3.3 The global context

Vietnam opened up its open door policy as the world experienced great changes in the socio- economic order associated with an increased interest in the issue of knowledge in general and curricular knowledge in university education in particular. For several social theorists, after the collapse of the socialist systems (the Soviet Union and the Eastern Europe countries), the world has moved into a new socio-economic order which is characterized by continuous international financial flows, fast-paced scientific and technological developments and the flexibility of labour, all of which impact differentially on industrialised countries and developing countries (Brown & Lauder, 1996; Brown et al., 2011; Castells, 1996, 1997; Held & McGrew, 2000). In advanced industrial countries, such economic dynamics are also associated with intense individualism and social movements calling for multiculturalism and diversity. Various terms

Chapter 2. University Curriculum in Vietnam: Context and Literature Review have been created to describe such socio-economic phenomena, for example, ‗neoliberalism‘, ‗economic globalisation‘, ‗post-Fordism‘, ‗liquid society‘, ‗risk society‘ and ‗knowledge society‘, among which ‗globalisation‘ has figured prominently in Vietnamese university policy after Doi Moi.

According to Yates and Young (2010, p.6), the ambiguous concept ‗globalisation‘ is related to the conception of the curriculum in two senses. In one sense, it is associated with certain influences on curriculum thinking from institutions beyond national borders, manifesting in trends such as university ranking, benchmarking from supra-national organisations such as the World Bank, OECD or bilateral donor agencies. The perception of globalization from such supra-national bodies, note Yates and Young, is frequently linked to ‗forms of modernization associated with flexibility, employability and the homogenization of national traditions and the efforts to maintain the national traditions in the new circumstances‘ (ibid, p.6), which poses the challenge for ‗how a country embodies values relevant for a global context‘ (ibid, p.5).

The second sense of globalization is associated with trends of ‗global instrumentalism‘ that are ‗linked to a neoliberal emphasis on markets, choice and accountability‘ with a new orientation of knowledge that emphasizes the ability to do rather than to know, to be flexible, to avoid boundaries or to produce competent and self-regulating citizens. These trends have been observed and discussed in literature both about school curriculum and university curriculum in particular. Alongside this tendency university curriculum researchers in different parts of the world ponder over the question of ‗hybridity‘ and ‗differentiation‘, which has become an unresolved debate in both policy and curriculum research in different countries.

The Vietnamese university and its curriculum reforms cannot be divorced from this broader context and trends post 1986. The intimate relationship between curricular knowledge and conceptions of socio-political order, both nationally and globally, has shaped the contours and boundaries of curricular knowledge and curriculum thinking among the policymakers.

The transition from state-socialism to market-Leninism and the dynamic direction of university education changes, particularly in curriculum reforms, in Vietnam since 1986 has increasingly been a topic of debate. However, it seems there has been little, if any, research explicating the

Chapter 2. University Curriculum in Vietnam: Context and Literature Review dynamic between curriculum, knowledge and social order in the literature on university education in Vietnam.

2.4 Research on university education in Vietnam since 1986

2.4.1 Lack of research on university curriculum in Vietnam

With Doi Moi, the exchange of ideas among Vietnamese scholars and overseas literature has greatly enriched scholarship about university education issues in Vietnam. According to London (2011), in the 1990s, with the arrival of international organisations such as UNDP, UNESCO and the World Bank, the international expert groups, composed of both academic and non-academic members, have produced reports that attempted to document the indicators of university education taken from surveys and review the aspects that needed to be remedied, mostly focusing on economic aspects. The first example of such analyses includes the ‗Research on higher education and human resources in Vietnam‘ jointly funded by UNDP and UNESCO, which is considered the major initial report with empirically grounded analyses of university education in Vietnam (London, 2011). The other significant influence came from the World Bank‘s reports on diverse aspects of university education over the years (World Bank, 1998, 2006, 2008, 2014). Since the 2000s, some independent field research and reports have come from several bilateral educational organisations, among which those from the US government have drawn widespread attention in Vietnam.

Recent years have also seen the emergence of more varied and critical policy literature, particularly in university education. A look at educational bibliographies, Google scholar keywords, and academic journals in education have shown a continuous growth of works concerned with university education over the last three decades. The bulk of literature in this field comes in diverse forms, ranging from international sponsored research reports to books, journal articles in both Vietnamese and English and the outpouring of online discussions and ‗populist critiques‘ on the media. Such works express critical insights into policies of university reform, such as university autonomy (e.g., Hayden & Lam, 2007; St. George, 2011), privatization (e.g., Hayden & Van Khanh, 2010; Pham & Fry, 2002), the impact of globalization on university education (e.g., T. K. Q. Nguyen, 2011), governance issues (e.g., London, 2010), internationalization (e.g., Welch, 2010), collaboration between educational institutions and

Chapter 2. University Curriculum in Vietnam: Context and Literature Review industry in the context of Vietnam‘s membership of the WTO (e.g., Fatseas, 2010; G. Harman et al., 2010). Some critique the low quality and backwardness of the university education by pointing to the adverse impacts of the centralized management policy on university education (e.g., Evans & Rorris, 2010; Hayden & Lam, 2007) and the low quality of graduate knowledge and skills in meeting the demands of the industry (e.g., Trần Thị Tuyết, 2013). A number of papers approach university education from the perspective of strategic planning (e.g., Pham, 2010; Smith & Nguyen, 2010), while others focus on the special problems of university education in the knowledge economy (St. George, 2006).

It might be useful to set out without comment here what seem to be some of the pervasive beliefs that commentators widely share about university education in Vietnam. The list would include:

 Vietnamese university education are in a ‗crisis‘ (beginning of 1986 and beginning of the 2000s); (e.g., Hoàng Tụy, 2011b; Vallely & Wilkinson, 2008)  Vietnamese university education needs ‗fundamental reforms‘ ‗comprehensive reforms‘, systemic reforms‘ (e.g., Hoàng Tụy, 2011b; Vũ Cao Đàm, 2014)  Vietnamese university education has failed to meet the demands of society (e.g., Trần Thị Tuyết, 2013)  Vietnamese university education needs rethinking its ‗purpose‘ to be more market- relevant (e.g., Trần & Marginson, 2014)  The separation between research and teaching functions in Vietnamese university education remains too entrenched and there is too much teaching and not enough research among university lecturers (e.g., Bùi Trọng Liễu, 2011)  There is an inflation in credentials in Vietnamese university education (e.g., Hoàng Tụy, 2011b)  What is needed for university education is ‗quality assurance‘, and ‗accreditation‘ but the issue is so contestable that it seems it is really being done (e.g., Madden, 2014; K. D. Nguyen et al., 2009; N. D. Tran et al., 2011)  The link between university education and the market and industry is loose (e.g., Sykes Jr, 1996)

Chapter 2. University Curriculum in Vietnam: Context and Literature Review

 Research output and patents in Vietnamese higher education is far behind the countries in South East Asia, such as Thailand (Nguyễn Văn Tuấn, 2011a; Nguyễn Văn Tuấn & Phạm Thị Ly, 2011)  Governance reform in university education in Vietnam has been too slow and institutional autonomy as well as academic freedom has not been fully recognised (Hayden & Lam, 2007; Van Khanh & Hayden, 2010)  University lecturers are too underpaid (Hoàng Tụy, 2011a)  There is an entrenched discriminatory policy on funding between public and private universities (Đàm Quang Minh & Phạm Thị Ly, 2014)

The widely used words that can be found in the titles of diverse writings about university education in Vietnam include ‗challenge‘; ‗response‘, ‗quality‘, ‗excellence‘, ‗reform‘, ‗national purpose‘; ‗modernisation‘, ‗governance‘. Nevertheless, despite a growth in studies about the differing dimensions of Vietnamese university education since 1986, research into curriculum and knowledge is almost absent in Vietnamese literature.

2.4.2 Some rare research on university curriculum in Vietnam after 1986

The university curriculum is at the heart of any academic undertakings in university education because it is central to addressing questions of the purpose, role and direction of university education in general (Barnett & Coate, 2004; Clark, 1986; Squires, 1990). It is impossible to effectively manage the university curriculum ‗unless we know what we are producing, for whom and in what context‘ (Squires, 1990, p. 162). Yet, since the 1980s, university education in several parts of the world, particularly in developed countries, has been under critical discussion and the role of the university as a social, political and economic institution is much debated. However, it is not until recently that the issue of university curriculum has become a focus of university education research (Barnett & Coate, 2004; Tight, 2003). According to Barnett and Coate (2004), in most Anglophone countries such as the UK, ‗curriculum‘ had almost been ‗a missing term‘ in the scholarship until the last 10 years or so. Observing how this topic is under- researched in the literature on university education, they suggest that

Chapter 2. University Curriculum in Vietnam: Context and Literature Review

Curriculum is, or should be, one of the major terms in the language of higher education. Through curricula, ideas of higher education are put into action. Through curricula, too, values, beliefs and principles in relations to learning, understanding, knowledge, disciplines, individuality and society are realised.

(Barnett & Coate, 2004, p. 26)

The same situation has also been observed in the case of Vietnam. The curriculum has not been subjected to substantial analysis either within the Vietnamese curriculum research or in the more Anglo-American dominated discipline of Vietnamese Studies. Most writings on HE curriculum policies in Vietnam have taken a fairly straight political or economic approach, i.e., curricular issues were often addressed in terms of broad political debates between factions of VCP or in terms of economic theories of development.

Foreign-produced reports or research done by international scholars on Vietnamese university education and university curriculum generally depict curriculum either as a means to a predetermined goal of development, particularly the transition from centrally-planned economy to the market economy. Most provide a brief overview and end by suggesting how these might be improved to meet ‗international standards‘. From this perspective, the curriculum is often interpreted as a function of modernization.

Elizabeth St George‘s (2003) doctoral thesis represents the first real attempt to document the changes in university curriculum between 1986 and 1998. St George offers an historical overview and places the changes to university policy in the theoretical framework of development. In conceptualising ‗development‘ in the ‗neoliberal model‘ and ‗state-centric model‘, she provides a rich picture of the diverse factors influencing changes in university policies, including the curriculum. By linking the dynamics of change to the political system and focusing on the analysis of some legal documents such as the Law of Education in 1998, she argues that between 1986 and 1998 the curriculum policies were shaped more by the state-centric model rather than the neoliberal model due to the strong intervention of the State in curricular content and course organization. In addition, other factors like international influence, historical dimension of the sector such as the autonomy of the faculty also contributed to impede curricular changes. However, while St George‘s work offers some valuable insight into the conditions of curriculum work in Vietnam between 1986 and 1998, it has not provided theoretically grounded

Chapter 2. University Curriculum in Vietnam: Context and Literature Review perspective on the relationship between knowledge and the socio-economic and political changes. Critical questions about the curriculum‘s ontological and epistemological assumptions were not its focus. In other words, curriculum knowledge is taken for granted, and the curriculum is judged in accordance with the predetermined model of the market economy without problematizing it as an object of study.

A recent collection of essays in a book authored by a group of Vietnamese and Australian scholars draw attention to the question of curricular knowledge in university curriculum (see Trần, Marginson, et al., 2014). Tran and Marginson (2014) argue that

[t]he problems of higher education in Vietnam are more than just problems of inadequate financing, inadequate skills and outdated models of organisation - real though these problems are. These are also problems deeper down, widely throughout the tertiary education system, in the approach taken to the knowledge that is imparted in educational institutions.

(Trần & Marginson, 2014, pp. 20-21)

One of the concerns that motivate these scholars (and many others who write about Vietnamese university education) derives from an analysis of the socio-economic changes taking place not only in Vietnam but also worldwide that has significant impacts on the labour market of this country (such as the issue of globalization and ‗knowledge economy‘). Their approach to curricular knowledge is a form of prescriptions that is not different from technocratic ideas spread by neo-liberal organisations like the World Bank. The following excerpt from their work illustrates this point:

There are three aspects of knowledge that must be covered. First is the core knowledge useful for further education and training – that is, disciplinary knowledge, information and technological knowledge and knowledge and language capacities as a strategic weapon primarily to prepare for the national workforce and national capacity building. At the same time, such knowledge must be meaningful and practical to develop graduates into not only the local but also the global mobile workforce. Second is the knowledge of various cultures (inter-cultural knowledge and competences), which allows the students to advance their communicative skills […] Last is knowledge of the self in which the student has a clear under-standing of himself/herself and whose agency is strong towards self-determination and self-direction with regard to their own learning and life […]

(Trần, Lê, et al., 2014, p. 100)

Chapter 2. University Curriculum in Vietnam: Context and Literature Review

The problem with this approach to curriculum analysis is that it takes the question of economic development as a major focus, and therefore does not allow us to see how curricular knowledge is treated within the social and political conditions of its existence and how it is differentially conceptualized in successive reforms since 1986. Besides, in the Vietnamese case, such a progressive, linear model is made problematic in that this model is rendered ‗ideal‘ for several scholars who believe the Soviet legacy per se to be the enemy of intellectual development and the global ‗neoliberalism‘ to be its salvation. From this perspective, the way forward appears unproblematic: knowledge can be divorced from power and is made objective in relation to ‗world standards‘. In other words, according to this logic, the marketization and social relevance of curricular knowledge is a historically proven answer.

Some Vietnamese researchers in recent years have often framed curriculum as a site of power interests among different stakeholders or of political struggles between factions in the CPV. Trần Hiền‘s doctoral thesis, for example, examines the rationale and practical implementation of HE reform after 1986 in terms of administration, internationalization and curriculum change (see Trần Hiền, 2009). Rather than looking at the issue of knowledge, Trần Hiền places her analysis in what is called a dualistic policy of the market-led and socialist-oriented visions of development. She argues that the shape of the curriculum policy in Vietnam is a representation of ‗dualistic pragmatism‘, a common ground reached by two political factions, the ‗conservative‘ who advocates stability by adhering to the Marxist-Leninist ideology on the one hand and the ‗pragmatist modernist‘ who promotes the integration of Vietnam into the global market, including university education on the other hand. Again, in this study, curricular knowledge is approached from a political perspective.

In summary, the brief review of the literature on university education in Vietnam has revealed two dominant approaches in analysing the dynamic between social change and the role of university education. The first approach, despite its critical view of the policies, assumes that the main function of education is for economic and social development. Issues of unemployment, for example, are viewed as rooted from the mismatch between knowledge and skills provided by the educational institutions and social needs. The other approach is based on a conflict perspective which emphasizes the role of conflict in the process of change, and which perceives university education policies in Vietnam as only reinforcing the status quo rather than reducing existing

Chapter 2. University Curriculum in Vietnam: Context and Literature Review social inequalities. As the next chapter will show, these are also the common approaches to curriculum analysis which view education and particularly knowledge as a ‗relay‘ for either power or economic development.

2.4.3 Concluding remarks

To sum up, the key point from the review of the existing literature on university curriculum in Vietnam is not to take issue with what values these analyses stem from. Rather, my view is that that they treat knowledge as unproblematic, either neglecting its intrinsic autonomy or viewing it as an object that simply serves one or other purpose. The existing limitations of the contemporary literature on Vietnamese university education, therefore, call for a fresh approach to looking at university curriculum, one that looks more closely at how knowledge is built or constrained and how forms of curriculum organisation support or impede this. More broadly, my approach, which is elaborated in the next chapter, foregrounds the problem of curricular knowledge in relation to the political and pedagogical tensions that underpinned the curriculum policy developments between 1986 and 2015, and that can shed light on how such relations may be mutually constitutive.

Chapter 3. Conceptual Framework

CHAPTER 3. CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

3.1 Introduction

The aim of this study is to analyse the changes in knowledge taking place in different phases of reforms of university education in Vietnam and particularly to reflect on how each phase aims to support specialisation needed for the modern economy as well as uphold the social order. To address this issue, this chapter argues for a social realist approach to curricular knowledge, a particular tradition in the sociology of education that is grounded in a Durkheimian sociology, and a theory which recognizes both the constructivism and the intrinsic autonomy of knowledge (e.g., Bernstein, 1971, 2000, 2003; Moore, 2000, 2004, 2007a, 2007b; Moore & Muller, 2002; Moore & Young, 2001; Muller, 2000, 2009; Muller & Young, 2014; Young, 2003, 2008, 2010). I will support the argument by first explaining that this theory presents a response to two other major families of approaches in the sociology of education, the technical-functionalist approaches and approaches in some critical social theories, that despite taking the social as their central starting point in analysing curriculum and education reforms, hold ‗reductionist‘ views of education and knowledge.

In the third section of the chapter I set out a number of concepts from social realist theorists that I will draw on in the thesis. Within the framework of social realism, I draw on Basil Bernstein‘s two analytical concepts that conceptualize the relation between knowledge and social order: the regulative discourse and the instructional discourse. Drawing on Muller and Hoadley (2010), I argue that Bernstein‘s contradictory formulation of the relationship between these two discourses could be resolved by recouping Durkheim‘s social theory of knowledge, which involves the need to relieve the dominance of the regulative over the instructional in curriculum analysis. This is significant for understanding contemporary debate on the ‗instructional discourse‘ of the university curriculum and particularly the place of specialised knowledge, a contribution made by recent Durkheimian and Bernsteinian scholars such as Michael Young and Johan Muller.

Section 3.3 of the chapter discusses approaches to understanding the instructional discourse in the university curriculum. I argue that two current dominant approaches, a concept of Mode 2 problem-based knowledge or a concept of Mode 3 learner-based knowledge, both have

Chapter 3. Conceptual Framework reductionist problems in relation to knowledge as discussed in section 3.2. I draw here on Young and Muller‘s critique of hybridized approaches to knowledge in contemporary debate on university curriculum to argue that while they have contributed to theorizing curricular knowledge in relation to socio-economic demands, at the same time they leave unexplored some theoretical questions on the specialised purpose of the university and their implications for the problem of order. Therefore, in section 3.4 I suggest that an engagement with Durkheim‘s theory of specialisation might fruitfully open up some reflection on this issue that underlies the political-pedagogical tension underlying curriculum reforms in Vietnam. This issue is one I will return in a later chapter of this thesis. The chapter concludes with a summary of these arguments in terms of the approach I take and sets out the question that frame the analysis in the chapters that follow.

3.2 Some dominant approaches to curriculum analysis and the case for a social realist approach

Moore (2007b, pp. 4-5) convincingly argues that the curriculum (and curriculum policy) is first and foremost a social phenomenon for two main reasons. First, the organisation of curricular knowledge is often treated as a representation of the social order in the sense that ‗what counts as valid knowledge‘ (Bernstein, 1971) in the curriculum is associated with how we identify ourselves individually and collectively. In other words, any curriculum reform entails issues of identity; it aims to construct an image of the individuals in some ways deemed desirable in society. Second, a curriculum policy is never a neutral decision or mere outcome of changes in educational theory but is often ‗triggered by actual events and circumstances, by movements and forces of social change‘ (Moore, 2007b, p.5).

Viewing the curriculum as social implies an influential perspective to curriculum analysis that takes the sociality of knowledge and the curriculum as a starting point (Moore, 2007b; Young, 2008). However, this perspective can take different forms that are at variance with each other, particularly on the sociality of knowledge, which leads to different approaches to curriculum analysis. I will now consider three major sets of approaches to knowledge, curriculum policy and reform mainly drawn from the UK and the US.

Chapter 3. Conceptual Framework 3.2.1 Technical-functionalist approaches

The first set of approaches, ‗technical-functionalism‘, often describe themselves as ideologically neutral (Moore, 2007b, p.10). These approaches take the ‗logic of industrialism‘ as their starting point by assuming a straight forward correspondence between education and production. The approach is linked to the logic of human capital theory, which holds a vocationalist view of education and curriculum by taking the economy as their focus and suggesting that the curriculum should be relevant to its needs (Moore, 2007b, p.6). In this perspective, economic development levels and increased access to education are assumed to have a direct correlation, which is ‗achieved through a process of educational reform in which educational institutions and methods assume the forms appropriate to ‗advanced industrial society‘, and in doing so generate broader, progressive social change‘ (Moore, 2004, p.39). Class conflicts, and hence social inequalities, are also believed to be resolved with economic development (ibid).

According to Moore (2007b), narratives of social change described by technical-functionalists tend to involve a break with the past, necessitating a major reform of knowledge and education. Yet this broad family of technical-functionalism is not a ‗unified project‘ (Morgan, 2015) and can be divided into two groups with contrasting attitudes to the social change accounts: the modernisers and the declinists (restorationists/traditionalists/neo-conservatives). The modernisers hold a celebratory attitude to industrialism and the present by seeking to change the curriculum in response to new curriculum initiatives that are more technologically or vocationally relevant. In contrast, the traditionalists are not happy with the current state of change and wish to restore to a past ‗golden age‘ through the ‗back to basics‘ curriculum. In other words, traditionalists are concerned with knowledge and a particular social order that they uphold.

The problem with technical functionalist approaches is that knowledge is seen as a function of the economy without attending to any structural forms that different forms of knowledge may have. In that sense they are reductionist and inadequate for looking at the curriculum details.

Chapter 3. Conceptual Framework 3.2.2 Approaches in some critical social theories

Another broad family of approaches to educational curriculum policy and reforms that relate knowledge to society comes from critical social theories that are rooted in Marxism or neo- Marxism and in some cases symbolic interactionist theories (Moore, 2007b; Young, 2008). These approaches were then extended and converged with critical social theories that take neo- Marxist or post-structuralist position in addressing issue of class, race, gender and social justice to the education institutions from the 1970s onwards, notably with the rise of the New Sociology of Education (see Young, 1971) in the UK and later with varieties of standpoint and postmodernist theories (e.g., Apple, 1993, 1995, 2004; Pinar, 1978, 2004, 1999). What these approaches share is a focus on knowledge as constructed and embedded in relation of power.

These approaches start from a social constructivist view of knowledge and reality, holding that these entities are socially constructed and represent those aspects of social order concerned with the relations of inequality between classes, sexes and races or ethnic groups. They draw attention to the role of educational institutions in reproducing the established order by showing that what happens within education (the school, the curriculum, the teaching learning process) systematically ‗reproduce‘ the system of relations to education (what is outside the education, such as society and its class relations). Variations of this approach involve ‗class (or economic) reproduction‘ or correspondence theory (e.g., Althusser, 1972; Bowles & Gintis, 1976, 2002; Carnoy & Levin, 1976; Collins, 2009), ‗cultural reproduction‘ (e.g., Apple, 2000, 2004; Bourdieu, 1984; Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977) and ‗linguistic reproduction‘ (e.g., Collins, 1988). Among these, cultural reproduction theory in education takes a major focus on educational knowledge.

The major thrust of cultural reproduction approaches is that curricular knowledge is the ‗relay‘ of power relations in society at large, i.e., knowledge is interpreted in terms of how it reproduces dominant (capitalist) social relations or legitimizes the ideology of the ruling class. For example,

The curriculum is never simply a neutral assemblage of knowledge, somehow appearing in the texts and classrooms of a nation. It is always part of a selective tradition, someone‘s selection, some group‘s vision of legitimate knowledge. It is produced out of the cultural, political, and economic conflicts, tensions, and compromises that organize and disorganize a people.

(Apple, 1993, p. 1)

Chapter 3. Conceptual Framework Some proponents of critical constructivist approaches are also concerned with converting educational institutions into instruments of social resistance or transformation and hence advocate curriculum change as a way of redressing unequal power relations (Bernstein, 2003; Moore, 2007b). In the writings of critical constructivists, one often finds a critique of existing schools and universities as the bastion of technocratic capitalism where students are made obedient by passively receiving knowledge that has value solely on the market. The teaching of professional knowledge in these writings is equated with the production of ‗compliant workers‘ (see Giroux, 2002). They also oppose the marketization trends of education, such as the commodification of knowledge, the accountability schemes, state-mandated curricula and the testing and standards movement (e.g., Apple, 1995, 2000; Olssen & Peters, 2005; Peters, 2007).

Critical constructivists uphold the rhetoric of ‗emancipation‘ and ‗collaboration‘, proposing to liberate students from ‗the prison of facts‘. In doing so, they provide a recipe for resolving what they see as the ‗contradictory‘ nature of education and knowledge. On the one hand, they argue that schools (and universities) mainly serve the aims of the dominant class, they can sometimes serve as sites for social transformation of the working class. To achieve the transformative role, they argue that schools and universities must be ‗moral agents‘. In Giroux‘s (2002) words, the university ‗should play as a site of critical thinking, democratic leadership and public engagement‘ (p.427) that ‗confronts the march of corporate power‘ (p.456). The same argument applies in their understanding of curricular knowledge. For example, on the one hand Giroux (1988) questions the existence of objective knowledge to teach, however, on the other hand he acknowledges that the working class can only transform their lives by getting knowledge and skills from schools (and universities). To resolve this apparent contradiction, he argues that curricular knowledge must have a pragmatist purpose for transformative actions. Giroux believes that students must be inducted to understanding the world as it ought to be rather than as it is, and the primary concern for university education is to produce a cadre of social activists who can take to the street. In other words, the primary purpose of university education is not the transmission of knowledge for its own sake but to get students to learn to learn about ‗the power of self-definition‘ (i.e., to affirm their own experience) and to ‗forge a new conception of civic courage and democratic public life‘ so that they can struggle individually and collectively against a society characterized by neoliberalism and corporate culture (Giroux, 2002, p.441).

Chapter 3. Conceptual Framework In summary, the problem with theorists like Giroux is that although they want schools and universities to be a place of resistance, they do not really have a perspective on knowledge other than an element of political power. In this regard, they are unhelpful in relation to the instructional purposes of the curriculum and in relation to the moral and social order purposes because their view is only one of resistance.

3.2.3 Social realist approach to curriculum analysis

The third broad family of perspectives, social realism, has been associated with scholars who draw on the works of sociologists Emile Durkheim and Basil Bernstein to argue for the relative autonomy of education and knowledge in approaching curriculum and education reforms. While they acknowledge the social purposes of knowledge, they also argue for the relative autonomy of its structure and forms.

This line of thinking has been led by Johan Muller (2000, 2009, 2015), Rob Moore (Moore, 2000, 2004, 2007a, 2007b) and Michael Young (Young, 2003, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2015) and taken up by a number of researchers across different countries (e.g., Barrett et al., 2017; Barrett & Rata, 2014; Beck & Young, 2005; Firth, 2011; Gamble, 2012; Hoadley, 2011; Maton & Moore, 2010; McPhail, 2012; McPhail & Rata, 2015; Moore & Muller, 1999; Moore & Young, 2001; Muller & Gamble, 2010; Muller & Hoadley, 2010; Muller & Young, 2014; Rata, 2012, 2013; Shay, 2013, 2014; Wheelahan, 2007, 2008, 2010).

For Moore (2007b), Young (2008) and Young and Muller (2010), varieties of technical- functionalism are ‗reductionist‘ by either neglecting the epistemological question of curricular knowledge (the case of modernizers) or treating it as given and fixed (the case of neo- conservatives). Focusing on the problem of knowledge, Moore (2007b, p.14) argues that the problem with these critical approaches is that they are epistemologically weak in the sense that they argue against any conditions for knowledge. Therefore, they cannot provide a sound epistemological basis for addressing what knowledge should be included or excluded from the curriculum, and hence turn against their emancipatory aspirations.

Young (2008) adds that while the strength of a social constructivist approach lies in the emphasis on contexts or sources of knowledge, the problem with it is that it is partial. By focusing on the

Chapter 3. Conceptual Framework social practices or the interests involved with knowledge production and acquisition, knowledge become equated with social interests or practice of certain groups of people having power over such knowledge. In other words, both could lead to a reductionist view that considers all knowledges to be representation of power relations. The only question they are interested in is ‗who has power‘. For example, in analysing a professional curriculum, the only questions they are interested in could be whether the employers, the state or the university have power over the curriculum. While such concerns are legitimate, Young (2008) argues that they do not distinguish different ‗degrees of situatedness‘ of different forms of knowledge. For example, knowledge used by an electrical engineer or an accountant is not the same as that of a receptionist or a call operator. Therefore, although very convincing in exposing different social interests associated with knowledge, as well as a reminder of researchers on the importance of contexts, various forms of social constructivism are based on an undifferentiated view of knowledge, equating all knowledges as having the same power.

The alternative approach that social realists advance stresses the importance of a theory of knowledge to inform curricular reforms. According to Young (2008), this approach does not deny the social constructivist view that recognize the sociality of knowledge, yet it progresses to an extended argument that the differentiated forms of knowledge as well as their powers are no less fundamental and social. Rather than taking educational knowledge for granted or reducing knowledge to other social categories such as power or the economy, the social realist approach draws attention to the way different principles of organizing knowledge in the curriculum might have consequences on individuals‘ specialised consciousness. Second, central to a social realist approach is the insight that the transformative power of education lies in the intrinsic property of some particular form of knowledge itself, rather than in the mixing of ideology with knowledge for transformative or instrumental actions or purposes. In Young‘s words

Unlike social constructivism, which treats only the social basis of knowledge as real and objective, social realism treats both the social basis of knowledge and the knowledge itself as real. It follows that instead of concentrating solely on ideology critique, a social realist approach to the curriculum seeks to identify the social conditions that might be necessary if objective knowledge is to be acquired.

(Young, 2008, p.165)

Chapter 3. Conceptual Framework In summary, I have argued that the social realist approach provides a better analytic frame than the two approaches in that while it acknowledges the social purposes of knowledge in curriculum it doesn‘t simply reduce curriculum questions to the social but recognizes the relatively objective and autonomous structural elements of knowledge. In my view, the social realist agenda does raise some important questions that confront curriculum policy and practice, such as insights about the need to recognize the intrinsic relative autonomy of both education and knowledge, and to consider the relationship between theoretical (academic or disciplinary) knowledge and knowledge drawn from other worldly sources. By shedding light on the role of both the differentiation in professions and disciplines as constraining factors in ‗hybridizing‘ or ‗integrating‘ the traditional ‗inward‘ discipline-based knowledge in response to the diverse socio-economic pulls outside the academy, the social realist agenda provides robust critiques of curriculum approaches that neglect the autonomy of knowledge by treating it as merely functional to either power, capital or action.

3.3. Key concepts for the study

In this section I draw on social realist theorists to set up some key concepts that will be used in later analysis, namely Durkheim‘s ideas of sacred/profane forms of knowledge; Bernstein‘s categories of instructional and regulative discourse; and Young and Muller‘s arguments about the instructional discourse in the university context.

3.3.1 Durkheim’s theory of the sociality and differentiation of knowledge; sacred and profane knowledges

The social realist approach to knowledge could be traced back to the ideas of the eminent French sociologist, Emile Durkheim (1858-1917), who began his research in the late 19th century. Durkheim‘s theory of knowledge is systematically expressed in The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, which was originally published in 1912 (see Durkheim, 2001). Through a study into the religious life of primitive (tribal and totemic) societies, Durkheim seeks to emphasize the ‗sociality‘ of knowledge, and in opposition to the forms of social constructivism discussed above, he emphasized the social differentiation of knowledge rather than differentiating social interests associated with different forms of knowledge.

Chapter 3. Conceptual Framework Through his study, Durkheim finds that the primitive people had the capacity to classify things according to the way they grouped themselves. This enables Durkheim to initially argue that ‗the fundamental notions of mind, the essential categories of thought, can be the product of social factors‘ (Durkheim, 2001, p.112). He is then able however to discover a common reality beneath religious beliefs across different cultures throughout history: that is, the separation of things and behaviours into two categories - the ‗sacred‘ and the ‗profane‘. In Durkheim‘s interpretation, the ‗profane‘ represents the immediate, practical and contextual responses of man to his everyday life and surroundings, while the ‗sacred‘ world of religion is social (it is a product of human beings), abstract and collective. As a consequence, the ‗sacred‘ does not depend on our experiences or observations. It is the sociality of the sacred, or its collective power, which constitutes the objectivity of these concepts and compels individuals to submit to it as truth. In other words, the profane is a form of phenomenal existence in everyday life, and the sacred is the world of social meaning or a collective project. The sacred refers to the ‗collective representations‘, the transcendental aspects, or a different order of reality that stands apart from everyday life, which allows a society to develop knowledge beyond their experience. Durkheim shows that the primary collective institution, that is religion, occurs not through practice but through organization of mode of meaning, through which the collective understands and thinks about itself. It is this concept of a more powerful form of conceptual knowledge that is drawn upon by contemporary social realists such as Muller and Young (2014).

For Bernstein, the distinction between the ‗sacred‘ and the ‗profane‘ in Durkheim‘s theory of knowledge is the progenitor for the distinction between types of knowledge, namely the specialised (or uncommon sense, disciplinary) knowledge and the unspecialised, everyday, commonsense knowledge that are available and differentially distributed in all societies:

in all societies there are at least two basic classes of knowledge: one class of knowledge that is esoteric and one that is mundane. There is the knowledge of the other and there is the otherness of knowledge. There is the knowledge of how it is (knowledge of the possible), as against the possibility of the impossible.

(Bernstein, 2000, p.29)

Muller and Young (2014) adds that it is this basic distinction between the ‗sacred‘ and the ‗profane‘ that explains the emergence of the categories of thought and lays the foundation for ‗the conditions for social progress‘ of which the key agents ‗are closely linked to disciplines as a

Chapter 3. Conceptual Framework source of new knowledge‘ (Muller & Young 2014, p.129). Such disciplines were organised into different types in the form of natural sciences and social sciences, which ‗have been preserved and developed by specialist communities and have defined the parameters of thinking of what is of greater or lesser worth, true or false in different fields at any particular time‘ (ibid, p.130).

Durkheim‘s theory on the sociality and differentiation of knowledge is what Bernstein calls Durkheim‘s ‗truly magnificent insight‘ because from here Bernstein sees the ‗internal ordering‘ as constituting the relative autonomy and the transformative power of education. Specifically, as explained by Young (2008), the implication of Durkheim‘s distinction is that not all knowledges are the same but in all human endeavours there exist a type of knowledge that is superior to others in terms of its reliability and its capacity to enlighten us and take us closer to truth as well as a better understanding of the world we are living in. This ‗sacred‘ uncommonsense knowledge, for Durkheim, consists of categories, which are master concepts and the most abstract forms of thought serving as the framework and tools for logical thought (Young, 2008).

According to Young (2008), one of the problems in Durkheim‘s social theory of knowledge is that because his analysis is deduced from small societies, Durkheim downplays the degree to which each order is differentiated from each other and is differentially distributed in society. The theoretical consequence is that power relations are secondary in his theory. In other words, Durkheim did not theorise further the nature of knowledge in the curriculum, particularly when it is driven by socio-political demands. In this sense, we need to look at Bernstein‘s theory of curricular knowledge through two key concepts, the regulative discourse and instructional discourse.

3.3.2 The instructional discourse and regulative discourse

3.3.2.1 The instructional-regulative couplet and its background

Bernstein draws attention to the idea that knowledge that is specified in the curriculum or in policy (curricular knowledge) should be distinguished from knowledge represented in disciplinary knowledge. This is because in moving from the distributive field (the intellectual spheres) to the recontextualizing field (such as curriculum policy), disciplinary knowledge is subject to the selection and sanction by agents such as the State, professional bodies and individual teachers as appropriate elements of a curriculum. In this process, curricular knowledge

Chapter 3. Conceptual Framework for Bernstein is a form of ‗pedagogic discourse‘ that results from the ‗recontextualisation‘ of two orders or discourses inherent in any educational contexts: the instructional discourse and the regulative discourse. The dyad refers to the two roles of education: the transmission of knowledge and the transmission of values and its attendant morality in relation to a particular social order. The instructional discourse attempts to impart knowledge and skills for individual learner‘s specialisation in a particular career. The regulative discourse attempts to impart collective values common to any individual in a certain society.

In a book published in 1996, Bernstein attempted to synthesize his works into a coherent whole through what he calls the theory of the ‗pedagogic device‘. The ‗pedagogic device‘ is, as (Hoadley & Muller, 2010, p. 74) remark, ‗an ambitious attempt to capture the role of education in the sociological big picture, reaching from social structure to individual consciousness‘. It describes the transformation process of knowledge from the field of knowledge production to the field of recontextualisation and finally the field of reproduction in the classroom, through three hierarchically related sets of rules, distributive, recontextualising and evaluative.

According to Muller and Hoadley (2010), the original antecedents of the instructional discourse and regulative discourse were ‗instrumental order‘ and ‗expressive order‘ respectively, which appeared in Bernstein‘s work in the late 1950s. They express the inter-related socializing roles of education that are in tension in all societies, particularly modern ones: the ‗expressive order‘ involves transmitting images of conduct, character, and manner, etc., all of which more or less reflect the common values and beliefs of the major society in which it is included. Meanwhile, the ‗instrumental order‘ denotes the school‘s production of specialised differences by transmitting specific knowledge and skills required by a complex division of labour. The expressive order is potentially cohesive in function while the instrumental order is potentially divisive (Muller and Hoadley (2010, p.163). It was not until the 1980s that the couplet became the well-established ‗instructional discourse‘ and ‗regulative discourse‘.

A key issue for this thesis is how the instructional and regulative are related in different curriculum reforms. It could be argued that Bernstein‘s formulation of the relationship between these two concepts seems contradictory; for it shows that at times Bernstein went too far from his

Chapter 3. Conceptual Framework Durkheimian starting point and was prone to undermining his own argument against the reductionist view of the social reproductionists.

3.3.2.2 Bernstein’s contradictory formulation of the regulative and instructional couplet

According to Muller and Hoadley (2010), at one point in his theorizing (especially from the late 1950s up to the 1980s), the instructional discourse is defined to be dominant, and the regulative is formulated to be embedded in the rules of the instructional:

Rules of social order, relation, and identity are embedded in rules of discursive order (selection, sequence, pace, and criteria). The first we call regulative and the second instructional discourse.

(Bernstein, 2003, p.108)3

In later formulations (during the mid-1990s), particularly with the introduction of the ‗pedagogic device‘ from 1996, the instructional discourse is defined as being embedded in the regulative:

However, I also want to argue that regulative discourse produces the order in the instructional discourse. There is no instructional discourse which is not regulated by the regulative discourse. If this is so, the whole order within pedagogic discourse is constituted by the regulative discourse

(Bernstein, 1996, p. 48)

In his last work in 2000, Bernstein re-asserts that the regulative discourse is dominant because pedagogic discourse, by nature, is always about power, the power to evaluate what is legitimate orderings of knowledge:

This is to show that the instructional discourse is embedded in the regulative discourse, and that the regulative discourse is the dominant discourse. Pedagogic discourse is the rule which leads to the embedding of one discourse in another, to create one text, to create one discourse.

(Bernstein, 2000, p.32)

Bernstein‘s first formulation, the embeddedness of the regulative in the instructional, derives from Durkheim‘s argument about the regulative function (the socio-moral formative role) of educational knowledge, that is, what is transmitted in education produces social regulation (Muller and Hoadley, 2010). In the second formulation, the couplet was used to express the

3 This work was originally published in 1990

Chapter 3. Conceptual Framework tension between curricular knowledge and the political and pedagogical pulls in ‗the micro contextual level of the recontextualising field‘ of education (such as the curriculum policy). In this second formulation the link between specialised (disciplinary) knowledge and curricular knowledge seems to be broken due to the ideological contestations of the regulative over the instructional discourse. Curricular knowledge seems to be simply understood as the product of power relations and interests.

Muller and Hoadley (2010) argue that the problem with the emphasis on the dominance of the regulative is that it diverts the attention away from the relative autonomy of the epistemic nature of knowledge itself in Bernstein‘s theory of the pedagogic device (Muller, 2009; Muller & Hoadley, 2010). In doing so, Bernstein risks undermining his own critique of the social reproductionists‘ approach to curricular knowledge and contradicting his argument about the hierarchically related set of rules in the pedagogic device, according to which the rules of the recontextualising level must be derived from the distributive level.

3.3.2.3 The concepts in curriculum analysis

The regulative discourse is ‗concerned with the transmission of order, relation and identity‘ (Bernstein, 2003, p. 182). It is the principle that transmits common values and beliefs of the society in which it is included. It celebrates consensus by creating political and moral agendas such as national unity, national solidarity or patriotic models and reproducing notions such as liberty, progress, freedom, citizenship or nation, etc. (Gamble & Hoadley, 2010). In the curriculum, it refers to the selection of knowledge that serves the transmission of values and their attendant morality (Bernstein, 2003, p.183).

From this reading, in curriculum policy analysis, questions may be raised involving what principles or positions are advocated in the reforms. In the context of university curriculum reform in Vietnam, the analysis of the regulative discourse in the Vietnamese university curriculum policy involves analysing the socio-political agendas that set the goals of university curriculum reforms and university education policy more broadly as well as the position of the neo-conservative ‗red‘ discourse. For example, prior to 1986, the Vietnamese State always had an explicit moral agenda on university education by prioritising the ‗red‘ over the ‗expert‘ in defining the purpose of higher education. Marxist-Leninist courses were also compulsory among

Chapter 3. Conceptual Framework all disciplines and passing the exams of these courses were a prerequisite for graduation. There was also strong regulation on knowledge in social sciences and humanities, such as politics, history and philosophy, all of which were based on Marxist-Leninist doctrines.

The instructional discourse is used to analyse the way specialized or conceptual knowledge is thought about and organised in the curriculum. This discourse is concerned with relationships between contents, which can be considered by asking ‗whether the boundary between it and other contents is clear-cut or blurred‘ (Bernstein, 1971, p.48), i.e., with how the curricular knowledge is divided up or integrated, how boundaries between different types of knowledge are treated. The primary boundaries that Bernstein refers to is twofold: one is between disciplines (or subjects) and the other is between academic knowledge and knowledge from locations external to educational contexts such as work and life.

In this thesis following Muller (2009, p.215), while I acknowledge that disciplinary knowledge is different from curricular knowledge due to the inevitable selections and arrangements involved in the latter, nevertheless a relation between them is necessary: curricular knowledge must correspond to some extent to disciplinary knowledge to ensure a consistent acquisition of specialised knowledge. It also means that, in my analysis, attention should be paid to any agendas, both in the instructional and the regulative discourse, that hamper students‘ systematic access to specialised knowledge.

3.3.3 The instructional discourse in the university curriculum: contribution from Michael Young and Johan Muller

Most of the social realist writings have focused on the issue of knowledge in school curriculum, but Johan Muller and Michael Young have recently applied their social realist perspective to university curriculum (Muller, 2009, 2015; Muller & Young, 2014; Young & Muller, 2015). Their concern arises out of the shift from a traditional discipline-based curriculum to one that is based on external demands such as the world of work or learners‘ needs in which the organisation of knowledge shifts toward increasing integration, with increase connectivity between disciplines and between knowledge and application as well as between the university and the outside world (Barnett, 2000; Bernstein, 2000; Gibbons, 1998; Moore & Young, 2001). This has been a global trend influencing university curriculum policymaking in many countries.

Chapter 3. Conceptual Framework Young and Muller (2014) argue that the disciplinary organisation of university curriculum is under attack world-wide due to the contemporary policy trends that ‗de-differentiate‘ or ‗de- specialise‘ the curricular knowledge by foregrounding ‗can do‘ knowledge in the form of ‗skills‘ and ‗learning outcomes‘. According to Young & Muller (2010), the de-differentiation trend finds its expressions in, to name a few, modularization, interdisciplinary or competence-based curriculum, and progressive pedagogy that focuses on ‗learning paradigm‘, as happening in the educational landscape worldwide. Some expressions of this trend include the influence of Mode 2 and Mode 3 curricular arguments drawn from Gibbons (1998) and (Barnett, 2000, 2004) respectively.

3.3.3.1 Mode 2 problem-based curriculum

The line of argument drawn from Durkheim, Bernstein, Young and Muller is that the instructional level of the curriculum has necessities of structure that are not simply regulative or political but relate to specialized and uncommonsense knowledge. A very popular and contrasting view is known as the Mode 2 thesis.

The Mode 2 thesis, a theory of university curricular knowledge developed by Michael Gibbons and his colleagues, has been one of the most influential views on university curriculum that challenges the traditional disciplinary curriculum in contemporary debate (see Gibbons 1998). This idea is based on an analysis of the production of knowledge in different settings that Gibbons and his colleagues undertook in the early 1990s (see Gibbons et al, 1994).

Gibbons et al (1994) argue that due to the seemingly contradictory dual forces, the ‗top down‘ pressure of globalisation and the ‗bottom up‘ democratic process for widening higher education access, there has emerged a new mode of knowledge production, Mode 2, which is both epistemologically and socially distinct from the traditional Mode 1 knowledge. In Gibbons (1998, p.5), Mode 1 is associated with the discipline-based and academic knowledge traditionally taught at universities. It embodies particular modes of analysis, critique and knowledge production that highlights mastery of concepts and modes of argument. In contrast, mode 2 is utility-based, pragmatic, and skill-based and is related to the world of work. Mode 2 comprises five attributes that are characteristically distinct from Mode 1.

Chapter 3. Conceptual Framework The first attribute of Mode 2 knowledge is transdisciplinarity. This feature is a departure from Mode 1‘s disciplinarity, in which discipline was the source of ideas for knowledge production. Transdisciplinarity requires an integrated systemic effort of scientists from diverse expertise to solve a problem, of which the result is a set of theoretical structures, research methods and modes of practice that are ‗not traceable to any single discipline‘ (Gibbons, 1998, p.5).

The second attribute is application-oriented knowledge production. While Mode 1 knowledge was produced exclusively in universities, mode 2 knowledge production are located in various other sites, such as specialized research institutes outside the academy, multi-national corporations, national or international projects, network firms, and government institutions. This also means that validity of truth is externally driven in terms of social utility.

The third feature of Mode 2 knowledge is its heterogeneity and organisational diversity. This feature refers to mode 2‘s diverse expertise of researchers in the team or organisation, which is characteristically transient, flexible, and less firmly institutionalised or co-ordinated. In Mode 1, researchers‘ skills are relatively homogeneous, and their institutions characterised by academic hierarchy.

Fourthly, Mode 2 knowledge is expected to enhance social accountability. All procedures of research, from problem definition, interpretation, diffusion of research results and research impacts are expected to be socially accountable, agreed upon by all stakeholders concerned from the outset. In other word, there is no such thing as curious-driven research in mode 2 knowledge production.

Finally, Mode 2 knowledge associated with an enhancement and extension of quality control. In Mode 1, quality control is defined by peer review process, which requires careful selection of competent researchers that share intellectual interests in the disciplines. In contrast, the criteria for Mode 2 quality is extended to ‗ a diverse range of intellectual interests as well as other social, economic or political ones, reflecting ‗the broadening social composition of the review system‘ (Gibbons, 1998, p.5).

In the light of this, Gibbons (1998) calls for a problem-based transdisciplinary curriculum that focuses on problem-solving skills, interpersonal communication, and learning to learn. In his

Chapter 3. Conceptual Framework view, the principle of ‗relevance‘ is underpinned by the need to understand the complex problems faced by developing countries and this requires a shift from discipline-based to problem-centred trans-disciplinary approaches. A ‗genuinely‘ transdisciplinary curriculum entails teaching programs that give a fair amount of room for participation in problem-solving teams, and make extensive use of such teaching techniques as modelling and simulation. Gibbons and his colleagues‘ Mode 2 curriculum thesis is underpinned by the blurring of boundaries between universities and other institutions, expert and lay persons, teachers and students, as well as between theory and practice, between academic and everyday knowledge.

For developing countries, Gibbons argues that the adoption of Mode 2 also provides a chance for a more democratic position in the global knowledge landscape. This is because, in his view, Mode 1 knowledge production has been ‗diffused‘ from Western countries to developing ones as an impediment to development rather than as an opportunity. He explains that Mode 1 involves sophisticated and costly methods and instrumentation that are affordable by only wealthy countries, thus third world countries are ‗locked into a Mode of knowledge production that is based on the disciplinary structure, is capital dependent and works on problems which are relatively context free‘ (Gibbons, 1998, p.53).

While Gibbon‘s theorizing of Mode 2 knowledge production is loosely conceptualized and not entirely new (see Hessels & Van Lente, 2008), Gibbons and his colleagues‘ account has been featured prominently in higher education policy discourse, to the extent that it seems to have become a ‗validated‘ and ‗legitimate‘ framework for countries or international organisations in their uncritical pursuit of Mode 2.

One of the problems with Gibbon‘s view on Mode 2 curricular knowledge is that even Gibbons himself has not been clear in his insight about the relationship between Mode 1 and Mode 2. On the one hand, his enthusiastic favour of a problem-based trans-disciplinary curriculum underlies the assumption that Mode 2 will triumph and eventually supplant Mode 1. On the other hand, in a revised paper on the same topic, Gibbons and his colleagues argue that Mode 1 does not supplant Mode 2, but outgrows from and co-exists with it. Another issue with Gibbon‘s view is the dichotomous and discontinuous account of the shift from Mode 1 to Mode 2. Bawa (1997)

Chapter 3. Conceptual Framework and Rip (2000) argue that the relationship between the two should be viewed as non-linear and complex because Mode 2 has always been around in history. Ekong and Cloete (1997) add that Mode 1 and Mode 2 are not mutually exclusive but they do have both socio-epistemic tensions that are worth further exploration for a better understanding of its implications for curriculum.

Muller (2000) examines two possibilities, those of the replacement thesis and of the adjunct or supplementary thesis in evaluating Gibbons‘ view. The replacement thesis advocates Mode 2 as a ‗good‘, necessary and more democratic form of knowledge production, while labelling Mode 1 as ‗bad‘ as it is both politically and epistemologically conservative. The supplementary thesis is based on the perceived important and indispensable role of Mode 1 knowledge. It strongly reclaims Mode 1 to its unquestioned position in the undergraduate curriculum because it determines the quality of Mode 2 and serves as the basis for Mode 2 to be effective. Contrary to Gibbons‘ argument that Mode 2 is more democratic than Mode 1, Muller argues that such Mode 2 democratic access is merely superficial: it widens learning opportunities via information technology or via policies that crudely take up more students at the expense of learning quality.

In summary, while Gibbons might raise some interesting points regarding the problem of ‗democratic‘ knowledge transfer, for the purpose of this study I would argue along with Muller that moves toward Mode 2 knowledge in universities should not make redundant concerns about the specialisation of knowledge and the different specialized forms of knowledge structures.

3.3.3.2 Mode 3 learner-based curriculum

Recent decades have also seen contrasting arguments critical of the discipline-based approach to knowledge in favour of a more holistic, situated and activity-based approach. For example, some theorists argue that the value of knowledge has become increasingly judged by its power to ‗perform‘ or do things and that the progress of speculative knowledge is subordinated to technology and the realm of practice (e.g., Castells, 2000; Lyotard, 1984). The distinction between science and technology has collapsed, because science also becomes a major force of production. In this scenario, the idea of knowledge as a set of universal truths is ditched, because there will be multiple truths and forms of reasons and knowledge becomes a form of commodity. Knowledge is also no longer judged on its power to describe the world but through its use value and its impact on the world. In a similar vein, Manuel Castells (2000) argues that knowledge in

Chapter 3. Conceptual Framework post-industrial societies is no longer to be seen as ‗object‘, a ‗thing‘ or a ‗product‘ to be produced and developed by experts and organised in traditional disciplines, but more as a ‗process‘, a series of flows and networks produced in the interactions between people. Such ‗fluid‘ knowledge resembles a form of dynamic energy that can do things or make things happen. According to Barnett (2000), in contemporary universities ‗what counts is less what individuals know and more what individuals can do‘ (ibid). In other words, the ‗knowing that‘ is backgrounded by the ‗knowing how‘:

the new practical interest has turned knowledge as contemplation to knowledge as praxis […]Action learning, strategy, elaborate theory, communication, and the solving of practical problems – these are just some of the elements that might be found in the constitution of a characteristic knowledge field. And each of these elements takes on a particular form in different fields of inquiry and or action.

(Barnett, 2000, p.37)

Yet Barnett rejects both Mode 1 and Mode 2 curricula, as well as the generic or transferable skills as a solution for contemporary university curriculum. Mode 1, for him, no longer meets society‘s need. Mode 2 is too limited, because it rests on the premise that a solution could be identified for a certain practical problem, which is impossible because we are living in a world of ‗supercomplexity‘ or the ‗reflexive modernity‘. Similarly, generic skills for Barnett are dead-end since they do not provide students with the qualities and dispositions to cope with conceptual and ontological uncertainty. To overcome this dilemma, Barnett and a number of curriculum theorists argue for Mode 3 knowledge, in which disciplinary knowledge is still present, yet its relative importance recedes to dispositions for surviving in the world of supercomplexity. In Barnett‘s words:

A Mode 3 knowledge, therefore, surely beckons, in which it is recognized that knowing the world is a matter of producing epistemological gaps. The very act of knowing- knowledge having become a process of active knowing- now produces epistemological gaps: our very epistemological interventions in turn disturb the world, so bringing a new world before us. No matter how creative and imaginative our knowledge designs, it always eludes our epistemological attempts to capture it. This is a Mode 3 knowing, therefore, which is a knowing-in-and-with-uncertainty. The knowing produces further uncertainty.

(Barnett, 2004, p.251)

Knowledge has now become a process of active knowing, rather than something that is external to individuals. Their argument against the role of specialised conceptual knowledge as the foundation of university curriculum is based on the argument for a shift from epistemological

Chapter 3. Conceptual Framework concern to an emphasis on learning in practical contexts and learner‘s needs (Barnett, 2000, 2004; Dall‘Alba & Barnacle, 2007).

Again I would argue that Mode 3 approach takes too little account of the autonomy and specialized structures of knowledge. Nevertheless the concepts discussed here have been globally powerfully and can be seen in some phases of the reforms I will analyse.

3.3.3.3 Muller and Young’s critique of Mode 2 and Mode 3 knowledge

According to Muller (2015), a common view between the Mode 2 curriculum and Mode 3 curriculum proponents is that they rest on a de-differentiated assumption about knowledge: the boundary is merged between different knowledge forms and between the educational institutions and those institutions external to it. Although the shift to activity might initially look liberating both politically and epistemically, it tended to ‗slip into a relativism that threw the baby (knowledge, truth and objectivity) out with the bathwater (a static and ahistorical view of knowledge‘ (Muller 2015, p.142).

It is because of the variations in forms of knowledge from different disciplines and professions, that Muller (2009, p.216) argues that there is no such thing as a ‗pure‘ conceptual coherent curriculum, i.e., one whose coherence is entirely driven by the abstract and internally hierarchical structure of disciplinary knowledge. Nor is there any curriculum that is entirely contextually coherent, i.e., one which aligns entirely with specific practical contexts of applications or external requirements such as the identification of education outcomes such as social inclusion, widening participation and economic competitiveness, and use of these outcomes to develop targets to drive the curriculum and research priorities. Rather, degrees of conceptual or contextual coherence differ among occupations and disciplines: in some occupations, knowledge is more ‗receptive to conceptual augmentation‘, especially that in established professions like law, medicine or engineering, while in others, knowledge is largely procedural, more ‗modularisable‘in the curriculum, and less sequential.

In critiquing the shift to knowledge genericism in curriculum theory and policy, Young and Muller also argue for the special worth of expert (specialised) knowledge. Drawing on Durkheim‘s argument that social progress and modernization depends on specialisation and

Chapter 3. Conceptual Framework differentiation, Muller and Young (2014, p.138) contend that disciplinary knowledge constitutes the safeguarders of innovation and hence should form the basis for the university curriculum, ‗regardless of whether they are based on pure disciplines such as literature and chemistry or applied disciplines such as engineering or teaching, or draw on the natural or the social sciences or the Humanities‘. For them, the transmission and acquisition of specialised conceptual knowledge ‗defines the purpose of university education and what university students are entitled epistemological access to‘ (ibid).

Here Young (2010) and Muller (2014) emphasize the need to distinguish ‗formal access‘ (the widening participation of education) from ‗epistemological access‘ or ‗epistemic access‘ (a term borrowed from South African educational philosopher Wally Morrow). For Young (2010), the widening of participation has been widely accepted as default to be a progressive approach to education. However, Young and Muller argue that ‗formal access‘ might not result in qualified graduates because ‗the opportunities offered by educational institutions are not necessarily educational‘ (Young, 2010, p.4) and it can lead to little more than the ‗warehousing‘ of young people, a situation when graduates left educational institutions ‗with little, if any, more knowledge than they had when they began‘ (Young, 2010, p.4). Muller (2014) adds that access in university education does not guarantee that students might have opportunities to develop intellectually robust and professional expertise due to the epistemological assumption underpinning the curriculum approaches.

In summary, Young and Muller are making the following case about knowledge in the university curriculum:

(1) Knowledge is differentiated and the distinction between academic knowledge drawn from disciplines and knowledge drawn from workplace or students‘ common sense understanding of the world should be recognised as a basis for curriculum thinking and acting. In university curriculum, there are cases where conceptual knowledge is important not merely for its own sake, but for utilitarian purposes, i.e., the requirements of pure (or conceptual) knowledge may be conducive to the requirements of applied knowledge (knowledge considered as instrumental). The conceptual bases of the curriculum vary according to different occupations and disciplines.

(2) Conceptual discipline-based knowledge constitutes a more ‗powerful‘ way of thinking, and hence is significant not only for ‗epistemic access‘, but also for the central

Chapter 3. Conceptual Framework purpose of the university curriculum because it relates to Emile Durkheim‘s idea that specialisation is a source of modernization and progress. For Young, disciplinary knowledge is not only about acquiring bits of received facts, but also entails developing identity and affiliation through a systematic and coherent induction and participation into discourses and actions of a collective social field.

In summing up then Young and Muller have made a good case for the need to pay attention to different forms of knowledge and the specialized structures as well as the dangers of undermining these in some contemporary reforms or moves. Attention to these will form part of my analysis in the next three chapters. However, Young and Muller have paid relatively little attention to the question of social order or the regulative function of the university curriculum. And this is also something I take up in the next section and in later chapters.

3.3.4 The regulative function of university curriculum

The tension between the intellectual and moral purposes is an enduring problem in the history of university education and has triggered successive contestations in Europe, the UK, the US and elsewhere. At the time when the American university system seems over-preoccupied with ‗training‘, Daniel Coit Gilman, in his inaugural address as the first President of John Hopkins University in 1876, expresses the significance of the moral purpose of university education as follows:

The object of the university is to develop character – to make men. It misses it aims if it produces learned pedants, or simple artisans, or cunning sophists, or pretentious practitioners. Its purport is not so much to impart knowledge to the pupils, as whet the appetite, exhibit methods, develop powers, strengthen judgment, and invigorate the intellectual and moral forces. It should prepare for the service of society a class of students who will be wise, thoughtful, progressive guides in whatever department of work or thought they may be engaged.

(Gilman, 1876)

In Vietnamese university education, as mentioned in Chapter 2, the epistemic and moral purposes of university education was traditionally associated with the ‗red‘ and ‗expert‘ discourse. Prior to 1986, the ‗red‘ and ‗expert‘ discourses were hierarchically structured, with the ‗red‘ discourse in the image of the firm ‗socialist‘ man taking precedence. The humanities and social sciences in Vietnam had for several decades seen as part of a fundamentalist ideology like

Chapter 3. Conceptual Framework several countries in Eastern Europe (St. George, 2003). Such knowledge was loosely related to the works of Marx-Engels, Lenin and the history of the Communist Party.

Brighouse and McPherson (2015, p. 2) suggest that the deliberations on knowledge for the moral formation of individuals involves questions of values, such as whether the curriculum aims at fostering ‗maximal productive individuals‘ or citizens with ‗deliberative capacities and inclination to use them for public good‘, whether the focus of the curriculum is on academic knowledge and skills or character, whether the curriculum should shape students‘ view about what is valuable in life and valuable to learn. These are matters of dispute that ‗always reveal the ideological tensions occurring in a society as it struggles to come to terms with changing cultural circumstances and new economic conditions‘ (Walker & Nixon, 2004, p. 5).

From the literature, the debate has been variously stated from various standpoints in terms for example of the rift between culture and utility, arts and science, liberal and technical. In this debate, we see polarizing positions between the belief that specialised training is a necessary evil, to be minimized as much as possible, and the belief that what is liberal or humanistic or cultural or whatever should be made a handmaid of what is vocational. In other cases, the contribution of one to the other is stressed, although often one is regarded as superior in value (Gutmann, 2015; Nussbaum, 1997; Roth, 2014).

Underlying these debates is the problem of specialisation. The struggles from those in the humanist tradition express an enduring fear of the spiritual loss and the generation of individuals that might be, in the classic phrase of Max Weber, ‗specialists without spirit, sensualists without hearts‘ (Weber, 1958, p. 182). This problem raises questions about the nature of specialisation itself and the value a society attaches to it. In the case of this study, this unexplored dimension over the purpose of university education in the social realist approach needs further elaboration to address the question about the ‗red‘ and ‗expert‘ discourse in the Vietnamese university reform.

The following section seeks to take further Bernstein and Young and Muller‘s arguments regarding the issue of specialisation considering not just questions about structures of knowledge but also about the issue of the regulative purposes of the university curriculum. I argue that Durkheim‘s argument about the moral nature of specialisation has important implications for

Chapter 3. Conceptual Framework thinking about the specialisation-order tension and the place of specialised knowledge in university curriculum.

3.4 Durkheim’s theory of specialisation

Is specialisation a moral issue or is it anti-moral or merely instrumental in nature? This was a problem that lay at the heart of sociological thought during the late 19th century when specialisation (and its association with industrialization and modernization) became an object of speculation in European societies. This was a time when Europe saw an uneasy structural transition from an agrarian society to an industrial society in which increasingly people and institutions become more specialised and differentiated in different spheres of the social and cultural life. The widespread phenomenon of specialisation received different responses from thinkers during the 19th century as to what constituted its nature and its relation to social solidarity, or the problem of order, i.e., what could hold society together (Crow, 2002).

In this debate, some theorists such as Comte saw specialisation as threatening social order and needing to be constrained by direct regulative imposition. Others such as Saint-Simon saw specialisation as tied to instrumental economic purposes but neutral (amoral) in relation to social order. Amidst this, Durkheim‘s The Division of Labour in Society, which was first published in 1893, presents an original interpretation of the role that specialisation plays in the breakdown of the old moral order and the genesis of modernity (see Durkheim, 1984). For Durkheim, specialisation offers a source for economic progress but more importantly in its natural form it offers a source of ‗organic solidarity‘, which is characterized by greater autonomy among the organs, yet at the same time greater functional interdependence in the organism. In other words, specialisation is both a social and a moral phenomenon:

Through it [specialisation] the individual is once more made aware of his dependent state vis-a-vis society. It is from society that proceed those forces that hold him in check and keep him within bounds. In short, since division of labour becomes the predominant source of social solidarity, at the same time it becomes the foundation of the moral order.

(Durkheim, 1984, p. 333)

Durkheim was well aware of the critique that specialisation is the cause of social dissolution and class conflicts. Durkheim‘s view on specialisation is that as a moral phenomenon, specialisation offers both constructive and destructive potentials; and hence any polarising position that either celebrates it uncritically or condemns it bitterly might not offer reasonable solutions to the

Chapter 3. Conceptual Framework problem. This has significant implications for the debate on specialised knowledge and the epistemic/moral tension of university education. Of particular relevance to this study, if we follow the Durkheimian assumption that specialisation is moral, it is possible to argue that there are challenges both for and of specialisation, and hence specialised knowledge, in thinking about the university curriculum.

Durkheim argues that changes in the forms of society have required functional specialisation and interdependence. Attempts to constrain this phenomenon by returning to older forms of authority and direct regulation might result in pathological forms of specialisation. For example, one of such pathological forms of specialisation is found in circumstances where there exists a lack of a system of just and fair rules, which Durkheim calls ‗enforced specialisation‘. In such cases, Durkheim argues that the rules do not correspond to the ethos of differentiation; they are illegitimate and oppressive and treat specialisation as a threat to order as in August Comte‘s approach (Durkheim, 1984). Equally driving specialisation to unconstrained economic ends can produce other pathological forms. For example, the prevalence of anomie when personal unleashed desires and interests are not sufficiently kept in check from one another, a problem that might arise from the views taken by Saint-Simon or the liberal economists.

Some authors argue that Durkheim‘s take on specialisation is above all about achieving integration within differentiation, and thus conclude that Durkheim is preoccupied with preserving the status quo of the capitalist economy (e.g., Smelser, 1993). Likewise, in the introduction to Durkheim‘s Division of Labour in Society, Coser (1984, p. xxiii) agrees with Lukes (1973) that one of the major flaws of Durkheim‘s argument is that he tends to ‗assume an identity between the ‗normal‘, the ideal, and that which was about to happen‘. The consequence of this view is that Durkheim identifies the status quo as ‗normal‘ while anything that is ‗repellent‘ to his ‗ideal moral demands and standards‘ is abnormal. But this is to miss one important point Durkheim wants to make: for Durkheim, the existing social conditions are still far from stable for a spontaneous ‗normal‘ specialisation. Durkheim is also much interested in social change in his insistence that the remedy for pathological specialisation is not to go back to the traditional way of organizing society by treating individuals as a means to some end (such as power or capital), but to reduce external inequality by increasing justice and equality into social life (Stedman Jones, 2001).

Chapter 3. Conceptual Framework This thesis is going to examine the reforms in Vietnamese curriculum in relation to question of knowledge, specialisation and order. In that sense, Durkheim‘s perspective on specialisation offers some starting ideas for the analysis. In particular, his argument is that specialisation is a moral phenonmenon sui generis and a condition for a new form of authority based on both autonomy and interdependence. However, his view is that since this new social form is not settled since changes have been underway, it is possible for specialisation to take pathological forms either by attempts to appropriate it by returning to older form of authority or by giving it an unconstrained regulative form. This is useful conceptually in examining how the ‗red‘ and the ‗expert‘ discourses are put together in the university curriculum reforms in Vietnam.

By returning to the debate on specialisation, particularly the significance of Durkheim‘s perspective on the issue, this discussion does not aim to dig into the theory of specialisation per se, for the problem of specialisation has never been satisfactorily solved in sociology. The modern age will have removed some of the older social and economic difficulties, but new problems will be created. The major point this discussion seeks to raise is that like the question of knowledge, specialisation, in this discussion, could be best described as what Michel Foucault calls ‗dangerous concepts‘, which is not the same as ‗bad‘, but it means we always have something to do and think about. In so doing, we can make space for thinking differently about the long standing problem that has been largely ignored in contemporary debate about university curricululum and its purposes.

3.5 An analytical framework: Knowledge, specialisation and social order in the Vietnamese university curriculum

In this study, drawing on the sociology of curricular knowledge in the Durkheimian tradition, the view is taken that, on the one hand, the university curriculum is not to be seen as simply having just knowledge transmission but, by its very existence, it is part of a society, that is, curricular knowledge also reflects social forms and moral constraints. On the other hand, it is important to detect the way such social and moral constraints might affect students‘ access to robust bodies of knowledge.

Drawing on Bernstein's conceptual dyad instructional discourse and regulative discourse and a number of arguments from Young and Muller on university curricular knowledge, my study

Chapter 3. Conceptual Framework explores the assumptions underlying the patterns of change in curricular aims, curricular knowledge organisation and pedagogisation represented in university education policies between 1986 and 2015.

Taking account of arguments discussed in this chapter, my assumptions are that specialised knowledge is not the solution, but a very important condition for both innovation and social integration. The task of generating specialists is both necessary and moral for the functioning of a modern differentiated society. This demands attention to the role of specialised knowledge and reminds us of the guard against any attempt to suppress specialised disciplinary knowledge in the curriculum. As well, this also poses questions about the way the Vietnamese curriculum reformers attempted to deal with the cultural dilemma between the ‗red‘ and ‗expert‘ discourses of curricular knowledge having particular regard to Durkheim‘s argument about the way in which specialisation can be inappropriately regulated.

In more detail, then, the major questions and analytic approach of the thesis are these:

(1) The detailed analysis of university curriculum reforms (1986-2015) revolves around the following key question:

 How did the Vietnamese State, throughout a sustained period of university education curriculum reform (1986-2015), seek to reconcile political and pedagogical agendas concerning knowledge, specialisation and order?

In chapters 5, 6, and 7, I analyse and discuss each of the three major reform phases in terms of the following sub-questions:

o How were the instructional (epistemic) discourse and regulative (socio-political) discourses of university knowledge described in each phase of curriculum reform?

. Regarding the regulative discourse: How was the reform‘s curriculum approach positioned in terms of aims, image of the individual and ‗red‘ knowledge?

. Regarding the instructional discourse: How was knowledge organised? What knowledge was considered ‗foundation‘?

. What were the tensions, if any, as the traditional forms of knowledge in both discourses were changed?

Chapter 3. Conceptual Framework (2) In chapter 8, I pull together the analysis of the reform in terms of the questions on the relationship between knowledge, specialisation and social order. Drawing on Durkheim‘s analysis of specialisation, the study attempts to raise further questions about the implications of the changes regarding the question of knowledge in relation to tension between specialisation and social order in contemporary university curriculum reform in Vietnam. This constitutes the second question of the study:

 What contributions can Durkheim’s theory of specialisation make in understanding and addressing the problematic of the curriculum regarding the question of specialisation and order in Vietnam today?

Chapter 4. Approach and Method

CHAPTER 4. APPROACH AND METHOD

The problem that the project seeks to examine, generally speaking, is how the conceptions of knowledge has changed as the curriculum reformers seek to address the tension between specialisation and order across the Vietnamese university education reforms after 1986. My study seeks to explore the assumptions underlying the patterns of change in curricular aims, curricular knowledge structuring and organisation represented in official policies in university education reforms between 1986 and 2015.

The conceptual issues driving the study were discussed in chapter 3. This chapter discusses the evidence drawn on in the study and the methodological approach relating to that.

The components of the study are:

 An analysis of university policy documents and curriculum materials between 1986 and 2015, with a focus on key policies marking three major periods of curricular reforms, regarding the question of knowledge, specialisation and order;  A review of secondary analyses and commentaries (such as conference papers and other forms of media and academic publications) on the reforms in the period under study;  Interviews with three senior curriculum officials about the background context of the reforms and the major policy documents marking the key phases in the period;  A reflection and discussion of the outcomes of the study in terms of the broader question about curricular knowledge, specialisation and order in contemporary Vietnam.

4.1 Research data and collection procedures

4.1.1 Research data

In this study, primary data are drawn from official published policy documents, further documents obtained during visits and semi-structured interviews. The selection and treatment of relevant data is underpinned by the following assumptions:

Chapter 4. Approach and Method First, in this study state and governmental policy documents related to university curriculum, curriculum guidelines and program guides developed by universities are all regarded as curriculum policies. As accurate and tangible products, policy documents are often used in historical attempts to chart and analyse continuities and changes because they provide ‗thick‘ factual and accurate data (Neuman, 2007). Policy documents are intended to have symbolic or rhetorical impact, as well as directing particular actions. For the purpose of this thesis both are important.

Since the interest of the study lies conceptions of knowledge in national curriculum reforms, the study focuses on the intended form of the curriculum at the ‗macro level‘, which includes policy for a particular system (Goodlad et al., 1979; Letschert & Kessels, 2004; Marsh & Willis, 2007), and is usually of a ‗generic‘ and intentional nature (Letschert & Kessels, 2004, p.160), including the ideal curriculum and formal curriculum. The ideal curriculum is also called the ‗imaginary curriculum‘ (Letschert & Kessels 2004, p.160) which conforms to the original visions of the developers and represent ideal views about the purpose of education. The formal curriculum indicates intentions as specified in curriculum documents and/or materials. According to van den Akker (2004, p. 5), curriculum documents at different levels include 10 major components (such as rationale, aims, content, teaching and learning activities, etc.). Because this study analyses official curriculum documents at the macro level, the focus would be on three major components, namely curriculum rationales, aims and contents, which are often expressed ‗in rather broad terms, sometimes accompanied by an outline of time allocation for various subject matter domains‘ (ibid).

Unlike the case of universities in the Western European tradition, where state control on university education goals and curriculum is indirect, and where the universities have more autonomy in creating their own curricula, in Vietnam‘s case, the key state actor, the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET), has been the major regulator of Vietnamese university education since 1986. Thus, the main data source for analysis of the university curricular reforms since 1986 in Vietnam will be policy documents issued by the MOET. More specifically, the data for state agendas are drawn from the resolutions, decisions or socio-economic plans on education strategies issued by the Party and the Government. Since the curricular reform context of Vietnamese university education also involved the role of the international field (i.e.,

Chapter 4. Approach and Method international organizations or donor agencies in education such as the World Bank), data source for the study also includes reports, guidelines, projects issued by international organisations or donor agencies that are involved in Vietnamese university education since 1986.

Although the focus of the study is curriculum as intended, the implemented or attained curriculum is also useful for reference as it facilitates the reflection on the tensions or effects of the policies (Taylor, 2004).Such curriculum materials at the university level were used to better grasp the features of the official knowledge. These documents include a range of material produced at university level such as discussion documents, syllabi, curriculum handbooks and guidelines, among others.

And finally, understanding the history and social context of the policy is of great importance in the policy analysis task to fully understand the drivers and intentions of the policy documents (Halperin & Heath, 2012; Rizvi & Lingard, 2010; Tatto, 2012). For this purpose I supplemented the formal state papers with semi-structured interviews with some high-level curriculum reformers. The selection of interviews and protocols and approach relating to these are discussed further below.

4.1.2 Data collection procedures

The method used to identify relevant data included existing secondary sources; research and collection of a range of texts using internet sources; and drawing on contacts with researchers and key policy actors in Vietnamese university education.

4.1.2.1 Collection of policy document data

Before locating key documents informing key changes in curriculum discourses, I looked at a variety of data drawn from different official sources:

Issues to explore Document types Document sources

National agendas and its resolutions, laws, decrees, decision and The websites of the corresponding strategies and directives; policies, leaders‘ statements, Communist Party of visions for education/university speeches, announcements or interviews; Vietnam and the website of education. This is to examine the reports and official documents from the government; dominant principles/discourses of international agencies dealing with

Chapter 4. Approach and Method the reforms. university education reforms in the two World Bank websites and periods in Vietnam. other bilateral HE project websites in Vietnam.

Reform measures indicated in the Ministerial directives, decisions, circulars, The website of the Ministry university education policies to curriculum and assessment guidelines; of Education; The websites explore the dynamics between ministerial interviews or speeches; official of Legal document archives; cognitive norms and social reports, studies with public agencies Vietnam‘s National Archive norms. expressing curriculum intents in the two Centre. reforms

Illustration of the reform policies University curriculum materials, such as Through informal contacts in concrete university curriculum curriculum handbooks and university websites (to better understand the reform)

Table 1. Sources and types of official documents

Initially, I planned to document the changes in curriculum policies between 1986 and 2013, since this project started in late 2012. However, to capture more changes in Vietnamese higher education in general and university curriculum in particular as the project progressed, I decided to take 1986 and 2015 as the period for study. The process of the collection of the policy documents on university curriculum reforms in Vietnam can be summarised as follows:

 Stage 1: a general search was undertaken in the internet source and secondary literature for general trends in Vietnamese university education as well as debates about the topic. The search was then refined to curricular issues.  Stage 2: align collected documents to curriculum as primary keywords to give a broad view of discussion of curriculum in general. The term ‗chương trình học‘ (curriculum) ‗giáo dục đại học‘ (higher education/university education) were used.  Stage 3: key words related to knowledge, university curriculum reform.  Finally, major key documents were chosen to represent the broad three waves of reforms (see Table 2).

Chapter 4. Approach and Method

1986 December Six National Party Congress (the start of the Doi Moi/Renovation era)

Directions, Goals and Action Programs of Higher and Vocational Education for 1987 10 August 1987-1990, Conference Proceedings at Nha Trang Conference on Reforming Higher and Vocational Education

Decision 1670/QD-DH, Minister of Higher and Vocational Education 1988 8 December (curriculum divided into 2 phases)

Decision 2301/QĐ-LB MOET & General Statistics Office on the list of higher 1990 22 December education disciplines and fields of study

Decision 2238/QD-DH, signed by Minister of ET on regulations for testing, 1990 17 December examination, graduation recognition for formal tracks at universities and colleges

Decision 2677 on Curriculum Framework 1993 3 December Decision 2678/GD-DT, minimum knowledge amount for phase 1 of higher education

1993 December Draft for course-credit curriculum Decision 2679/GD-DT

1998 Law of Education (revised in 2005 and 2009)

Regulation 04/1999 (04/1999/QD-BGD-DT) dated 11 Feb 1999 on the organisation of 1999 curriculum, tests, examination and recognition of graduation for regular students at university and college level

2001 Beginning of the construction of diverse Core Curricula for different specialties

Higher Education Reform Agenda (HERA) Report & Governmental Resolution 2005 November 14/2005 on fundamental and comprehensive reform of higher education for Vietnam for period 2006-2020

Ministerial decision 25/2006/QD-BGDDT (Regulation 25) dated 26/06/2006 on the 2006 organisation of curriculum, tests, examination and recognition of graduation for regular students at university and college level

Ministerial Decision 43/2007/QD-BGD-DT (Regulation 43) dated 15/08/2007 on the organisation of curriculum, tests, examination and recognition of graduation for 2007 regular students at university and college level – signed by Vice-minister Bành Tiến Long (on behalf of Minister Nguyễn Thiện Nhân)

Circular (ministerial guideline) 2196/BGDDT-GDDH on the construction and 2010 publication of learning outcomes of a study program

2012 Law of Higher Education

Circular 07/2015/TT-BGDDT on the minimum amount of knowledge, requirements on 2015 competence for graduates at each level of higher education and on the procedures for constructing, accrediting, promulgating the undergraduate and postgraduate curricula

Table 2. List of key curriculum policy documents 1986-2015

Chapter 4. Approach and Method An initial assessment of these major policies in higher education suggests that there were three major phases of higher education reforms between1986 and 2015 that directly touched on the curriculum issue, which form the organizational structure of chapters 5, 6 and 7:

 The first phase 1987 and 1997, or the 1987 Curriculum, can be traced back to the 1987 document entitled Directions, Goals and Action Programs 1987-1990.  The second phase 1998 and 2004, or the 1998 Curriculum, saw the first Law of Education in 1998 (revised in 2005 and 2009). One of the key concerns of the document was the introduction of the Core Curriculum.  The third period 2005 and 2015, or the 2005 Curriculum, which was associated with Vietnam‘s entry into the WTO, saw various resolutions and directives from the Party and government. Key among these documents was the Higher Education Reform Agenda (HERA) in 2005.

4.1.2.2 Collection of interview data

In my study, the interview data was used to understand critical changes and contextual background of the curriculum reforms. Although interviews can be time-consuming and a source of bias, the information from interviews was worthwhile for me to better grasp the nuanced changes or movements within the curriculum reforms that are not available from the analysis of policy documents. In other words, it unpacks the issues not easily recognized from reading the official documents.

To achieve this aim, the study draws on interviewing those who are well-informed about the reform process. This is part of what is termed ‗expert interview‘ (Bogner & Menz, 2009; Littig, 2011). Expert in this sense is understood as those who have special access to the policy-making process. Interviews with key policy figures aim to provide a solid basis for discussing the significance and relevance of context so as to enhance our understanding of the present. Interviews with these experts were used not to analyse for their own sake (I was not aiming to study the politics of curriculum making in the ways that some previous studies have done) but as a means to understand the contexts of the policy documents and terms and references to which the policies were a response. Expert interviews constitute a small sample and of course their

Chapter 4. Approach and Method perspective needs to be treated with care. I took what steps I could both to access those who would have an informed sense of the context of each policy, and to treat the interviews ethically.

To identify who would give the most reliable information about the context of the policy, I decided to look for those who worked as senior officials in the Department of Higher Education during the period under study. I employed both a purposive and snowballing method. The purposive method involves deliberately selecting particular persons or settings that can provide information unavailable to the researcher (Maxwell, 2009), while the snowballing methods require referral or reputation sampling in a network, beginning with ‗one or a few people or cases and spreads out on the basis of links to the initial case‘ (Newman 2007, p.144).

I planned to interview a number of key policy figures who worked in the field of higher education between 1986 and 2014, as the interviewing process began in 2014. The process started with a senior official who worked between 1987 and 19974. Through him, I received contacts from some key policymakers at the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET). There were four policy authorities that I had planned to interview. However, I could not arrange to interview one key figure who worked between 1986 and 1997. Therefore, the interviewees for my study include: the consultant of Vietnamese higher education from 1991 to 1998, who was interviewed on an informal basis in the pilot phase of the study and three other senior officials who worked at the MOET Department of Higher Education. Through these interviewees, I was able to get access to important policy documents relating to curriculum issues (see Table 3).

Interviewee Interviewee position and affiliation Official interview date reference Interviewee A Senior official at Department of Higher August 2014 Education, MOET, from 1987 to 1997 Interviewee B Senior official at Department of Higher August 2014 Education, MOET, from 1987 to 2008 Interviewee C Senior official of Department of Higher August 2014 (follow-up Education, MOET (current) emails October 2016)

Table 3. Interview participant matrix

4 The contact with key policymakers was facilitated with the help of one of my acquaintances who was a retired university professor at RMIT University. The professor used to be a Vice-Minister of education in charge of higher education section under the South regime in Vietnam before 1975. In 1982, he immigrated to Australia as a refugee and worked as a professor in South East Asia Studies at RMIT University until 1991. In 1991, he decided to return to Vietnam to work as a volunteer consultant for the Ministry of Education and Training and some universities in Hanoi. The professor therefore was also a source of information because he was an important advisor and friend of the minister of education in the period between 1993 and1998 and worked closely with the officials of the Department of Higher Education. The information from him provided on an informal basis to consolidate my understanding of the background to the higher education environments in the 1990s.

Chapter 4. Approach and Method The form of the interview was in-depth ‗semi-structured‘, which allows for the collection of rich information while also ensuring both flexibility and commonality across the interview (Maxwell, 2009). The purpose of the interviews with people who worked or have been working in the period under study is to gather background information of the curriculum policies. This requires answers to questions related to (1) the origin and local and global context of the policy origin; (2) the socio-political contexts in which the policy operates as well as the degree of effectiveness the policy has addressed the problem (in this case, the reform of university curriculum); and (3) the changes made to the original policy (Tatto, 2012, p.5).

In August and September 2014, first visits and informal semi-structured interviews were conducted with three senior officials from the Ministry of Education and Training whose work spanned from 1986 to the present. The interviewing process took two rounds: The first round occurred during my visit to Vietnam to collect some official documents from the national library. These three interviews with three officials were informal and exploratory, being concerned with mostly open-ended questions about the context of the university curricular reforms, the documents they thought significant during the period, and the background of the key policy documents. The meetings were generally friendly and relaxed and they were willing to share with me a number of documents, such as proceedings of conference or reports that were only internally circulated in the MOET. After this, I obtained their consent for the next round of interviewing through Skype, after I met all the requirements from the University Human Research Ethics Committee.

The second round of interviews took place several months later through Skype. Each interview lasted about one hour and was recorded with a recording software on my computer. The data then were transcribed. Since the aim of the interview data was to understand critical changes and contextual background of the curriculum reforms, the main questions I raise to the interviewees are about the goals of the reforms, the key strategies and approaches were chosen, and the rationales for these choices (See Appendices 1, 2 and 3). After these interviews, some follow-up emails were exchanged between me and the interviewees if there were points or terms in the policy documents for which I needed clarification, for example the issue of English-Vietnamese equivalence.

Chapter 4. Approach and Method 4.2 Data analysis and interpretation

The analysis of curriculum policy documents is guided by the following assumptions:

First, this study does not focus on the procedural aspects of curriculum planning; rather it takes a conceptual approach to the curriculum (Posner, 1998). Specifically, rather than starting with the traditional way of looking at the curriculum by focusing on technical issues of design, implementation and evaluation of curricular materials which is rooted in curriculum administration, the study takes a historical and sociological approach focusing on understanding of how conceptions of knowledge were being put together in relation to the socio-political and the pedagogical agendas between 1986 and 2015. Yet it could be said that the approach is partly descriptive as the aim is to understand the changes made by the policymakers.

Second, the analysis approach to policy is both interpretive and critical and involves an ‗analysis of policy‘, not ‗for policy‘ (Gordon et al., 2002, p. 12), through which the researcher can interpret ‗what its analytical assumptions are and what effects it might have‘ (Rizvi & Lingard 2010, p.70). To tease out the political and pedagogical/epistemological tensions across the different waves of university curricular reforms, the analysis of the texts is guided by two key themes guided by the analytical dyad instructional/regulative discourses. These themes include the red/expert structure of knowledge and the organisation of knowledge, and a number of questions drawn from drawn from the literature review on knowledge debate and the specific sociological concepts (red/expert) drawn from the historical context of the Vietnamese university curriculum:

 How was ‗red‘ discourse described in terms of curricular aims, the image of the individual and the ‗red‘ approach to knowledge?  How was knowledge organised? What form of knowledge was seen as foundation?  What were the tensions, if any, as the agendas of knowledge for specialisation and knowledge for order were put together?

The use of a ‗policy analytic memo‘ has been a vital process throughout my research journey. This document was manually constructed to keep track of the key policy documents together with my own translation, key considerations guiding the approaching of policy documents, the synthesizing and analytic notes as well as my own critical reflections on the policy documents.

Chapter 4. Approach and Method Throughout the process of analysing data, I went back and forth to the memo, which was structured as follows:

Policy Analytic Memo

General structure of analysis memos:  Origin of the document and the broad context to which it is embedded;  Summary/Key headings;  General themes & notes on core issues regarding the regulative and instructional discourse of curricular knowledge;  Comments/reflections (including synthesis and intertextual comparison). How a document is approached:  initial scan and read through. Be mindful of the rhetoric from the policy by asking: ‗what is the broader context here?‘ Highlight areas of interest. Get initial sense of the priorities that are mentioned directly in the document;  take notes and responses in notebook;  construct a written summary, with highlighted sections indicating areas to zoom in on.  Come back to the document, do it over and make some broad comments and responses for a range of documents in the first phase.

Prompted questions when reading a document:  Origin of the document as specified in the text.  If and how the context is set in the document.  How is university (higher) education positioned?  What are the key focus, rationale and ideas in the document?  What are the core issues/assumptions underpinning the problematisation?  What are the key rhetorical devices or themes and figures?  What are the core concepts underpinning arguments for policy change?  What are some continuities in terms of enduring issues and debates around which the policy document is framed?  If and how a curriculum issue (teaching/learning) is problematized and what recommendations/solutions/strategies are.  What conception of the aim of university education, especially the red/expert dyad, is specified in the document?  How does the document provide insights into enduring and shifting of themes and representations about the problems and issues regarding the regulative and instructional discourse of curricular knowledge?  What is the new language that emerges?

Table 4. The structuring of the policy analytic memo used in this study

Chapter 4. Approach and Method The process of understanding and grouping document content into key themes guided by the analytical concepts (e.g., instructional discourse and regulative discourse) was undertaken simultaneously with the translation and analysis of the key documents. The translation issue is important because the policy documents are in Vietnamese but interpreted in English. Thus, attention should be paid to concept transference and the equivalence of terms. This is offset by comparing diverse literature on the same issue in both English and Vietnamese.

The analysis process also involves a comparison of the kinds of curriculum to emerge between the three phases of curricular reform (1987-1997; 1998-2004; 2005-2015) regarding the pedagogical and political formulations of knowledge. The analysis involves an attention to ‗context‘ when the state decisions on national agendas are taken up since it focus on how such agendas are reproduced in the university curriculum policies. As such, it is not a mere systematic collection and description of curriculum trajectories within the broad rhetoric agendas. Rather it offers, through theoretical and critical analysis, a new way of understanding curriculum reforms in Vietnamese university education.

In analysing the documents, I made rigorous efforts to attend both to the empirical content of the documents and to not being too fixed with categories/themes from the theory. In this way, I could both tell a story of university curriculum reforms with some idiosyncratic features of Vietnam, while also relating the case to a more conceptual issue of knowledge, specialisation and social order. Also, I attempted to avoid a distorted accounts of the reform by making a close reading of the diverse documents related to the reforms in each phase and employ both primary and secondary sources, such as interviews with key policy figures to understand the contexts and background of the documents, the commentaries from the media and the literature about the issue, to determine whether the evidence is valid. To ensure the consistency of the account, I attempted to use different techniques in analysing and interpreting research data. The analysis of written documents, for example, was triangulated with interview data and secondary data such as commentaries and the literature. I assume that the relationship between my conceptual understanding and the unfolding of data is an evolving process; hence the need to take notes (the use of memos) and refer to other secondary sources to cross-check and reinforce the findings.

Chapter 4. Approach and Method 4.3 Ethical considerations

Ethical considerations are a mandatory component of research studies at the University of Melbourne. I am also aware that ethical issues might arise during the interview process, particularly in the case of Vietnam where the talk of politics remains sensitive in different social fields, including university education. In my research, I have followed all the requirements of the Ethics Committee in conducting interviews.

Before conducting the interviews, an informed consent form along with a plain language statement of my research was sent to the interviewees. These documents were expressed both in Vietnamese and English. In the statement, I clearly explained the goal questions, and outline of my research in plain language and the purpose of the interview, which is to support my understanding of the major policy documents and the background of the curriculum reforms. Interviews were recorded only if the participants agreed. All interviewees were asked to sign the form to confirm their consent. I also explained that the interviewees could withdraw from the interviewing process anytime they wished. The informed consent form, the plain language statement and the interview questions were submitted to the ethics committee of the Melbourne Graduate School of Education, the University of Melbourne. The personal information of the interviewees was kept confidential by removing the identifiers and the use of pseudonyms (i.e. Interviewees A, B and C).

4.4 Concluding remarks

This chapter together with the preceding one has explained the conceptual agendas, evidence sources and methodological approach of this study. The chapters that follow report the outcomes and reflection of the analysis. Chapters 5, 6 and 7 discuss in turn the three main reforms that are the focus of this study. Each chapter will start with an analysis of the key policy documents and the context, focusing on which agendas were taken up and the dominant logic of the reform. This is followed in chapter 8 by the analysis of how knowledge and order were put together in related policy documents during the reform. It also presents the reflection and discussion of the accounts in light of the conceptual issue of knowledge, specialisation and social order.

Chapter 5. ‘Đào Tạo Theo Diện Rộng’: The 1987 ‘Broad-Based’ Curriculum

CHAPTER 5. ‘ĐÀO TẠO THEO DIỆN RỘNG’: THE 1987 ‘BROAD- BASED’ CURRICULUM

5.1 Introduction

During the years from 1975 until Doi Moi (1986), the Vietnamese university system faced huge obstacles: economic crises on the verge of collapse, fragile administrative and political structure and weak political economy (London, 2010). Towards the mid-1980s, a sense of serious urgency for systemic reform was clearly felt. The whole system was pressed to be more relevant and practical to social changes. In 1987, the Ministry of Higher and Specialised Secondary Education (which in 1990 was merged with the Ministry of Education to become the Ministry of Education and Training) convened a conference for rectors in Nha Trang. At this meeting, scholars, top university administrators and chief politicians addressed critical issues pertaining to the university reform. The conference set out an orientation to a new way of thinking that could ‗overcome‘ the existing ‗narrow‘ and ‗unresponsive‘ system, following themes of a ‗broad‘ curriculum.

The 1987 curriculum reform refers to the period that stretches from 1987 to 1997, before another curriculum discourse was adopted with the introduction of the Law of Education in 1998. What characterized this period was a series of initiatives for changing the curriculum structure and the organization of knowledge through the adoption of the American course-credit system promoted through the World Bank and the widening of the general curriculum through offerings of diverse interdisciplinary courses.

In this chapter, I will first briefly characterize the regulative agenda as it was finalized in ‗The Directions, Goals and Action Programs of Higher and Professional Education Reform‘ before analysing the subsequent key curriculum policies that transformed the instructional discourse (structure and organisation of curricular knowledge) during this period. From the analysis I argue that the reform was to some extent an uneasy marriage between neo-conservative and technical- functionalist views of curricular knowledge, whereby the reformers selectively adopted elements of the past to respond to socio-economic changes. While the technical-functionalist focus seemed

Chapter 5. ‘Đào Tạo Theo Diện Rộng’: The 1987 ‘Broad-Based’ Curriculum to be more dominant, it was not left free to market forces. Traditionalist knowledge discourse, both pedagogically and politically, vied for attention in most major initiatives to transform curricular knowledge in the 1987 curriculum.

5.2. Regulative discourse

The set of documents issued by the Minister of Education and Training at the conference, entitled ‗The Directions, Goals and Action Programs 1987-1990’ (Bộ Đại Học và Trung Học Chuyên Nghiệp, 1987), also called the ‗Four Action Programs of Reform‘ (herewith the Action Programs), set major goals and important policy directions on curricular issues. The key documents focusing on university education from this publication include:

 The speech reflecting the view of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) read by Mr Đặng Quốc Bảo, Head of the Central Committee on Science and Education , on behalf of Mr Trần Xuân Bách, head of the Central Party Committee;  The speech reflecting the view of the Council of Ministers (currently the term refers to the Government), read by General Võ Nguyên Giáp, Vice-Minister of the Council of Ministers;  The speech articulating the directions, goals and action programs of higher and specialised secondary education for the period 1987-1990 and for the 1987 academic year, read by Mr Trần Hồng Quân, the Minister of Higher and Professional Education;  Decisions of the Ministry of Higher and Specialised Secondary Education on three action programs for higher education reform: (a) Program One on reforming the university structure and university curriculum; (2) Program Two on reforming the linkage between science research, education and production; (3) Program Three on the professional training of higher education lecturers and administrators.

One of the highlights of the conference was the two speeches from General Võ Nguyên Giáp, the Vice head of the Council of Ministers (the representative from the Government), and Mr Đặng Quốc Bảo, the Head of the Party‘s Committee for Science and Education (who reported to Mr Trần Xuân Bách, the Head of the Central Party Committee). The speeches from these key politicians set major topics for reflection and discussion at the conference, which would then be settled in the final ministerial decisions on the priorities of higher education reform such as the

Chapter 5. ‘Đào Tạo Theo Diện Rộng’: The 1987 ‘Broad-Based’ Curriculum curriculum. An interesting point could be raised about these speeches: on the one hand they were both based on a predominant technical-functionalist approach, one which takes the economy and the market as the basis to overcome what was perceived to be ‗outdated‘ in the traditional curriculum. On the other hand, their views diverged somewhat from each other regarding the image of the ‗socialist individual‘ and the approaches to the existing political curriculum.

5.2.1 A dominant technical-functionalist view of curriculum reform

Both Võ Nguyên Giáp and Đặng Quốc Bảo shared the view that the backwardness of the system was a cause of complaint, and assumed that there was a parallel between educational inefficiencies (and the curriculum) and economic inefficiencies. They both positioned higher education as being within the ‗global panics‘ of the fast-paced changes in the science and technological developments in the world as well as concerns about the weakness of national systems. In Đặng Quốc Bảo‘s words:

Contemporary science-technology is creating an entirely new principle of industrial development as compared to the former industrial structure. It was called a transitioning shift from an industrial society to a technological society. In this shift, all potential would be used to foster production at an unprecedented rate, increasing the productivity much higher than the present […] the crucial factor determining the success of the shift lies in human, specifically the ‗brain‘, generated from education.

[…] Science becomes the immediate factor of production, technology playing an important role in renovating the productive system, and when education is considered to be an essential factor, the reform of HE and increase in its efficiency are not a self-sufficient goal of HE but become an objective social demand of the socio-economic system. Therefore, the race in economy among countries and between socio-political systems, to a certain degree, has taken on the form of a race in education reforms, especially higher education, very fiercely. A whole new trend of higher education reform has been spreading all over the world.

(Đặng Quốc Bảo, 1987, p. 4h)

Both Võ Nguyên Giáp and Đặng Quốc Bảo used a manpower argument to bring about changes in the university sector, which was essentially a technical argument to do with the development of skill requirements in response to the growth of science and technology. They argued that the educational system should become the prime agency of an industrialised economy. For Võ Nguyên Giáp:

Our educational reform now sets the task for continuing, lifelong education, the connection between education and society. Education reform means enhancing the linkage between education and production in all circumstances […] it is necessary to emphasise the linkage between education and production; […] the goal of higher education must be tied closely with the socio-economic goals.

(Võ Nguyên Giáp, 1987, pp. 4b-c)

Chapter 5. ‘Đào Tạo Theo Diện Rộng’: The 1987 ‘Broad-Based’ Curriculum For Đặng Quốc Bảo:

The general goal of this reform is to generate a population of experts in science, technology and management on a balanced scale for different economic sectors, forming a well-rounded personality, activeness and high adaptability with the fast pace of change in science and technology and social revolution, with sufficient capacity, physical well-being and mental well-being to contribute to the stabilizing of socio-economic premises and conditions to serve the industrialization of the country and catch up with the world‘s level in certain sciences, elevating gradually in the common trend of the time.

(Đặng Quốc Bảo, 1987, p.4h)

They both shared the argument that the Vietnamese education tradition was exceptional in its narrowly technical and professional form, which was held to be anti-modern and anti-industrial. In Đặng Quốc Bảo‘s words:

[T]he traditional specialised training has thwarted the adaptability and flexibility of individuals with the technological cycles of development. Such curriculum nullifies the students‘ opportunity to change professions due to the vitality of the economic system. Technological achievements are not reflected in references and books; students are passive in accepting academic knowledge and are bookish; they lack interest in exploring knowledge through libraries and labs, through practical economic production and social struggle, losing the will to read and to choose electives which define the style of a university student. They are just like high school students. Both teachers and students lose contact with production and society, being unfamiliar with what‘s going on outside.

(Đặng Quốc Bảo, 1987, p.4i)

Both politicians called for the modernization of the curriculum by broadening the curriculum and flexibilising its content through modularization and curriculum restructuring. For Võ Nguyên Giáp, the crucial task of the reform was to ‗reduce curriculum content and end the state of overloaded curriculum‘ by ‗focusing on students‘ self-study time and doing a broad-based education, following a two-phase curriculum‘ (Võ Nguyên Giáp, 1987, p.4d). In similar vein, Đặng Quốc Bảo promoted the proposal for ‗a broad-based curriculum in profiles, bloc and modules of knowledge, incorporating production as a major training mode to enhance the quality of education‘ (Đặng Quốc Bảo, 1987, p.4i).

5.2.2 The discordance over the ‘socialist man’

Right after 1975, with Resolution 14 of the Politburo, the formation of individuals from pre- school to higher education into new ‗socialist‘ person was an important part of the Vietnamese State (Huy Đức, 2013). The curriculum content gave a particular focus on moral education and revolutionary ethics. The participation into political organisations sponsored and funded by the

Chapter 5. ‘Đào Tạo Theo Diện Rộng’: The 1987 ‘Broad-Based’ Curriculum CPV became a compulsory part and a prerequisite for a student to be enrolled in higher education. The first goal of university education was to generate individuals ‗firmly loyal to the socialist state‘. Curriculum content and textbooks were renewed, with an emphasis on political education.

However, the speeches from the key political figures in the 1987 Action Program seemed to show some regulative tension in university education. There were nuanced differences between the two Party and Government leaders on the idea of the ‗socialist individual‘ and its implications for the modernization of the university curriculum.

General Võ Nguyên Giáp expressed a view that is typical of the neo-conservative generation, those who upheld the ideal of Marxism-Leninism. The key rationale for educational change was attributed to the ‗era of socialist revolution‘ through science and technology. He emphasized that ‗the future of an individual is the most crucial factor determining the victory of socialism as well as the centre of the struggle of socialism against capitalism‘ (Võ Nguyên Giáp, 1987, p.4b).

Võ Nguyên Giáp argued that one of the main causes for the crisis of university education was that the relevant Marxist principle was not correctly applied. Making a reference to Karl Marx‘s dictum, Võ Nguyên Giáp argued that only by linking education to production can education ‗form a well-rounded man‘ and ‗truly and quickly grasp the Party‘s policies‘:

To realize the aim of cultivating the new socialist individual, it is necessary to adhere to the principle of combining education with production. A human becomes human through the tools of labour. We must apply this principle across all levels of education […] It is production that gives a human being the necessary tool for understanding and transforming nature and society, as well as for perfecting themselves […] ...only those who love labour can truly and quickly grasp the Party‘s policies […] I repeat that, the

principle of combining education and production is not only useful for the current need to improve the standard of living, but even later on it must still be applied to modernize the institution‘s infrastructure.

(Võ Nguyên Giáp, 1987, p.4d)

Chapter 5. ‘Đào Tạo Theo Diện Rộng’: The 1987 ‘Broad-Based’ Curriculum For Võ Nguyên Giáp, Hồ Chí Minh was considered to be the ‗exemplar‘ for young generations to follow:

Only Vietnamese socialist individuals and the scientific revolution can overcome the challenge. President Hồ Chí Minh said: ‗To achieve socialism, we must first and foremost have socialist individuals‘. We must cultivate new socialist individuals by taking President Hồ Chí Minh as the exemplar […] We already had new socialist individuals, and they are Uncle Ho and excellent and exemplary Party members. We must generate such individuals. Such is the task of education in general and higher and vocational education in particular.

(Võ Nguyên Giáp, 1987, p.4b)

In contrast, the representative of the Party Committee seemed to put forth a more prospective view of the ‗socialist individual‘. The image of the new socialist individual, for Đặng Quốc Bảo, was equivalent to someone with a unique personality (he used the French word ‗personalité‘ – phẩm chất nhân cách), that was ‗not to be mixed with the collectivity‘ (Đặng Quốc Bảo, 1987, p.4n). That ‗unique personality‘ was ‗revolutionary‘ in its engagement with society through a mastery of modern scientific and technological knowledge and an enlightened awareness of the conditions of the society that people are living in:

A university educated individual is not to be shaped in the same rigid mould with a faded individuality, on the contrary, he or she is not to be the same as others. Their individuality (le moi) must be encouraged by university education so the students will have their own original personality.

(ibid)

While Võ Nguyên Giáp embraced the existing Marxism-Leninism doctrine, Đặng Quốc Bảo showed an open criticism of the indoctrination of political education in the universities, particularly the criticism of Marxism-Leninism subjects in the curriculum. He did not hesitate to deem them as ‗dry‘, ‗dogmatic‘ and ‗formal‘, which make students passive and politically inactive:

Many students became less active in both life and work, less adaptable to the rapid change in science and technology and politically passive. We had crammed students with formalistic Marxism and Leninism and slogans. We just expected to cultivate in them a certain dose of ideology, ethics and political spirit.

(Đặng Quốc Bảo, 1987, p.4i)

Chapter 5. ‘Đào Tạo Theo Diện Rộng’: The 1987 ‘Broad-Based’ Curriculum Đặng Quốc Bảo emphasized that the students‘ new ‗socialist personality‘ entails a new attitude with ‗communist education‘: it does not mean cramming them with Marxist and Leninist subjects, but equipping them with ‗a whole new system of thought, new categories and concepts that reflect the advanced level of the modern economy‘ (Đặng Quốc Bảo, 1987, p.4m). However, the critique of the existing Marxist-Leninist dictum does not take Đặng Quốc Bảo away from his faith in the socialist order and the space for ‗socialist‘ (or ‗communist‘) education in the university curriculum. For Đặng Quốc Bảo, communist education involves:

the rectification of the inactive political attitude in almost all university students nowadays. We must construct individuals with a clear political will about class struggle and a faith in socialism. Communist education must become a constant interactive program over the course of their study, in all teaching and learning activities and youth movements. Communist education must imbue young generations with social responsibilities, honesty, disciplined ethics, which are leading qualities of socialist individuals, of workers, of people‘s soldiers, of cadres and citizens in the contemporary revolutionary period.

(ibid, p.4m)

Despite their somewhat contrasting views of the ‗socialist‘ individual, both Đặng Quốc Bảo and Võ Nguyên Giáp called for more political education in the universities to enhance ‗the Party- building tasks‘:

We must show more attention to political and moral education for students by closely watching students‘ lives in the dormitories, expanding democratic activities in the university, enhancing Party-building tasks, renovating and updating the Youth League movements. We must also review the implementation of the Instruction 25 CT/TW decided by the Party‘s Central Committee on the teaching and learning of Marxism- Leninism and enhancing communist education in higher and vocational institutions.

(Đặng Quốc Bảo1987, p.4p-q)

The speech read by Trần Hồng Quân, the Minister of Education and Training, set the terms for the government‘s major policy changes in university education ‗in line with the Party and Government agendas‘. The speech seemed to soften the ‗progressive‘ tone of the representative from the Central Party Committee by proposing to ‗improve the content of the political curriculum‘, instead of reconsidering it (Trần Hồng Quân, 1987, p. 44). The new directions of higher education reforms were finally ‗settled‘ in the Decision on the Directions, Goals and

Chapter 5. ‘Đào Tạo Theo Diện Rộng’: The 1987 ‘Broad-Based’ Curriculum Programs of Actions for Higher and Vocational Education for Academic Years 1987-1990 and for 1987 in which dimension of ‗expert‘ seems to be more prioritized in the goal of higher education:

The goal of higher education is to generate a population of experts in science and technology and in management, with balanced proportion in terms of professions, levels of training, having both good political and moral qualities and solid expert knowledge, having innovative competence, self-improvement, management and leadership capacity.

(Bộ Đại Học và Trung Học Chuyên Nghiệp, 1987, p. 19)

However, as discussed further below, the ultimate concern for the survival of the political order in addressing the socio-economic challenges happening inside and outside Vietnam at the time, then, remained consistent with the Leninist principle. There were attempts to preserve forms of knowledge that were considered essential for political stability while an overall agreement among the conference participants was achieved over the curriculum aiming at generating experts of broad profiles, i.e. graduates who would be flexible and adaptable to the changing economy.

It is useful to link the uneasy tension in the ‗red‘ discourse to the political context of the time. Between 1987 and the Seventh National Congress in 1991, the Soviet Union was collapsing, Eastern Europe was in political and economic chaos. This was a time of political crisis in Vietnam, especially after the call of the Party to ‗courageously face the truth‘ and the encouragement of intellectuals for public debate. The shift to a diversified economic order in line with the ‗capitalist‘ conception and the political will of a ‗socialist‘ order from the Communist Party of Vietnam reeks of uncertainties for the policymakers.

The contradictory points over the ideological order in the university reform partly reflect a flash of an ‗intellectual moment‘ in the history of university education in Vietnam, where an alternative political society was hinted at amidst a reign of cynicism. Trần Xuân Bách, who supported an alternative ‗socialist individual‘ at the 1987 conference mentioned earlier, was considered to be a radical reformist in the Party (Huy Đức, 2013, pp. 179-190). In another conference for writers in 1989, he argued that the socialism that Karl Marx predicted betrayed some facts irrelevant to the reality of the past 70 years. Meanwhile, for him, capitalism contained

Chapter 5. ‘Đào Tạo Theo Diện Rộng’: The 1987 ‘Broad-Based’ Curriculum the seed and material-technological foundations for constructing a new society. However, before long, after the collapse of the Communist block in Eastern Europe in the early 1990s, the ideological order in the political society in general, and in the university mission in particular, was geared to the neo-conservative ideological order.

In June 1991, the election of Đỗ Mười as General Secretary, a position he would hold for six years, signalled the resumption of power by the conservative factions within the Party. Trần Xuân Bách was expelled from his position as head of the Central Party Committee, and the liberalisation of public debate was rolled back. Resolution 04-NQ/HNTW on education during the 7th National Congress, signed by Đỗ Mười in 1993, highlighted the existing tension between the ‗red‘ and ‗expert‘ in the educational system. The Resolution drew the line: more attention shall be given to Marxism-Leninism and Hồ Chí Minh thought. The Marxist-Leninist principle was considered to be equally important to the goal of fostering ‗experts‘. On the principle of education, this is represented in the well-repeated slogan: ‗theory is tied with practice‘ and ‗talent must go with morality‘. The educated individuals must be ‗altruistic and patriotic‘ and ‗love socialism‘.

5.2.3 The swing in the political curriculum

Even before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the relevance of the Marxist-Leninist curriculum was increasingly questioned among students and teachers at Vietnamese universities (St George, 2003). The aspiration for a change in scholarship became more intense as the country entered Doi Moi. Students were eager to look for information relating to social reforms in Eastern Europe and secretly passed on documents with discussion on the problems of ‗socialism‘ and ‗capitalism‘ (Huy Đức, 2013).

The CPV General Secretary‘s slogan ‗let us courageously face the truth‘ in 1986 and the momentary possibility for democratic atmosphere in the university campus between 1987 and 1991 allowed young students to express their frank views over the curriculum, which after 1975 was criticized as being politicised instead of providing them with necessary knowledge for their career. According to Huy Đức (2013, p.57), in mid-1987, in a rare incident, many students protested against the decision from the Comprehensive University of Hồ Chí Minh City (Đại học Tổng hợp thành phố Hồ Chí Minh) that failed a student‘s exam paper because of his critical

Chapter 5. ‘Đào Tạo Theo Diện Rộng’: The 1987 ‘Broad-Based’ Curriculum remarks and tendency to ‗betray‘ the CPV‘s principle. In June 1987, the University‘s Communist Youth League conducted a survey on students‘ opinion on political education. The result was that 89% respondents said they disliked it. Among these, 30% said the reason was because of low quality lectures and 20% thought it was because of the teaching-learning organising process.

On 18 June 1987, the third year students of the Faculty of Philosophy at Hồ Chí Minh City Comprehensive University organised a seminar on ‗The teaching and learning of Marxism- Leninism‘. Many students explicitly proclaimed they dislike the existing political curriculum. A fourth-year student said, ‗a respect for the teachers doesn‘t mean one has no right to comment on bad teaching. It is time to re-assess the quality and method of the lectures, even the quality of political lecturers‘ (quoted in Huy Đức, 2013, p57).

Similar combustible atmosphere could be felt across many other campuses. On 15 December 1988, Sài Gòn Giải Phóng, an official press in Vietnam, held a special seminar on the political curriculum, which was reported to be ‗of special significance and concern‘. A number of university leaders and lecturers were invited to express their views about the studying of Marxism-Lenininism. These include 7 Deans and Vice-Deans of Marxism-Leninism departments from the Universities of Economics, the University of Finance, Polytechnique University, Comprehensive University, the University of Pedagogy and nine students nominated by the University‘s Communist Youth League. Main Lan, the reporter who recorded the seminar, explained the rationale for the debate:

Despite their intentional diversion from reality, those with social conscience could not avoid hearing echoes of some great currents going on in the classrooms of philosophy, political economy and scientific communism. The reality of the teaching and learning of these subjects could be captured in this image: as soon as the teachers stepped in, the students got out of the class, at times the movements looked like a traffic jam at the door of the lecture hall. It is better to face the truth rather than avoid it; hence Sai Gon Giai Phong decided to organise this debate.

(Mai Lan, 1988)

The reporter wrote that the students‘ discontentment with Marxist-Leninist subjects raised concerns among the public because many would think that this issue could be a sign of a low standard in students‘ ideology and ideal. However, for Prof Trần Trung Hậu (Economics lecturer, Comprehensive University of Hồ Chí Minh City) and several other lecturer participants

Chapter 5. ‘Đào Tạo Theo Diện Rộng’: The 1987 ‘Broad-Based’ Curriculum in this debate, to be able to speak one‘s voice in an official paper should be seen as ‗a sign for democratic attitude in science because it requires discussion and dialogue, which is a crucial step in forming knowledge‘. Trần Trung Hậu elaborated:

If we follow the path of science, we must be equal and democratic. This is very important for being a lecturer. It would not be good for us lecturers to turn angry at different ideas from students, or to take someone‘s idea as truth and force others to follow. I think the democratic principle must also be established in life.

(Trần Trung Hậu, quoted in Mai Lan, 1988)

The most part of the seminar was the discussion around the problem with the existing political curriculum. Both lecturer and student participants shared the dominant view that these subjects were not being treated as ‗science‘ but a form of ‗dogmatism‘, ‗politics‘, or ‗a missionary task‘. Most agreed that one of the main causes of the problem with the political curriculum was due to the consequence of the separation of teaching and research and the deep-rooted mindset held by many students and teachers. Prof Nguyễn Ngọc Ái (Dean of Marxism-Leninism Department at the University of Pedagogy) said that freedom of expression and inquiry remained limited in universities. Those who exhibit different ideas from the ‗customary mould‘ of thoughts would one day feel an invisible force watching over them or hear some provocative comments hinting that they were committing the sin of being a ‗reactionary‘ (phản động) person, i.e., one that went against the socialist revolutionary ideals.

Nguyễn Sơn Thủy Hùng, a Political Economy student at the University of Economics, said that the political curriculum was a source of inhibition not only for him but also for most students:

In examinations and tests, we must say according to textbooks and do not dare to express our own views because what if we will fail and have to repeat the subject? No teachers dare to express their opinion? Does that mean those who do not know about Marxism frankly criticise it, while true Marxist scholars are those who are silent?

(Nguyễn Sơn Thủy Hùng, quoted in Mai Lan, 1988)

Mai Lan also reported that Phạm Văn Toàn, a student leader of the Communist Youth League of the University of Economics, was the only one among the eight student participants to challenge

Chapter 5. ‘Đào Tạo Theo Diện Rộng’: The 1987 ‘Broad-Based’ Curriculum the foundation of Marxism. Phạm Văn Toàn frankly expressed his doubt over the starting point of Marx in analysing capitalism: Marx started from goods rather than human beings, among others. The student also provided his own situation to justify his doubt: he, as a young Party member, was worried over a fading socialism and a changing capitalism. He demanded that the teaching of these subjects be stopped because the current content and textbooks no longer helped students but even contributed to generate a cohort of students that stayed away from real life. Although the other eight students did not propose to abandon these subjects altogether from the curriculum by suggesting that the Marxist-Leninist curriculum would still be necessary, they argued that the teaching of these subjects have been equated with a ‗missionary‘ task, in which the teacher talked like a book, but the book was not convincing.

Criticisms were also levelled at the one-way teaching method and the outdated textbooks of the political curriculum, which for them was a source of boredom. Several students also said they could not accept a method of teaching that merely aim to cramming students with empty concepts and the textbooks that were unchanged for 30 years. Đặng Tâm Chánh, a student of the University of Pedagogy said that he and several of his friends did not like studying these subjects, despite knowing the practical meaning of dialectic materialism and historical materialism because the textbooks ‗are drawing an image that is far too removed from reality‘.

Despite the universities‘ efforts in renovating the teaching methods of the political subjects, the persistent vocal protests of students forced the Ministry of Higher and Professional Education (the predecessor of the current Ministry of Education and Training) to amend the existing political courses by issuing Instruction 12 in December 1988 (St George, 2003, p.318). Accordingly, the graduation examination of Marxist-Leninist subjects was to be abandoned and political subjects such as Marxist-Leninist studies and Hồ Chí Minh thought were to be significantly reduced in terms of proportion within the overall program.

However, as history unfolded, the swing in the political curriculum soon gave way to a dominant ‗red‘ discourse from 1991 onwards. In the concluding speech at the seminar on ‗Enhancing the quality of HE to meet the demands of industrialization and modernization‘ organized by MOET in November 1994, the newly appointed Head of the Party Central Committee re-asserted the role of political education:

Chapter 5. ‘Đào Tạo Theo Diện Rộng’: The 1987 ‘Broad-Based’ Curriculum

The Party Central Committee and the State have great interest in the political education and moral education for students. The education of Marxism-Leninism and Hồ Chí Minh thought should not be mixed with the education of other disciplines. This is a crucial part of the personality formation of students, who are the future masters of the country. The product of the universities must be individuals with patriotism and a will to contribute to the country‘s prosperity, fairness and civilized culture. We do not accept the generation of a-political individuals in the sense that allows other values and beliefs to penetrate into students‘ consciousness and to drive them far away from our Party. Therefore, HEIs must place emphasis on political education along with other moral values such as honesty, creativity and practicality.

(Nguyễn Đình Tứ, 1995, p. 106)

Between 1991 and 1995 the MOET actively recomposed the Marxist-Leninist subjects, which were then approved by the Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. These subjects include Marxist-Leninist philosophy, Marxist-Leninist political economy, Scientific Socialism and Hồ Chí Minh thought. Despite some updating information, the major concepts, laws, categories and principles of Marxism-Leninism remained the same (Bộ Giáo Dục và Đào Tạo, 1995a, pp. 1-13).

5.3 Instructional discourse

5.3.1 Education for breadth and the idea of the ‘multi-disciplinary university’

The overall principle of the 1987 reform was based on the discourse of ‗breadth‘ (đào tạo theo diện rộng). The then Minister of Higher and Professional Education projected the ‗broad-based‘ undergraduate curriculum as follows:

 The university graduates are to be adaptable to the developments in production and in science and technology and be able to meet the broad expectations regarding the object and function of their professions;  Therefore they should be provided with potential basic knowledge, practical competence and creative work methods as well as the features and general principles in different professional objects and functions;  In the undergraduate curriculum, the ‗broad-based‘ principle is expressed in the emphasis on basic sciences over professional knowledge; basic sciences should be both general and profession-oriented; professional knowledge should be made basic and general and closely connected with the graduate curriculum.

(Trần Hồng Quân, 1987, p.44)

Chapter 5. ‘Đào Tạo Theo Diện Rộng’: The 1987 ‘Broad-Based’ Curriculum Another key policymaker at the Department of Higher Education further explained that a ‗broad- based‘ curriculum

requires an increase of general knowledge and basic professional knowledge so that the students would have greater potential to adapt better to the changing labour market and the accelerated pace of scientific and technological development. It also requires reducing the number of study programs and renovating the list of study programs.

(Lê Viết Khuyến, 1995, p. 44)

To materialize this discourse, three major reforms of the curriculum during this period were adopted. They involved

 Modularising knowledge through the introduction of the credit accumulation and transfer curriculum.  Re-organising the structure of the curriculum by dividing it into two distinct phases, the general phase and the specialised professional phase;  Reconstructing the list of disciplines/areas of knowledge.

Before discussing how these curricular initiatives changed the structure, organization and orientation of knowledge during this phase, it is necessary to mention the policymakers‘ efforts in re-organising the university network, particularly the idea of a ‗multi-disciplinary university‘ (đại học lớn đa lĩnh vực), which was one of the major attempts to facilitate the broadening of the curriculum in Vietnam during the period between 1987 and 1997. The goal was to widen participation in higher education and to deconstruct the existing fragmented, rigid, self-sufficient and narrowly specialised institutions into one that could form a more organic whole (Lâm Quang Thiệp, 1997a, 1997b; St. George, 2003).

Since the 1950s, the university system in Vietnam consisted of two types of universities and colleges: the comprehensive ones and specialised ones (Lâm Quang Thiệp, 1997b)5. The

5 According to Lâm Quang Thiệp (1997b, p.22), up to 1993, Vietnam had 105 universities and colleges, not including those affiliated with the army, the Party and other state associations. Most institutions were characterized by small size; some only had over 100 students and less than 100 permanent staff, among whom only some had a ‗phó tiến sĩ‘ degree (a Soviet degree equivalent to an American-European MA). All institutions in the systems were self-sufficient and independent of each other. They were called ‗mono-disciplinary‘ institutions because often only one specialty was provided. For example, the University of Agriculture would train only students in agriculture and not in other disciplines. Following the state‘s curriculum standards, each provided their own curriculum. The

Chapter 5. ‘Đào Tạo Theo Diện Rộng’: The 1987 ‘Broad-Based’ Curriculum comprehensive universities, of which there were only a few, offered programs in theoretical disciplines (basic sciences), similar to the colleges of liberal studies in the US. Meanwhile, specialised universities and colleges (which are referred to as ‗mono-disciplinary‘ institutions by the reformers) offered specialised courses in science and engineering, and were established in accordance with particular ‗governmental sectors or product areas‘ and were governed by line ministries. Because of this specialisation, higher education ‗institutes‘ were run as independent units physically separated from one another. In this way, like the situation of the Soviet and Chinese university system, the bond between different faculties as well as between teaching and research is broken, in contrast to most of the American and West European universities (de Witt, 1955; Hayhoe, 1989).

The policymakers wished to redress this issue through the idea of a ‘multi-disciplinary university’ (đại học đa ngành) and a more diversified and organically connected higher education system. For the policymakers such a university was the popular model in the world. They decided that the best solution would be to merge the separate institutions to become a larger one, turning the once ‗mono-disciplinary‘ institution into a larger national or regional one. The reformers also looked to integrate teaching and research functions by a plan to form research institutes within these multidisciplinary institutions. National universities would enjoyed more autonomy than the rest of the system, as well as more investment, both in terms of property and funding, because they were expected to play the ‗role model‘ for other higher education institutions (HEIs). Another rationale for such a privilege was these universities would support the later formation of high quality Schools of Foundation Studies (Trường/Khoa Giáo Dục Đại Cương), i.e, universities or colleges with the main task of providing general education, or phase 1 of the university education.

The plan for re-organising the system also involved the formation of other new forms of HEIs such as private universities (đại học dân lập), semi-public universities (đại học bán công), community colleges (cao đẳng cộng đồng), and open universities (đại học mở), among these the

administrative wall separating the institutions were strong and the deployment of staff and facilities were inefficient. Besides, due to the separation of teaching and learning functions inherited from the Soviet model, the main function of such universities was teaching. Researching belonged to the separate specialized institutes.

Chapter 5. ‘Đào Tạo Theo Diện Rộng’: The 1987 ‘Broad-Based’ Curriculum latter two were expected to contribute significantly to the task of widening access and laying the foundation for a mass higher education system. The community colleges were expected to provide human resources to a local community by providing short-term and long term vocational programs, as well as ‗phase 1‘ of higher education. An important condition for the existence of these institutions would be the linkage with a larger university or ideally a multi-disciplinary one, which could take up successful phase 1 students to phase 2 and support the community colleges in terms of lecturers and curriculum making. Open universities were described as one which would break the traditional rule on student enrolment and the teaching methods. The enrolment methods would be ‗very easy‘, the teaching method ‗very flexible‘ while the testing methods ‗very rigorous‘.

According to Lâm Quang Thiệp (1997b), the implementation process began in late 1993 when the government decided to found Hanoi National University by merging three specialized HEIs. In mid-1994, a number of regional universities including University of Hue, Da Nang University and Thai Nguyen University were established on the basis of merging some other institutions in the area. In early 1995 HCMC National University was formed on the basis of merging nine specialised institutions in the city. Many community colleges were progressing in different provinces and two open universities were established in 1993. By 1996, nine private universities were also formed.

However, this plan did not achieve what was originally intended. Difficulties emerge as the new system was entirely new to the administrators and educators whose mindset for a new form of authority and collaboration were not ready. According to the former Head of MOET Department of Higher Education, ‗all multi-university faced huge obstacles due to the lack of leadership and management‘ (Lâm Quang Thiệp, 1997b, p.24). Besides, the attempt to alleviate the segmentary bond of the HEIs to facilitate the flow of knowledge by realizing the concept of a multidisciplinary university was significantly constricted partly because of the power struggles in which the MOET ‗were wary of delegating genuine authority to the institutions themselves, such as delegating authority for new courses to national universities‘ on the one hand and the existing institutions were concerned that ‗their authority would be challenged in the process of amalgamation‘ (St George 2003, p.198). Clearly, in practice, the objective of university integration could be contradictory rather than complementary. The merging of the universities

Chapter 5. ‘Đào Tạo Theo Diện Rộng’: The 1987 ‘Broad-Based’ Curriculum was not accompanied by regroupings that were more open to innovation than the old division. The end result was simply the replacement with one form of closed self-sufficient units with equally closed groups integrated in political-administrative terms, rather than an ‗organic whole‘ like the European and American systems.

Similar situations were observed with the developments of community colleges, the open universities and private universities (Lâm Quang Thiệp, 1997b). Despite attracting thousands of students, these institutions did not have any accreditation process in place. Besides, the idea of ‗rigorous testing technology‘ was poorly developed in the two open universities. This also reflected the quality of the students who could easily enter those universities and follow a flexible curriculum without much academic efforts. For community colleges and other institutions, a serious shortage of high quality lecturers was also reported.

In summing up, it could be argued that the re-organisation of the system during this period was guided by the motivation to widen formal access rather than a genuine attention to the requirements of teaching and research. As shown, despite much attention to re-organising and diversifying the university system, there were little efforts at constructive restructuring of the relationship between teaching and research functions, partly due to the force of legacy and the entrenched institutional intransigence.

The failed attempt also reflects the lack of support from within the universities for a top-down rational approach for university network reorganization. One significant implication of this issue is that it could not resolve the enduring legacy regarding the fragmentary bond between and within universities. The separation between teaching and research functions as well as other necessary internal organization necessary for the flow of knowledge in the system remained an unresolved problem that continued in later phases. The faculties, which dealt with the heart of teaching and learning, continued to exist as ‗enclaves‘ within the university. This problem cut across the ability to achieve real qualitative academic improvements and presented a challenge for the coordination among faculties as well as institutions in realizing the ‗flexible‘ two-phase and course-credit system, as elaborated below.

Chapter 5. ‘Đào Tạo Theo Diện Rộng’: The 1987 ‘Broad-Based’ Curriculum 5.3.2 Modularising knowledge and its conflict with pedagogical legacies

The adoption of the course-credit system was one of the two major initiatives that significantly transformed the organisation of knowledge in the Vietnamese university curriculum in the early 1990s (the other was the two-phase curriculum, as discussed in a later section). It was most associated with the US system channelled indirectly from Thailand and some APEC countries (Interviewee A, August 2014). One of the rationales for the adoption of the modularization of the curriculum was that it would bring the curriculum structure closely in line with that of other countries in the region and to overcome what was considered ‗rigid‘ in the existing subject- based, year-based system. According to a senior official of the Department of Higher Education:

The reforms in the 1990s were often referred to as attempts to adapt to the market economy and regional integration by the policymakers. But clearly these attempts also were very much influenced by the American university model, though it was not explicitly stated. This is partly because Vietnam was still under American embargo during the 1975-1995 period […] In fact, we can say that the American model influenced Vietnamese university education both directly and indirectly. There were direct influences during the pre-1995 period in the South of Vietnam and indirect influences on the unified Vietnam after Vietnam transitioned to the market economy in 1986.

(Interviewee A, August 2014)

The term ‗credit‘ could be traced back to the so-called ‗Carnegie unit‘ associated with the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. By using academic credits as a proxy for time spent in the acquisition of a subject, the aim of the course-credit system was to establish a standardized set of requirements for defining university curriculum (Altbach, 2001; Mason et al., 2001). According to Heffernan (1973), the emergence of this system is related to two developments in late 19th century in response to increased specialisation and the diversification of university education. The first development went with the retreat of the common classical curriculum, which was paralleled with the need for an elective system. The second was the need to align and articulate the content of the increasingly diversified high school curricula with undergraduate programs. According to Trowler (1998, p. 8), the course-credit system emerged out of the need to respond to mass university education. The emphasis on learner‘s choice of this approach is the challenge to the traditional assumption that knowledge is best acquired within the academy, with a fixed period of time controlled by the academics. In the late twentieth century,

Chapter 5. ‘Đào Tạo Theo Diện Rộng’: The 1987 ‘Broad-Based’ Curriculum with massification of university education gaining more popularity outside the American borders, the modularization of knowledge through course-credit system was adopted in many countries in the 1990s such as the UK (see Bridges, 2000; King, 1995; Rich & Scott, 1997), China (see Agelasto, 1996), South Africa (see Ensor, 2004) and Europe (through the European Community Course Credit Transfer Scheme introduced in 1989 by the European Union).

Vietnamese policymakers did not introduce the course-credit system because it had reached the phase of university education massification. At that time, access to most traditional universities remained limited; the selection scheme through the university entrance exam remained strict and elite-based (except for the newly introduced open universities and community colleges, as shown above). The main rationale for the introduction of course-credit into Vietnam was twofold: first, the policymakers‘ belief in the correspondence between the nature of this approach, i.e., the ‗flexibility‘ of knowledge organization, and the unpredictability of the labour market. Second, it was considered to be a ‗pathway‘ to re-organise teaching and learning as well as to prepare for the policy on widened access to university education in at a later stage.

The major conception of a modularized curriculum in Vietnam was drawn from two key texts. The first, entitled The academic credit system in HE: Effectiveness and Relevance in Developing country consisting of writings by American authors edited by a consultant from the World Bank, which was then selected for translation by MOET‘s officials to circulate among universities (see Regel & Mundial, 1992). The other was Arthur Levine‘s The Undergraduate Handbook (see Levine, 1978).

The aim of modularization was to reduce the lecture time spent in class and ‗strengthen the autonomy of the students during the learning process and to enhance the adaptability and transferability during and after their undergraduate studies‘ (Bộ Giáo Dục và Đào Tạo, 1995b, p. 55). Moreover, it was expected to foster ‗the cooperation within and among university departments‘, to enable students to ‗choose learning pathways that would suit their own capacity and circumstances‘ (Interviewee B, August, 2014).

The nature of the modularized course-credit system is twofold: (a) accumulation of knowledge through credit points and a certain number of courses per semester; (b) modularization of knowledge into courses or modules (compulsory, optional or elective) that could be combined

Chapter 5. ‘Đào Tạo Theo Diện Rộng’: The 1987 ‘Broad-Based’ Curriculum and arranged to make up an undergraduate curriculum that leads to a degree (Levine, 1978). When applied into the Vietnamese curriculum, the modularisation of knowledge in terms of course credits was actively ‗appropriated‘ despite their apparent similarity in definition with the US system.

The first modification in the Vietnamese version was the time assigned to the ‗credit point‘. In the US system, one credit point is calculated as one hour of teaching or two hours of home study. A Vietnamese ‗credit‘ during this period was only 2/3 of its American counterpart, and therefore the class hours per week must be longer in Vietnam (30 hours/week as compared to 18 hours/week in the American system). The curriculum reformers reasoned that this ‗Vietnamese characteristic‘ of the course-credit system was due to ‗the lack of materials and references‘ (Interviewee A, August 2014). It is possible to see from this that the influence of the traditional curriculum mode remained significant. Rather than an emphasis on students‘ choice and the redefinition of teachers as ‗facilitators‘ as in the US case, the Vietnamese course-credit discourse gave great weight to lecture-based transmission because of the lack of a well-resourced and updated system of libraries and bibliographies. The problem neglected by the policymakers of the time was that a traditional curricular mode in Vietnamese university curriculum could not ensure a systematic pathway to ‗real‘ knowledge, since it was strongly associated with dry, rote- learning class hours whereby students came to class mainly to take notes passively from lecturers and then would regurgitate them for exams. This was partly because of the lack of high quality teaching staff and the Soviet legacy of the separation of the teaching and research functions of the university that was not taken into consideration during this phase of reform.

Unlike the course-credit system in other parts of the world during this time, such as South Africa and the UK, whereby the shift to a modular system involved a significant epistemic focus on ‗outcomes‘ and ‗skills‘, the course-credit system in Vietnam during this time remained content- based (Mason et al., 2001). What it changed most was the organization of knowledge. In general principles, the shift from time-based to course-credit structure is associated with the delivery of knowledge in bite-sized pieces delivered in different orders and accumulated at different speeds. In contrast to the traditional linear curriculum comprised of a sequence of subjects, the course- credit involves a modularization of knowledge that presents a radical change to the identity of the subjects because it involves the disaggregation of curriculum content into small discrete and

Chapter 5. ‘Đào Tạo Theo Diện Rộng’: The 1987 ‘Broad-Based’ Curriculum non-sequential modules or learning units. Such a feature poses a threat of knowledge fragmentation, which in the US system was offset with a carefully designed system of pre- requisites and co-requisites. Unfortunately, there was no such system in place in Vietnam at the time.

5.3.3 Re-organising knowledge: the two-phase university education

One of the two most controversial curriculum initiatives in the 1990s was the decision to introduce a two-phase curriculum structure (the other was the adoption of the course-credit system, as discussed in the earlier section).

This initiative aimed to fundamentally restructuring the undergraduate curriculum into two levels: a generalist cross-disciplinary phase and a specialized professional phase. The first phase would give students a more generalist background, one principle rationale of which was expected to provide the learners with ‗a tool for their life-long education‘ (Lâm Quang Thiệp, 1997b). The second phase would then ‗provide students with initial professional knowledge and skills‘ (Lê Viết Khuyến, 1995, p. 55). Specifically, the professional knowledge phase (phase two), lasting from 2 to 4 years, would take place through the ‗screening exam‘ after the students finish the general phase.

The adoption of the general curriculum idea involved a de-emphasis on professional specialised knowledge by focusing on the general curriculum. This instructional initiative also involved a tension with the traditional regulative discourse and a significant repercussion on the structure of curricular knowledge, as elaborated below.

5.3.3.1 An emphasis on the general curriculum and its conflict with the traditionalist ‘red’ discourse

One of the major rationales for the emphasis on the general curriculum was justified on an instrumental basis, centred on such key words as ‗labour market adaptablity‘ (thích nghi với thị trường lao động), and ‗flexibility‘ (linh hoạt). According to one of the key policymakers, the adoption of the general curriculum was to (1) allow students to easily adjust their earlier choice of specialisation when discovering that they cannot continue with it or when such a choice cannot meet the change in social demands; (2) ease the mobility of students between the HEIs in

Chapter 5. ‘Đào Tạo Theo Diện Rộng’: The 1987 ‘Broad-Based’ Curriculum the country, and (3) facilitate linkage among HEIs to focus resources and finance for improving the quality of learning materials and mobilizing facilities and good lecturers, which would then be cost-efficient for the state education budget and would create a system of multi-disciplinary universities comparable to other systems in the region and the world (Lâm Quang Thiệp, 1997a; Lê Viết Khuyến, 1997).

The general curriculum was expected to resemble the ‗liberal arts‘ curriculum in the American sense, with modules organised on the basis of distributional requirements similar to the US liberal arts curriculum in the 1960s and 1970s (see Levin 1973). It was made up of modules constructed as traditional subjects or subjects integrated from some disciplines and drawn from six categories of knowledge: social sciences and humanities; natural sciences and mathematics; foreign languages; military education and physical education.

According to a senior official at the Department of Higher Education (Interviewee A, August 2014), the introduction of the idea of the ‗general curriculum‘ was to overcome what was considered too ‗instrumental‘ in the existing curriculum. The Soviet model was considered to be ‗instrumental‘ because the curriculum was too specialized and the student did not have a broader foundation of knowledge to adapt to changing economic conditions. For him, the American liberal arts education was of higher quality because it gave students access to a cross-disciplinary curriculum constructed on a distributional basis. This means that students in the first two years would be provided with a range of studies from diverse fields in natural sciences and in social sciences and humanities.

The idea of the ‗liberal arts‘ or ‗general‘ curriculum has its root in the European medieval university (Levine, 1978; Mason et al., 2001). Throughout history, there has been much controversy over the role of ‗liberal arts‘ knowledge, which was often contested with knowledge for a particular profession or occupation. The conception of ‗liberal arts‘ and its organization in the curriculum has undergone various changes, yet the main argument for its role in forming students‘ moral character still persists in the US university education and elsewhere. In the US, the significant part of ‗liberal arts‘ knowledge is drawn from disciplines in social sciences and the humanities, designed with the aim of engaging students with knowledge that encourages them to think critically on questions about society, polity and humanity (Levine, 1978;

Chapter 5. ‘Đào Tạo Theo Diện Rộng’: The 1987 ‘Broad-Based’ Curriculum Nussbaum, 1997; Roth, 2014). However, in the case of Vietnam, it could be argued that the emphasis on the general curriculum in directing students to ‗liberal‘ ideals was not conceptualized according to the Western liberal curriculum. The ‗liberal‘ values implicit within the Western educational practices were actively appropriated and changed to suit the political context of Vietnam. This is evidenced in the way the aim of the general curriculum was set up: the ‗broad worldview‘ must be viewed together with ‗the correct view of science and life‘ and ‗loyalty to the socialist ideal‘, which found its expression in a body of Marxist-Leninist subjects which were compulsory for all students and whose content conformed to the conventional ‗red‘ discourse:

The general curriculum aims to equip students with a broad worldview and a correct view of science and life; knowledge about nature, society and human beings (including oneself); a solid grasp of scientific methods; appreciation of national and humanity heritages; ethics and citizenship responsibilities; patriotism; the capacity to defend the motherland; loyalty to the socialist ideal.

(Bộ Giáo Dục và Đào Tạo, 1995b, p. 54)

5.3.3.2 Restructuring knowledge

The adoption of the two-phase system involved re-structuring the curriculum into two distinct parts: a general education phase that last about 1.5 years, and a specialized phase that last about 2.5 to 4.5 years depending on specific fields of study. To be eligible for phase 2, students had to take a national ‗screening‘ exam, the purpose of which was to select the best students from phase 1 (Bộ Giáo Dục và Đào Tạo, 1995b).

To understand how they gave the curricular knowledge structure a new shape, it is useful to look back at the Soviet curriculum. Under the Soviet cognitive system, university education was characterized by a relative uniformity across the system. According to de Witt (1955, p.274), in the Soviet university model, typically no Soviet HE institutions offered non-specialised professional instruction such as general studies or liberal arts programs common in American colleges and universities. Students chose specialty at the time they entered HE, then ‗embarked on a well-defined program which he must complete to qualify as a ‗specialist‘ in the narrow occupational meaning‘ (ibid). In this model, knowledge organisation resembled Bernstein‘s concept of ‗collection curriculum‘ (Bernstein, 1971). Students of the same specialty followed the

Chapter 5. ‘Đào Tạo Theo Diện Rộng’: The 1987 ‘Broad-Based’ Curriculum same curriculum. Each narrow specialisation had a centrally controlled teaching plan and prescriptive set of course outlines and texts. Their general education was narrowly confined to a few required courses in Marxism-Leninism, the History of the Communist Party and a foreign language.

Like the Chinese university curriculum, the general structure of curriculum in Vietnam before 1986 with that of the Soviet HEIs in the 1950s, especially in the engineering institutions, one may find a great resemblance between the two (see Huang, 2006). The professional knowledge base of the pre-1986 curriculum was structured into relatively narrow majors. Students had to follow a strict curriculum, its parts being arranged in the order of a triangle or a pyramid. The parts were generally grouped into four broad categories:

 compulsory subjects: usually included foreign languages, political courses, physical culture, etc.;  basic disciplinary subjects: basic subjects common for several specialties, e.g., maths for all the specialties of science, history for social sciences and humanities;  specialised basic subjects: subjects directly related to a specialty, e.g., economics for accounting; physiology for medicine;  specialised subjects: major subjects in the specialty, e.g., calculus for maths and Vietnamese history for history;  and sub-specialised subjects.

Table 5 illustrates the similarity between the Soviet university curriculum and its Vietnamese counterpart, adapting from de Witt (1955) and Huang (2006):

Structure of the Soviet curriculum in 1952 Vietnamese curriculum structure prior to 1987

Compulsory political subjects and foreign languages Compulsory political subjects and foreign languages General sciences Basic science subjects General nonspecialised subjects Specialised basic subjects Narrow specialised subjects Specialised subjects Sub-specialised subjects

Table 5. Comparison of the 1952 Soviet curriculum and the Vietnamese counterpart prior to 1987

Chapter 5. ‘Đào Tạo Theo Diện Rộng’: The 1987 ‘Broad-Based’ Curriculum The pre-1986 curriculum structure officially changed with the introduction of Decision 2677 in 1993 (see Table 6), which divided the curriculum into the general phase and the professional phase (Bộ Giáo Dục và Đào Tạo, 1993a). Most general knowledge was to be taught in phase 1, with some modules being extended to phase 2 (some modules of Marxism-Leninism). Professional knowledge was to be taught in phase 2.

Level Program Total General Professional knowledge amount knowledge education amount knowledge amount (credits)

Total Core Major Minor Dissertation (if any)

College Type 1 college 120 30 90 45

Type 2 college 180 30 150 45 25

Type 1 120 50 70 45 Professional college

Type 2 160 50-90 70-110 45 45 25 professional college

Three year 160 90 70 teacher training college

University 4-year 210 90 120 45 25 10 university

5 year 270 90 180 45 25 15 university

6 year 320 90 230 45 25 15 university

4 year teacher 210 90 120 45 45 25 5 training university

(Notes: a credit = 15 periods of theoretical lectures or discussions = 30 to 45 hours of lab practice = 45 to 90 hours of field internship = 45 to 60 hours of assignment or dissertation preparation)

Table 6. Extract from Decision 2677/GD-DT of 3/12/1993

Chapter 5. ‘Đào Tạo Theo Diện Rộng’: The 1987 ‘Broad-Based’ Curriculum Compared to the pre-1986 curriculum, professional knowledge in the 1987 curriculum was oriented to breadth, aiming to equip students with ‗initial professional knowledge and skills so that students could be more ‗adaptable‘ to the changing market‘ (Bộ Giáo Dục và Đào Tạo, 1995b, p.55). Sub-specialised subjects were now relegated to guided or optional elective status, with the latter designed for those who would pursue a minor degree.

With Decision 2678 in 1993 (Bộ Giáo Dục và Đào Tạo, 1993b), which regulated the minimum amount of knowledge in phase 1 education (see Table 7), students would undertake one of seven different streams (subject groups) in accordance with their future career. For example, in order for students of a 4 year university to graduate from phase 1 general education, they must accumulate at least 90 credits of a particular stream, with different modules belonging to 6 fields of knowledge (i.e. natural sciences and maths; social sciences, humanities, foreign languages, physical education, military education).

Fields of knowledge Stream

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Social sciences (including Marxism-Leninism 11 11 11 28 35 19 19 Political Economy, 5 credits) **** ***** **** **** ****

Humanities (including Marxist-Leninist 12 12 12 15 19 35 55 Philosophy, 5 credits) **** **** **** *** ***

Languages (first foreign language) 20 20 20 20 20 20 **** ***** ***** ***** ***** ****

Natural sciences and maths 40 40 40 20 9 9 9 **** **** ****

Military education 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 Weeks weeks Weeks Weeks weeks Weeks weeks

Physical education 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 **** **** **** **** **** **** ****

Table 7. Extract from Decision 2678/GD-DT dated 3/12/1993.

Together Decision 2677 and Decision 2678 served as a ‗general curriculum framework‘ setting out the limits within which each HE institution can establish their own detailed curriculum. To

Chapter 5. ‘Đào Tạo Theo Diện Rộng’: The 1987 ‘Broad-Based’ Curriculum some extent this framework allowed the HE institutions some leeway in curriculum making based on their specific educational profile (student composition, the teaching staff and resources) rather than following the central rigidly law-like teaching plans detailed for content and teaching hours in the classroom as earlier. Specifically, the content of the general curriculum was composed by the special advisory councils (hội đồng tư vấn đặc biệt) at each HEI, which was expected to emulate the independent academic councils in the US universities. When a multi- disciplinary university was to be established, this function would be relegated to the academic council of that university. The core knowledge of the professional curriculum was composed by the interdisciplinary advisory councils established by a group of HEIs sharing the same fields of knowledge or by the academic council of schools or departments if a multidisciplinary university could be established. It was only with electives for specialised professional knowledge that departments or faculties had full autonomy (Interviewee A, August 2014).

However, such ‗leeway‘ in curriculum construction was very limited, due to MOET‘s extensive work in establishing a ‗sample‘ seven-stream program to be applied across the country. The reason given by MOET for this move was twofold. The first was related to MOET‘s concern to keep a unified and standardized curriculum across the system which was believed to necessitate central influence in different aspects of the curriculum-making process. The second was MOET‘s assumption that it was their responsibility to take up the lead in curriculum design because after many years of central dependence many institutions were not ready to take on any extra workload (Interviewee B, August 2014).

In 1995, the MOET experimented the detailed ‗sample‘ curriculum at some universities and colleges in teachers‘ education (Bộ Giáo Dục và Đào Tạo, 1995c). This sample curriculum established the number of hours to be devoted to each subject in the first phase allowed.6 With this ‗standardised‘ curriculum, the students from most universities and some colleges (mostly teacher training colleges) spent 3 semesters (in phase 1) studying one of seven curricular streams. Streams 1, 2 and 3 were applied to students of natural sciences, industrial engineering, agriculture, medicine and pharmacy. Among these, stream 1 had a significant workload of maths while streams 2 and 3 reduced maths to give more space for chemistry and biology respectively.

6 By 1995, the MOET claimed that 34 universities across the system were using the seven stream (subject group) system (Bộ Giáo Dục và Đào Tạo, 1995a, p. 3)

Chapter 5. ‘Đào Tạo Theo Diện Rộng’: The 1987 ‘Broad-Based’ Curriculum Stream 4 was applied for all students of economics and business management, highlighting knowledge of social sciences and applied maths. Stream 5 was applied for students of social sciences, highlighting knowledge of social sciences. Stream 6 was used for students of humanities, arts and culture, highlighting knowledge of humanities. Stream 7 was used for students of foreign languages, centring on foreign languages and Vietnamese language.

The sample curriculum at Da Lat university in 1996 was as follows (a straight line refers to normal progression; a dashed line refers to a situation where a student is eligible for a particular phase 2 stream if they have accumulated sufficient compulsory credits as in the normal progression):

Figure 1. The sample curriculum at Da Lat University in 1996

(adapted from Đại Học Đà Lạt, 1997, p.?)7

The two-phase curriculum policy also involved an ambition of the policymakers to create the separate School of Foundation Studies, which was drawn from the University of Tokyo model, in

7 The page number is obscured due to the quality of the copy material

Chapter 5. ‘Đào Tạo Theo Diện Rộng’: The 1987 ‘Broad-Based’ Curriculum all national and regional universities. The main task of this institution was to provide students from different faculties in a university with a cross-disciplinary curriculum of phase 1 higher education. If students successfully passed the screen exam and qualified for phase 2 higher education, they would be able to go to the specialist faculties at a different campus.

In 1993, the ‗foundation studies certificate‘ was officially introduced into the national education system, marking the institutionalization of phase 1 and phase 2 higher education (Chính Phủ, 1993). This certificate, which was ‗half‘ of a Bachelor degree, was aimed to give students a preparation for the labour market while not specializing in any particular field. This idea raised concerns among the parents and the public that it would increase the number of unemployed youths (Lâm Quang Thiệp, 1997b). In response to criticisms, the reformers insisted that with generalist knowledge of phase 1, students would be able to find jobs and create jobs, because they were ‗university students‘. Besides, even if those students who were unqualified for phase 2 curriculum, they could still pursue relevant programs at lower levels, such as colleges (cao đẳng) or short-term vocational classes. According to the then Head of MOET Department of Higher Education, the principle underlying the generalist curriculum was both educationally and economically beneficial:

In higher education, there are two functions that should be equally emphasized: initial education and lifelong education. The university education is conceived as an initial ‗capital‘ for students to pursue lifelong learning. With the rapid changes in technology, life-long education was necessary for students to be updated with the labour market. The university must focus both on these functions.

[…] For students without any profession in mind when enrolling the university, phase 1 education would be of great benefit because with a generalist foundation based on a broad curriculum, students could easily change their professional choice by choosing a range of options to be adaptable to the labour market and to have a solid potential to update knowledge and technology.

(Lâm Quang Thiệp, 1997b, p.26)

It could be argued that the division of the curriculum into 2 phases entailed a number of unintended consequences on knowledge that were under-recognised by the curriculum reformers of the time. Specifically, the coherence of the curriculum for different disciplines with different knowledge structures was not only ill-defined in the design of the two-phase curriculum but also became complicated with the administrative changes that occurred. In the design, the general curriculum would consist of courses in basic sciences, which was the emphasized part that forms

Chapter 5. ‘Đào Tạo Theo Diện Rộng’: The 1987 ‘Broad-Based’ Curriculum a conceptual base for the later professional base. This involved conceptual progressions of disciplinary subjects in phase 1 and phase 2. However, the system of rules or articulation for this issue was not yet well-developed. In my interview, the senior official in charge of curriculum policy during this period said that ‗curriculum design‘ was an entirely new issue for not only curriculum policymakers but also university academics in Vietnam at that time (Interviewee B, August 2014).

Another unrecognized factor that could compromise the coherence of the curriculum was the administrative separation of the two-phase curriculum. As noted by St George (2003), to ensure a smooth journey for students between phase 1 and phase 2, the teachers and curriculum makers had to ensure a logical connection between the subjects in successive years. The consistency in the flow of knowledge required that teachers of both phase 1 and phase 2 worked together to define the progression and sequence of knowledge. One of the requirements for a smooth progression of knowledge (curriculum coherence) is that communication between these two groups of teachers in phase 1 and phase 2 must be on a regular basis and share a common goal. With the administrative separation of the foundation faculty (or schools) and the professional faculties, the process of curriculum design was exposed to the problem of knowledge fragmentation and curriculum coherence that was never taken into consideration during the design process.

5.3.4 Reconstruction of the list of disciplines and the selective knowledge orientation

At the 1987 conference, Đặng Quốc Bảo‘s speech reflected this knowledge problem by emphasizing the need for updating social sciences – a fundamental ‗blank spot‘ in Soviet education:

A very important managerial task is to overcome the delay in training cadres in social sciences, the shortage of which has led to an unbalanced structure. We must quickly develop our own qualified communities of philosophers, economists, lawyers and sociologists to develop our scientific system

(Đặng Quốc Bảo, 1987, p.4m)

However, when finalized in the 1987 document on this task, it was agreed that while some disciplines were updated or created for pragmatic purposes, several others were preserved. On

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Chapter 5. ‘Đào Tạo Theo Diện Rộng’: The 1987 ‘Broad-Based’ Curriculum the one hand, the document emphasized the imperative of introducing some areas of knowledge such as information technology, business and management science. On the other hand, the establishment and improvement of some social sciences was projected to associate with the economic development and cooperation between Vietnam and the countries in the socialist bloc (the SEV).

In 1990, the Ministry of Education and Training and the General Statistics Office developed an entirely new list of fields of study which totalled 127 disciplines in 34 general areas (Bộ Giáo Dục & Tổng Cục Thống Kê, 1990). While some disciplines were updated or created with a focus on market adaptability, several others were preserved. Disciplines updated both in terms of content and structure include mostly economics, natural sciences, engineering and technology. For example, the economic programs were made to be less narrow by combining or reducing the number of specialties, from 30 to 5 (Bộ Giáo Dục và Đào Tạo, 1995a, p. 2). New definitions of ‗fields of study‘ and ‗specialties‘ (study programs/majors) were used to express a more appropriate fit to national needs, a greater stress on breadth of knowledge to be more relevant to the economy. For instance, the University of Agriculture offered new courses such as industrial agriculture, the preservation and processing of farming products, agricultural business and fisheries (ibid).

Parallel to the updating of new areas of knowledge along the principle of ‗market relevance‘, most disciplines in social sciences and humanities, such as philosophy, history, literature and sociology, did not undergo any significant changes. While urging the reform of social sciences, the 1991 Central Resolution on tasks for science and technology for the Doi Moi era stressed the need for social sciences ‗to provide a theoretical basis for activities in the ideological front to strengthen the socialist battleground and to overcome false views and hostile thoughts and arguments‘ by

creatively applying Marxism-Leninism, Hồ Chí Minh thought, and provide the theoretical basis for consolidating and implementing the Program for socialist building and the program for socio-economic development in our country, as well as providing an updated understanding of the latest issues of our times, of the science and technology revolution, of socialism, modern capitalism and the transition to socialism relevant to the distinctive characteristic of our country and the basic trend of our modern times.

(Đảng Cộng Sản Việt Nam, 1991a)

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Chapter 5. ‘Đào Tạo Theo Diện Rộng’: The 1987 ‘Broad-Based’ Curriculum It is also useful to relate to Marr‘s (1988) account on how social sciences and humanities in Vietnam remained so politically sensitive around this period. According to Marr, even after 1986, while natural scientists and engineers had more chances to go to international conferences, not only from Soviet-led CMEA countries8 but also from Western ones, scholars in the social sciences and humanities could not enjoy such privileges. In research, social scientists had to follow state agendas in the direction for research in the form of ‗quota-ism‘, a pseudo-scientific syndrome ‗characterized by regular rousing declarations from above, quantifying the achievements expected from each sector of society during the coming year‘ (Marr 1988, p.29). For example, economists spent ‗tremendous amount of time spent thinking about how best to justify existing (or contemplated) government policies in terms of Marxist-Leninist theory, rather than collecting reliable statistics, conducting detailed case studies, or analysing national and international economic trends‘ (ibid, p.30). When a mismatch between prediction and reality occurred, causing spontaneous protests from the public, most social scientists did not dare to speak the truth:

While some economists argue for price reforms, most toed the line; historians and archaeologists reaffirmed wartime patriotic rhetoric, philosophers split Marxist-Leninist hairs, and legal scholars occupied themselves with researching new national constitutions rather than evaluating growing evidence of popular disregard for regulations.

(ibid, p.29)

Meanwhile, sociology, which was permitted to become a discipline in Vietnam in 1977, ‗had still not found a secure niche in Vietnam‘, and in most cases sociologists spent ‗inordinate amounts of time distinguishing ‗socialist and capitalist viewpoints‘ rather than mounting intensive field investigations‘ (Marr, 1988, p.28). In the university curriculum of sociology, a lecturer, by making use of the rare ‗space‘ for open discussion during this time, frankly (and courageously) complained about the rigid discrimination between ‗socialist‘ and ‗capitalist sociology‘:

Sometimes lectures were reproduced from those of the Soviet Union, at other time from Germany DGR, or Poland. This was not to mention the unbalanced and anti-scientific spirit when neglecting classical sociologists such as August Comte and Max Weber when discussing the history of sociology. Sociological theories from the capitalist system are not found even in the latest textbook from an experienced group of sociologists.

(Như Thiết, 1989, p. 90)

8 An economic organization under the leadership of the Soviet Union and comprising Bulgaria, Cuba Czechoslovakia, German DR, Hungary, Mongolia, Poland, Romania, USSR and Viet Nam, existed between 1949 and 1991.

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Chapter 5. ‘Đào Tạo Theo Diện Rộng’: The 1987 ‘Broad-Based’ Curriculum And the refusal to transmit some crucial sociological concepts that speak truth to power was also a subject of his concern:

One of the worst problems of the sociological curriculum in Vietnam is the deliberate omission of the concept ‗social deviance‘. The root of the problem lies in the one-way, extreme and dogmatic view. This perhaps reveals people‘s fear of talking about social deviance because it may expose the weakness and defects of socialism.

(ibid, p.91)

5.4 The end of the 1987 reform

As soon as he was elected to be the Minister of Education and Training, Nguyễn Minh Hiển announced the ending of the formal exam and the closing of foundation schools (St George, 2003). The decision was based on negative feedbacks from institutions and educators experimenting the two-phase education and the various problems arising from the implementation process (see Bộ Giáo Dục và Đào Tạo, 1997; St. George, 2003).

According to St George (2003), at a rectors‘ conference convened by the new minister in Hanoi from 9-11 April 1998, there were divided opinions among the rectors and educational officials about the 1987 curriculum. While a small number of institutions, particularly private ones, saw the course-credit system and the two-phase curriculum as positive developments because they could design more programs to attract students, others dismissed them as too difficult to implement. The progression and transfer of students was a challenge that they could not cope with. Despite these contradictory opinions, however, the minister went ahead with the decision to remove the two-phase system and the course-credit system. There might be different reasons for the decision to abandon a policy when it had almost reached its most mature stage, but from what the Minister said, the sole reason was because the policy was implemented too abruptly, lacking agreement among the institutions as well as support from the people working on the ground, such as the lecturers.

In my view, perhaps the two-phase and course-credit reform was fundamentally misplaced from the beginning on both political and pedagogical grounds. Politically, the policy did not arise from the natural change in the system. It was mainly driven by the policymakers‘ attempts to

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Chapter 5. ‘Đào Tạo Theo Diện Rộng’: The 1987 ‘Broad-Based’ Curriculum overcome the traditional system by criticizing it as ‗rigid‘ and an over-emphasis on ‗formal access‘, i.e., the ambitious drive to widen higher education participation, which came at the price of constraining ‗epistemic access‘, i.e., the conditions conducive to high quality scholarship. It was also an attempt to incorporate, at all costs, some innovative approaches borrowed from university systems of different political and academic cultures. This resulted in a form of ‗hybrid‘ initiative that ran against the original intention to enable individuals to get access to forms of knowledge that genuinely broaden their epistemic horizon. For example, in the Vietnamese case, although claiming to broaden the ‗worldview‘ and to flexibilise the curriculum through initiatives adopted from the US system, the Vietnamese university curriculum was in fact a ‗selective‘ import of knowledge from outside, one that was both politically and pragmatically oriented. Mason et al (2001, p.108) rightly argue that ‗the interplay of forces of university reform that originate nationally within those embodied in the international system can result in very different appropriations of policies‘, particularly when it is ‗governed by forces unique to nation-building projects‘.

Pedagogically, the preconditions for reforming the curriculum were not fully prepared. Although the policymakers might have been aware of the weak institutional base of the system, the overly ambitious drive the system to a mass higher education deflected their attention away from issues crucial for strengthening the institutional base. Besides, the policies were not grounded in the changing experiences of systems with similar curricular initiatives. For example, in order to understand why the two-phase and the course-credit system were both premature and problematic for a system like Vietnam in the 1990s, it is necessary to consider the conditions for their feasibility in the US system; and that was not taken into account by the Vietnamese policymakers at the time.

The first problem with the adoption of the general curriculum was that it was based on the assumption that all universities in Vietnam would have the same capacity to be excellent in research, the important condition to deliver high-quality general curriculum. This is feasible only when a system has a strong internal organization that could foster the link between teaching and research as well as an established research culture. According to Ben-David (1992, p.83), towards the 20th century, the liberal arts curriculum failed to exist in England and Europe because knowledge ‗became so specialised that first-rate scholars were not willing to teach

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Chapter 5. ‘Đào Tạo Theo Diện Rộng’: The 1987 ‘Broad-Based’ Curriculum courses in a program of general education‘. Meanwhile, in the US system, a scholar could train research students and at the same time conduct a general program for undergraduates, because the research and teaching functions were closely linked. The involvement of the graduate level also helped solve the selection and integration of the course-credit system of electives to some extent because graduate schools ‗could lay down standards for courses and determine which electives were acceptable for course sequences‘ (ibid). These conditions were not in place during this time in Vietnam, specifically when the idea of a unified ‗multi-disciplinary‘ university had failed and the separation between the teaching and research functions of the university to the legacy of the Soviet system was not yet resolved. Besides, the development of disciplines remained dependent on the direction and control of the MOET and not on entities within the university. The construction of new disciplines remained in its early phase as the country had just opened its door to other knowledge systems.

Another problem was that curricular initiatives like the general curriculum and the course-credit system emerged out of the natural response of a massified and pluralistic system like the US in which the institutions as well as the lecturers enjoyed autonomy over their profession, which was not feasible in the case of a highly centralized system like Vietnam whereby teacher‘s autonomy over designing new courses or teaching materials was not yet recognised. Questions such as what considerations teachers should take in determining content and knowledge relations in different types of curricula as well as what processes universities should have for monitoring and reviewing curricular knowledge were outside the main frame of reference of the policymakers.

Ben-David (1992) also warns that a reform of the general curriculum prompted by the commands of government and contrived uniformly according to a central directive ‗is bound to be ineffective‘, because the success of general education and the course-credit system depends very much on the capacity of an institution and its staff to constantly change and experiment with different programs in order to ensure a high quality and stimulating inter-disciplinary curriculum. A single institution like the University of Tokyo could be ‗justified to settle on a given dogma‘ yet but the ambition of the Vietnamese policymakers to apply it on a large scale of the whole national system seemed too ambitious.

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Chapter 5. ‘Đào Tạo Theo Diện Rộng’: The 1987 ‘Broad-Based’ Curriculum But most importantly, an intellectually meaningful general curriculum requires excellence of research and standards of the teachers who are capable of teaching such courses in basic sciences satisfactorily. This is also an important condition for students to get access to a solid conceptual base necessary for the later professional phase. According to Ben-David (1992), in the US system, this was feasible because of the proliferation of graduate schools that trained specialists in different academic and professional fields at the highest level of learning. The general curriculum was the place the specialists of high quality transmit the result of their research. In Vietnam during the 1990s, the academic quality of university academic staff remained limited, judging from the modest number of lecturers holding postgraduate degrees. In 1996, there were 38,657 lecturers in HEIs in Vietnam. About one third of these (28.9%) held post-graduate qualifications, mainly at the master‘s levels (Ministry of Education and Training-Higher Education Project, 1999). This was a significantly low proportion by international standards.

5.5 Concluding remarks

Trapped in a politically turbulent time during the 1990s, the 1987 curriculum reform arguably shows a significant move by the Vietnamese policymakers in the higher education sector in their attempt to adopt the initiatives inspired by the US model, which set forth one of the most important and comprehensive changes to the curriculum of HE institutions in Vietnam. Fundamentally what the reform entailed was an eschewal of a ‗rigid‘ and ‗overspecialised‘ curriculum that was deemed a ‗Soviet legacy‘ to allow for a ‗flexible‘ and ‗broad‘ one, as well as the attempt to relieve the dominance of the ‗red‘ knowledge in the ‗inner disciplines‘ (social sciences and humanities).

Despite the swing in the regulative discourse over the different interpretations of the ‗socialist‘ person, political education and the politicization of subjects in social sciences and humanities was still a priority during this period of reform. The orientation to new fields of knowledge in the social sciences and humanities was limited and selective. It is not difficult to notice the general curriculum was in large measure the MOET‘s attempt to recontextualise political subjects with a form of ‗liberal‘ discourse adopted from the American model. The bulk of the distributional requirements in the general curriculum remained politically dogmatic subjects, which hampers any idea of genuine ‗liberal‘ education. It expresses an attempt to reinstate old certainties under

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Chapter 5. ‘Đào Tạo Theo Diện Rộng’: The 1987 ‘Broad-Based’ Curriculum new names. In other words, it did not step far beyond the circumstances in which they found themselves before the attempt to break away from the earlier curriculum model. The cultivation of ‗civic culture‘, as envisaged by reformist politician Trần Xuân Bách through social sciences and humanities, remained a dream during this period. The transcendental certainty of a singular ideological truth remains fundamental and seen as essential to the political order.

The key reforms in the instructional discourse between 1987 and 1998, particularly the course- credit system and the two-phase curriculum were considered to be ‗good international practices‘ that could bring about significant changes in the shape of curricular knowledge and its dynamics in the university cognitive system: a broader general and professional education, with the promotion of interdisciplinary courses (so that students of social sciences and humanities could also study basic knowledge in math and informatics, while students of sciences and engineering could also study basic social sciences and humanities), all of which seemed to foreground the overtone of ‗progressivism‘. However, in the case of Vietnam, the emphasis on a ‗broad-based‘ general curriculum was not as ‗progressive‘ as it might seem. This is because students were treated as if they did not have a purpose before going to university, or as if their sole purpose was to use university education as a terminal to ‗find themselves‘ by experiencing a diverse range of subjects that have nothing in common. This is the fatal factor that was not recognised by the policymakers. Such a measure excluded a variety of students who demanded a professional education so they could enter the labour market rather than a non-specialised curriculum. This is especially true in the case of Vietnam, since most students came from rural areas and their families could not afford a trial-and-error education.

By restructuring and modularizing knowledge, the 1987 curriculum showed a marked departure from the pre-1986 discipline-based curriculum, with the following new features:

 Curricular knowledge was broken up into small units and students were expected to put them together;  Student choice was recognized and students were allowed to choose their personal learning pathway;  Cross-disciplinary themes were emphasized through the concept of ‗general curriculum‘;  During this reform, content-based curriculum remained a central feature.

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Chapter 5. ‘Đào Tạo Theo Diện Rộng’: The 1987 ‘Broad-Based’ Curriculum It would be impossible or difficult to expect a macro-level policy to define the specific nature of knowledge to be taught – what we could see are only references of a generic nature. Yet we could see that the overall energy of the reform, albeit on curriculum issue, lies not in tackling the epistemic questions, such as the ‗recontextualsing‘ rules from disciplines of different knowledge structures with different forms of curricula, but rather in technical, ideological or bureaucratic questions.

The focus on aligning the curriculum with the one imported from outside clearly deflects attention given to rules required to ensure academic standards, such as the systematic and coherent progression, or the quality of teachers, the availability of books and reading materials, all of which speak directly to the quality of knowledge. The nature of knowledge to be acquired was driven by more immediate concerns, such as the screening exams, the administrative reform, etc., rather than on consideration of what constitutes systematic and coherent knowledge for students to acquire.

As the dominant logic underlying these features was justified on an instrumental basis through a shift from generating ‗specialised‘ individuals to one with a more general base of knowledge so that they could be adaptable to the labour market, the reform disregarded any possibility for theorizing relationships not only between professional curriculum and the general curriculum but also between the professional curriculum with knowledge drawn from professions and the workplace. Coupled with a top-down approach to curriculum design and a failed effort to re- organise the university structure and network, content knowledge remained hermitically separated from working knowledge. Such an approach and misplaced efforts were likely to undermine the already weak culture of teaching and learning in Vietnam by escalating the administrative burden on teachers at the very time when their professionalism needed most investment.

In the next part, I seek to show the changing shape and relations of curricular knowledge during the next decade, which reinstates the role of the State in curriculum control, and the subsequent shift to a traditionalist curricular mode.

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Chapter 6. ‘Chương Trình Khung’: The 1998-2005 Reforms and the ‘Core Curriculum’

CHAPTER 6. ‘CHƯƠNG TRÌNH KHUNG’: THE 1998-2005 REFORMS AND THE ‘CORE CURRICULUM’

6.1 Introduction

The 1998-2005 phase of curriculum change took place amidst the Asian Financial Crisis which cast considerable concern on the Party elite as it threatened Vietnam‘s fledgling economy (London 2009, p.386). In 1997, Lê Khả Phiêu became the General Secretary of the CPV at the Fourth Plenum of the CPV‘s Eighth Party Congress. Rather than economic reform, his main agenda was a two year program of ‗criticism and self-criticism‘, tightening the authoritarianism of the Party.

This chapter seeks to show that the key curricular policies between 1998 and 2005, which was officially initiated with the 1998 Law of Education, represent a throwback tendency to the pre- 1987 curriculum regarding both regulative and instructional discourses. The argument is laid out as follows: the first section describes and analyses the policy of ‗Core Curriculum‘ (chương trình khung), which dominated the whole period after 2001 until it came into conflict with the convoluted curricular initiatives after 2005. The second section analyses the key regulative discourse of the 1998 curriculum policy before analysing the instructional discourse of this period of reform (i.e. the organisation and structure of knowledge in the Core Curriculum). Drawing on some studies comparing undergraduate curricula of Vietnamese and American universities during this period, I would argue that the realisation of the Core Curriculum seems to show that standardisation had been achieved at the cost of eroding the specialisation of curricular knowledge.

6.2 The 1998 key agenda

6.2.1 The Law of Education and the ‘Core Curriculum’ concept

By 1998, the legal policy system in Vietnam was still underdeveloped in almost every aspect of social life, including education (St George, 2003; 2010). Educational policy papers were ad-hoc

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Chapter 6. ‘Chương Trình Khung’: The 1998-2005 Reforms and the ‘Core Curriculum’ to the extent that sometimes a ministerial circular could be interpreted as a ‗law‘. In 1998, a Law of Education was passed (see Quốc Hội, 1998). This was the first attempt to counterbalance such a diffuse legal status-quo in the education sector. According to St George (2003; 2010), the process of drafting the Law began in October 1995 by the Party Committee of Education, Youth and Children, headed by Trần Thị Tâm Đan. The process involved the recruitment for suggestions and consultations from the MOET, and from the Party, governmental bodies, and educational research institutions. After 24 drafts, the final version was passed by the National Assembly in December 1998. The Law consists of 9 chapters and 110 articles stipulating the aims, principles, characteristics, roles and responsibilities of teachers, students, the educational institutions and the State across the whole education system.

It can be argued that the Law of Education passed in December 1998 marked a reversal of the 1987 curriculum in the sense that it abandoned all mention of the two-phase higher education, the ‗screening exam‘ and the course-credit system. Nevertheless, with the introduction of the Ministerial Decision 04/1999 on curriculum, pedagogy and assessment in universities and colleges, the division between generalist studies in foundation years and more specialist studies subsequently became an institutionalized feature of Vietnamese university education.

The article on higher education curriculum in the Law of Education also introduced a new concept called ‗chương trình khung‘ (the curriculum frame or ‗Core Curriculum‘), which was easily confused with the ‗khung chương trình‘ (the general curriculum framework that divides HE curriculum structure into general education and professional/specialised curriculum). The term ‗chương trình khung‘ was introduced by Trần Thị Tâm Đan, Head of the National Assembly‘s Committee on Culture and Education (Interviewee B, August 2014). Her argument was that the general curriculum framework in the 2677 and 2678 Decisions in 1993 was too general – and the State needed to have more control over the university curriculum. The 1998 Law stipulated that the Ministry of Education and Training not only control the ‗general curriculum framework‘, i.e., the amount of knowledge specified for different levels of higher education, but also various ‗core curricula‘, i.e., the content of all for all academic fields and disciplines, as indicated in Article 36 (item 1, point c):

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Chapter 6. ‘Chương Trình Khung’: The 1998-2005 Reforms and the ‘Core Curriculum’

The content, instructional method in higher education must be materialised in a curriculum. The Ministry of Education and Training shall manage the ‗chương trình khung‘ (core curricula)…On the basis of core curricula, the higher education institutions establish their own specific curriculum.

(Quốc Hội, 1998)

With this stipulation, the Ministry of Education and Training shall not only regulate the curriculum structure and the minimum core for the general HE curriculum, but also standardise the required courses (both in the general and the professional period of the study program) and learning sequence for the whole program of study for each specialty (major) across all universities and colleges.

The top-down order from the National Assembly via the Law of Education created a ‗unique‘ situation: the officials from the educational sectors must be responsible for elaborating and looking for the legitimacy as well as the equivalent definitions in university education literature for a newly created concept in the Law that they did not propose (Vụ Đại Học và Sau Đại Học, 2003, p. 6).

The following definition of ‗chương trình khung‘ for a field of study is considered ‗broadly agreed‘ after the Department of Higher Education pooled advice from educators, educational officials, and international experts on education:

The Core Curriculum (chương trình khung) refers to the combination of the general curriculum framework (khung chương trình) and compulsory content (nội dung cứng).

(Vụ Đại Học và Sau Đại Học, 2003, p. 5)

The term ‗chương trình khung‘ (Core Curriculum) gives an impression of a word game in that it reverses just one word in the term ‗khung chương trình‘ (curriculum framework) which was introduced in the 2677 and 2678 Decisions in 1993. As discussed earlier, based on the curriculum framework stipulating the structure and the minimum amount of knowledge at different levels of higher education, the HEIs had some ‗leeway‘ in constructing their own curriculum, yet before doing so they must get MOET‘s approval and must refer to the ‗sample‘ seven-stream curricula designed by the MOET.

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Chapter 6. ‘Chương Trình Khung’: The 1998-2005 Reforms and the ‘Core Curriculum’ It could be argued that the idea of a more detailed top-down Core Curriculum was a continuation of ‗standardised‘ seven-stream curricula, reflecting the MOET‘s attempt to tighten its control on curriculum content. In doing so, there materialized the stark contradictions in the Law of Education regarding the control power over the curriculum between the State and the higher education sector. Specifically, Article 55 (section 1), which allows universities and colleges to construct and develop the curriculum, textbooks, teaching and learning plans for study programs approved by the State, comes into conflict with Article 36 (section 1, point c), which states that the MOET regulates and defines the curriculum in terms of the structure of the subjects, the course and program duration, the time distributions among basic and specialised subjects, between theory and practice, and internship. It also contrasts with Article 37 which states that MOET has full power to compose and accredit textbooks for universities and colleges.

The Department of Higher Education was fully aware of these contradictions – as they wrote in the materials/handbook for constructing Core Curriculum (Vụ Đại Học và Sau Đại Học, 2003, p. 29). Their rationale for continuing to make do with such contradictions was based on the idea of ‗a hybrid model between 2 tendencies of HE curriculum management‘:

 Tendency 1 in countries with a centrally planned economy: the State issues a list of majors and core curricula in the form of ‗hard structure‘, then the HE institutions have autonomy in constructing detailed curricula.  Tendency 2 in countries with a market economy: the HE institutions have their autonomy in constructing curricula based on social needs. The ‗standard reference‘ is based on agreed criteria of groups of universities. The State then collects and classifies information on diverse majors and fields of study.

(Vụ Đại Học và Sau Đại Học, 2003, p. 22)

6.2.2 The construction of the Core Curriculum

6.2.2.1 Seeking legitimacy for the concept of the Core Curriculum

To seek legitimacy for this concept, the Department of Higher Education attempted to look back into history to find ‗evidence‘ for the relevance of the Core Curriculum, demonstrating that the concept was not something unfamiliar to Vietnam‘s higher education policy. In essence, a Core Curriculum for a specialty in a field of study (such as the ‗curriculum standard frame‘ for sociology in the field of social sciences) is the product of a process of curriculum planning

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Chapter 6. ‘Chương Trình Khung’: The 1998-2005 Reforms and the ‘Core Curriculum’ through the consultancy councils set up by the Ministry of Education and Training. This mechanism could be traced far back to the 1960s (Vụ Đại Học và Sau Đại Học, 2003, pp. 4-5). During the 1960s and 1970s, curriculum management and development were under the responsibility of the Ministry‘s Council of Education and Training Consultancy. This Council recommended the programs of the study and these programs would be approved or disapproved by the Ministry. However, due to financial difficulties and the growth of institutions, these activities declined and ended in the early 1980s. In the late 1980s, with the trend of university reform, the department of Higher and Specialised Vocational Education decided to establish Consultancy Councils for fields of study, and Consultancy Councils for specialties (majors). These councils advised the Ministry on the Core Curriculum for the first two years for some fields of study. However, owing to insufficient funding, the curriculum for the next two years was not realised. Moreover, some universities were not engaged in the promulgated curriculum, suggesting that the members of the councils did not really represent all the institutions in the country.

In accordance with the 1998 Law of Education, the Ministry of Education and Training proposed that the concept Core Curriculum is not to be understood as ‗detailed‘ curricula promulgated by the Ministry during the 1960s and 1970s, since such conceptualisation would go against article 55 of the 1998 Law of Education: ‗the universities and colleges have the autonomy and accountability in accordance to the law and university charter in: (1) establishing curriculum, textbooks, teaching plans for approved fields of study‘. However, later on, the former Head of Department of Higher Education admitted that the idea of the Core Curriculum could not avoid conflicting with article 55 of the Law. The officials from MOET also attempted to refer to similar international practices. A similar definition of this concept could be equivalent to ‗curriculum standard‘ or ‗core curriculum‘ in the US, or in the concept of ‗Gosudarst obrazovatelnyi Stadart‘ in Russian higher education (ibid). The problem is, the American ‗Curriculum Standards‘ are used mostly by the independent accreditation organisations to ensure the quality of study programs; and more importantly they are designed via a ‗bottom-up‘ approach, in which there is a significant involvement of scientific and professional associations. In the case of Vietnam, the concept of Core Curriculum followed more or less the same form as that of ‗curriculum standards‘ in Eastern European countries, in which the State takes a strong hold over the design of the Core Curriculum (see Tomusk, 2004).

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Chapter 6. ‘Chương Trình Khung’: The 1998-2005 Reforms and the ‘Core Curriculum’ For the MOET curriculum reformers, the concept of Core Curriculum was both legally and academically sound. Legally, it was an important project to bring the 1998 Law of Education into life. Academically, it increased the institutions‘ confidence in curriculum development, especially when the teaching staff and leaders of HE institutions are different in terms of qualifications and capacity (Vụ Đại Học và Sau Đại Học, 2003, p. 10). At the conference on higher education in October 2001, the education minister argued that the Core Curriculum would be ‗a basis on which standardised, basic, modern, pragmatic, articulative and progressive curricula are ensured. It would ensure diversity in the common core knowledge of the curriculum, facilitating the recognition of qualifications among nations in integration‘ (Vụ Đại Học và Sau Đại Học, 2003, p. 7) and this would be the ‗ground-breaking‘ reform initiative of higher education in the direction of curriculum standardisation and modernization (ibid).

6.2.2.2 The drafting process of the ‘Core Curriculum’

In 2000, the plan for drafting core curricula for all fields of study in higher education was approved by the MOET. The plan was presented by the Department of Higher Education on 10th March 2000. The curriculum policymakers considered this event ‗a turning point in the process of giving true autonomy for HEIs, while asserting the accountability of the institutions on the curriculum‘ (Vụ Đại Học và Sau Đại Học, 2003, p. 4). The Decision set up a timeline of 5 to 6 years in which a set of core curricula for different knowledge areas would take shape, and the MOET would take on the major role of coordinating the consultancy councils.

On 1st November 2001, the MOET approved the budget distribution plan to establish the Core Curriculum for 2001. In this plan, most of the budget for 2001 would be directly transferred to 14 universities and coordinating units through contracts. According to this plan, it cost 200 million VND to run a consultancy council of a field of study (for example, the field of health) and 85 million VND to run a consultancy council of a specialty (for example, the specialty or study program for medicine or a study program for nursing). With the total sum amounting to 11 billion VND, the Ministry signed the decision to establish 12 consultancy councils of fields of study and 106 councils of specialties, which involved 1725 council members and 365 secretaries. According to this approved plan, an addition of one council of field of study (teacher training) and over 200 councils of specialties were needed.

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Chapter 6. ‘Chương Trình Khung’: The 1998-2005 Reforms and the ‘Core Curriculum’ For the Ministry of Education and Training, the basic difference in this method of curriculum management was that it expressed a will to move the management of the curriculum from direct intervention to ‗indirect control through the consultancy councils with members recommended from the institutions‘ (Vụ Đại Học và Sau Đại Học, 2003, p. 9). Once the draft was outlined by the consultancy councils, it must be sent to all the HE institutions for feedback before final submission to the Ministry of Education and Training. The timeframe to produce a Core Curriculum would not be less than 6 months, and if the time for institutional feedback was included, the time must not be less than a year. Although the Decision stipulated that the Core Curricula must also be reviewed periodically, it did not specify the specific amount of time for the review.

In the process of drafting, the consultancy councils played a leading role in drafting the Core Curricula for different specialties for both university and college level. A consultancy council consists of leading specialists in different specialties from different HE institutions and research institutes, HE educational managers and some representatives from business and industrial sector and human resource agencies. These members were all recommended by higher education institutions (HEIs). It should be noted that, as St. George (2010, p. 231) remarks, these recruited council members involved prominent academics within the leading HEIs who are ‗usually also senior members of the Communist Party of Vietnam‘ and who ‗maintain a monopoly on curriculum textbooks for use throughout the country, with almost non-existent academic or other oversight to ensure they are of high quality‘.

There were two types of councils: the consultancy council of fields of study and the consultancy council of specialties (majors or study programs), with different missions. The consultancy councils of fields of study were asked to:

 propose and name the specialty belonging to the field of study;  draft the Core Curricula (including the curriculum objectives, training time, minimum amount of knowledge, knowledge structure, time of internship, etc.);  define and describe the content of common subjects for the whole field as well as for the branches of study in the field;  recommend the members for the councils of specialties;

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Chapter 6. ‘Chương Trình Khung’: The 1998-2005 Reforms and the ‘Core Curriculum’  guide the councils of specialties in completing the Core Curriculum for each specialty;  assist the Educational Minister in evaluating the Core Curricula of different specialties;  recommend authors for teaching materials to be shared in the specialities.

There were 12 fields of study: Engineering; Technology; Social Sciences; Humanities; Economics and Business Administration; Health; Agriculture-Forestry-Fisheries; Military Science; Physical Education and Sports; Pedagogy; National Defence and Security Education; Arts-Culture and Communication. Each field of study is then further divided in specific specialties at university and college levels. For example, the field of engineering is composed of 14 study programs or specialties at university level including: Heat and Refrigeration Engineering, Electrical-Electronic Engineering; Control and Automation Engineering; Metallurgical Engineering; Aeronautical Engineering; Food Engineering; Textile Engineering; Mine Engineering; Surveying and Mapping Engineering; Petrochemical Engineering; Construction Material Engineering; Construction Machine Engineering; Water Supply and Drainage Engineering; Road Construction Engineering.

The consultancy councils of specialties (majors) were asked to:

 Define the specific objectives of the specialty;  Define the name and describe the content of the compulsory subjects of a specialty that constitute the core for a specialty.  Recommend authors of teaching materials to be shared for a specialty.

In the long term, the consultancy councils of branches of study and of specialties would have an additional task of assisting the Ministry of Education and Training in accrediting the teaching programs at HE institutions throughout the country.

The design of the curriculum standard frame must go through the following steps to ensure its quality and approval from all HE institutions:

 Step 1 (completed in July 1999): (a) the drafting of major preparatory documents, including the proposed core curriculum; the proposed classification of curriculum by branches of study; regulations for the activities of councils of branches of study and of

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Chapter 6. ‘Chương Trình Khung’: The 1998-2005 Reforms and the ‘Core Curriculum’ specialties; (b) collection of documents (curriculum of all HE institutions nationwide and overseas; the criteria for evaluation, etc.).  Step 2: (a) the establishment of 13 councils for fields or branches of study and over 300 specialties; (b) the specialist groups prepare the documents (translation, document drafting, etc.); (c) the actual working of the councils with the expected outcome of the drafts of curriculum standard frames for each branch of study;  Step 3 (at least 6 months): consult lecturers and specialists on the draft for the set of curriculum standard frames of each branch of study through the university and college networks and the internet. Seek reviews from the Councils of Science.  Step 4: The consultancy councils of specialty would adjust the set of core curricula in each specialty so that the consultancy councils of branches of study could evaluate before submitting for approval from the Ministry.  Step 5: (time unlimited): the councils introduced authors for textbook writing and organise the writing and evaluating of textbooks; to serve quality assurance, the councils would also play the role of accreditation agents at the institutional level.

With the introduction of the Core Curriculum, the university could decide on about 30 per cent of each study program. This means that the MOET‘s mandatory subjects in the Core Curriculum accounted for at least 70 per cent of the university curriculum. Based on the MOET Core Curriculum, a faculty academic council at the HEIs could develop a full study program based on the core knowledge specified in each subject by the MOET. This council would appoint a lecturer to develop a detailed syllabus (with chapters, duration, textbooks and references). After the study program was approved, the curriculum would be reviewed by the university‘s academic council and approved by the MOET (except for National Universities, which have power to approve the detailed curriculum sent from the member schools). An approved subject can be used in different classes. Similarly, the same test can be used by different lecturers teaching the same subject. To prepare for the tests, these teachers provide their own test questions to be synthesized and approved by the head of the faculty.

The development of a standardized curriculum framework agreed among the state politicians and bureaucrats seemed to reflect a problematic assumption at that level that knowledge and skills could be treated as facts and could be divided arbitrarily. The arbitrariness could also be seen in

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Chapter 6. ‘Chương Trình Khung’: The 1998-2005 Reforms and the ‘Core Curriculum’ the appointment of directors defining priority areas of knowledge for different councils based on their ‗loyalty‘ to the Party. This also implies that knowledge can be packaged and reviewed by groups of people intellectually separate from each other.

By looking at the participants and the process of drafting the standards, it could be seen that standards were the primary responsibility of the MOET with little, if any, reference to the requirements of accrediting agencies, the expectations of professional associations and employers. This substantially constricts the bounds within which the autonomy of mixed participation councils can be exercised.

6.3 Regulative discourse

6.3.1 Recommitment to the socialist order

The regulative discourse dominant in the 1998 reform featured a strong commitment to the socialist order. It was briefed first through the 1996 Second Central Resolution for Education Reform, entitled ‗The Strategic Directions for Educational Development in the Industrialisation and Modernisation Era and the Tasks for the Year 2000‘ (Đảng Cộng Sản Việt Nam, 1996a), which was to be settled in the first Law of Education in 1998.

The Resolution highlighted the enduring need to make a balance between the need to commit to ‗socialism‘ while undertaking ‗modernisation and industrialism‘. However, it could be argued that the overall ethos in directing education was a neo-conservative mode. In its expression of the concern for the drawbacks of the system, it lamented the lack of ‗political and ideological education‘ in the system, and its inability to foster ‗active‘ and ‗creative‘ individuals:

The causes of the drawbacks of the education system involve an unbalanced curriculum, in which content is not tied to life. The political and ideological education, the cultivation of ethics and personality as well as the teaching of social sciences and humanities, physical education and arts is underemphasized. The efficiency of the teaching of Marxist-Leninist subjects is limited. The educational method has not fostered individual activeness and creativity.

(Đảng Cộng Sản Việt Nam, 1996a)

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Chapter 6. ‘Chương Trình Khung’: The 1998-2005 Reforms and the ‘Core Curriculum’ The ‗red‘ was prioritized over the instrumental ‗expert‘ in both the aims and content of education:

The fundamental aim and task of education is to form individuals and generations with commitment to the ideal of national independence and socialism, with clear conscience and strong will of nation building and defence, to the cause of industrialisation and modernisation of the country and to the preservation and enhancement of the national values; The education system also aims to form individuals with capacity to acquire the cultural heritage of humanity; to strengthen the potentiality of the nation and the Vietnamese people, with communitarian consciousness and to develop the activeness of the individual, master scientific knowledge and modern technologies, with good practical skills, industrial lifestyle, highly disciplined; with good health. In short, they are those who inherit and build socialism, both ‗red‘ and ‗expert‘ as taught by Uncle Ho.

(The education system must) adhere to the socialist ideal in the content and method of instruction, in policies, especially policies on social justice; strengthen the advantages of market mechanism while curbing the disadvantages of market mechanism in education; prohibit the ‗commercialisation‘ tendency, and guard against any apolitical trend in education; the transmission of religions is prohibited in educational institutions.

Educational development must go hand in hand with socio-economic development, scientific and technological progress and the consolidation of national defence and security. Equally focus on three aspects of education: quantity expansion, quality focus and efficiency. Education must be tied with production and scientific research; theory must tie with practice, learning must go with practising, educational must tie to family and society.

(ibid)

As for content and method of instruction, the politicians highlighted that the curriculum must:

Strengthen citizenship and ideological education, cultivate patriotism, Marxism-Leninism and introduce Hồ Chí Minh thought as a subject into the educational institutions relevant to ages and levels of education. More attention should be given to social sciences and humanities, especially Vietnamese language, national history, geography and Vietnamese culture. Review the content of textbooks on these fields of sciences; selectively reference to international experiences; build up sciences in economics, management, law relevant to our country‘s context and the viewpoints and policies of the Party and the State.

(ibid)

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Chapter 6. ‘Chương Trình Khung’: The 1998-2005 Reforms and the ‘Core Curriculum’ In this rhetorical statement, priority was placed on the commitment to nation building via socialist ideals. This is further demonstrated in the Law of Education introduced in 1998. Through the Law of Education, it is possible to appreciate the enhanced significance of the role of education in general and university education in particular in transmitting nation building knowledge, namely the commitment to the ‗socialist‘ order and a set of political doctrines regulated as compulsory for all types of university students. In Article 2, on the purpose of education, we find a declaration of support for socialism and the assertion of forming the ‗subjects‘ into the mould of a national morality revolving around the values of loyalty and patriotism:

The purpose of education is to form well-rounded Vietnamese individuals with ethics, knowledge, health, tastes of art and profession, and a sense of loyalty to the ideal of national independence and socialism; to cultivate the personality, character and competence of citizenship to meet the demands of the cause of constructing and defending the Fatherland.

(Quốc Hội, 1998)

In Article 3, on educational principles and characteristics, we find it stated that Marxism- Leninism must be the foundation to guarantee the realization of the educational purpose:

The Vietnamese education system is socialist, populist, scientific, and modern, with Marxism-Leninism and Hồ Chí Minh thought being its foundation.

(ibid)

Likewise, the purpose of university education is specified in Article 35 so that professional knowledge (the ‗expert‘ aspect) must be preceded by ‗political qualities‘ and ‗ethics‘ (the ‗red‘):

The aim of undergraduate and postgraduate education is to form the individual with political qualities, ethics, willingness to serve the people, professional knowledge and practical capacity relevant to the level of training, good health, in order to serve the cause of constructing and defending the Fatherland.

(ibid)

Article 5 (point 1) on the requirements of educational content and method is also grounded in the essential character of the socialist education and structured in accordance with the State‘s needs

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Chapter 6. ‘Chương Trình Khung’: The 1998-2005 Reforms and the ‘Core Curriculum’ and requirements. Tensions between tradition and modernization are explicitly recognised in the way elements of ‗traditional ideas and practices‘ and national identity are mobilized against the anticipated effects of a changing economy. The construction of morality and the construction of nation building are foregrounded over the construction of a quasi-market economy:

The educational content shall be basic, comprehensive, practical, modern and systematic; emphasizing ideological citizenship education; drawing from and enhancing the good tradition and national cultural identity, learning from cultural fruits of humanity; relevant to the psychological development of the learner.

(ibid)

Likewise, Article 36 (section 1, point a) on the content of university education sees several elements of ideological articulation. The destabilising elements of economic modernization are believed to be effectively tamed through the manifestation of an ‗exemplar‘: Hồ Chí Minh, a state leader in the 1950s, remains a symbol and focus for the construction of national feeling:

The content of higher education must be modern and developmental, ensuring a balance between basic sciences, foreign languages, information and technological technology with knowledge from specialties and knowledge from Marxism-Leninism and Hồ Chí Minh thought. It must build up from good traditional ideas and practices, national identity and correspond to the general level of the region and the world.

(ibid)

The provisions of the Law on university education and the ordering of knowledge for this field also reflect the logic that matters concerning the forms and contents of the curriculum are not thought of as internal aspects of the educational process. Neither are they entrusted to the discretion of teachers and their professional associations, but to the power of educational bureaucrats and the existing political order.

As elaborated belows, the deference to ‗socialist‘ order was also represented in the strengthening of the political knowledge base and the way the Core Curriculum marginalized forms of knowledge that enable the learners to think ‗the unthinkable‘ in the disciplines of social sciences and humanities. In these subjects, some form of knowledge became objectified and used to support the ruling powers while others are treated as insignificant.

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Chapter 6. ‘Chương Trình Khung’: The 1998-2005 Reforms and the ‘Core Curriculum’ 6.3.2 Strengthening Marxist-Leninist curriculum

Between 1999 and 2005, a series of policy documents were issued to tighten and strengthen the teaching and learning of Marxist-Leninist knowledge in university education. Following Prime Minister‘s Decision 494/QD-Ttg on 24 June 2002 on approving the project for enhancing the quality of teaching and learning of Marxism-Leninism and Hồ Chí Minh thought in universities and colleges and political courses in vocational schools (see Chính Phủ, 2002), a series of decisions were issued between 2001 and 2003 to regulate what and how to teach Marxist- Leninist courses in HEIs, namely:

 Decision 45/2002/QD-BGDDT on 29 October 2002 on the issuance of the detailed outline for Marxist-Leninist Philosophy used for majors in social sciences and humanities, natural sciences and engineering; the detailed outline for Marxist-Leninist Political Economy used for majors both in and out of economics and business administration (Bộ Giáo Dục và Đào Tạo, 2002).  Decision 34 /2003/QD-BGDDT on 31 July 2003 signed by the Minister of Education and Training on the issuance of the detailed outline of Scientific Socialism at undergraduate level (Bộ Giáo Dục và Đào Tạo, 2003a).  Decision 35/2003/QD-BGDDT on 31 July 2003 on the detailed outline of Hồ Chí Minh thought at university and college level (Bộ Giáo Dục và Đào Tạo, 2003b).  Decision 41/2003/QD-BGDDT on 27 August 2003 on the detailed outline of the History of Communist Party of Vietnam at undergraduate level (Bộ Giáo Dục và Đào Tạo, 2003c).

These documents gave detailed prescriptions on subject objectives, content, the time amount and distribution, and the sequencing of each subject (see Table 8). The political modules took up most of the ‗general base‘ in the Core Curriculum. The Marxism-Leninism, History of the Party and Scientific Socialism accounted for 203 hours, which occupied about 9% of the whole program of study.

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Courses Time amount and sequencing Objectives

Marxist-Leninist Philosophy 6 learning units (90 periods) To provide students with a relatively systematic and basic knowledge about Marxist-Leninist (Decision 45/2002/QD- worldview and methodology and to enable BGDDT on 29 October them to apply the fundamental principles of 2002) Marxist-Leninist philosophy in researching and analysing practical issues.

Marxist-Leninist Political  8 learning units (120 periods) The objectives of the course on Marxist- Economy for majors in economics and Leninist Political Economy differ among two business administration; types of students: those specialising in (Decision 45/2002/QD- economics and business administration and BGD&DT on 29 October  5 learning units (75 periods) those not: 2002) for those not specialising in economics and business - For those specialising in economics and administration administration, this course is fundamental basis for other economic courses, which aims to ‗provide students with a systematic and selective knowledge of Marxist-Leninist Political Economy so that student can have scientific basis for explaining the economic programs and policies of the Party and State in the transition to socialism in our country, thus forming scientific belief in the leadership of the Party and the definite victory of socialism‘. The final point is related to the consolidation of a particular worldview, mindset and methodology for graduates in economics. - For those not specialising in economics and administration, this course is designed to ‗enable students to grasp the basic rationales of the economic pathway and policies of the Party during the transition to socialism in our country, creating consensus and consolidating belief in the leadership of the Party and the definite victory of socialism‘

Scientific socialism  4 learning units, equal to 60 To provide students with theoretical and periods of 45 minutes each; scientific basis to understand the programs of (Decision 34 /2003/QD- nation-building as well as the pathway and BGDDT on 31 July 2003)  must be preceded by Marxism-Leninism policies of building socialism in Vietnam; to philosophy explain and embrace correct attitudes towards social reality, to enhance their belief in the path to socialism, which has been chosen by the Party, President Hồ Chí Minh and our people.

History of Communist Party  4 learning units To provide students with basic knowledge of Vietnam  to be taught in the second about the history of the Communist Party of Vietnam, so that students can have ‗a (Decision 41/2003/QD- semester of the second year systematic and relatively comprehensive BGDDT on 27 August  must be preceded by Marxist- understanding of the formation and the 2003) Leninist philosophy, Marxist- Leninist Political Economy; historical mission of the Party in organizing and Scientific Socialism. leading the Vietnamese revolutions‘ and to ‗help students recognize that the Communist

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Party of Vietnam is the vanguard and the loyal representative of the working class of Vietnam‘, from these objectives ‗students could draw the revolutionary methods and ethics and enhance their belief on the path to socialism, which was chosen by the Party, President Hồ Chí Minh and our people‘.

Hồ Chí Minh thought  3 learning units (45 periods) To help students grasp basic understanding of Hồ Chí Minh thought as the application and (Decision 35/2003/QD-  must be preceded by all other creative development of Marxism-Leninism on BGDDT on 31 July 2003) Marxist-Leninist courses the specific context of Vietnam through the pathways, views, guidelines and resolutions of the Party and the Law of the State. The overall objective is to strengthen the belief in the path to socialism in Vietnam and to enhance students‘ national pride in the Party, on Uncle Hồ Chí Minh and their responsibility in devoting and contributing to the building and defending the State.

Table 8. The 1998-2005 political curriculum

Prescriptions were applied to not only the teaching content, the learning materials and references, teaching and learning requirements, but also to the evaluation details. Specifically, the learning materials and textbooks were to be drawn from the Ministry of Education and Training. The teaching plan for courses in Marxist-Leninist philosophy must ‗present the basic principles corresponding to the national textbook on Marxism-Leninism‘ (Bộ Giáo Dục và Đào Tạo, 2002). Students were asked to ‗read and study the textbook and references beforehand, prepare ideas and suggestions during the lecture time; prepare the seminar and collect materials related to the lectures‘ (ibid). Prescriptions on the evaluation of knowledge in these subjects were similar to the evaluation of other subjects. Besides, prescriptions for the evaluation of political subjects are even more detailed than other specialised subjects. For example, for the subject of Hồ Chí Minh thoughts, as part of the evaluation, students must attend the visit to the museum and historical places before writing their reflection from the visit. They would also have to take two tests during the course of study and an exam by the end of the course. In 2004, another ministerial decision (Decision 02/2004/QD-BDGDT) stipulating that ‗full time regular students at universities and colleges must take a final exam on subjects on Marxism-Leninism and Hồ Chí Minh thought‘ (Bộ Giáo Dục và Đào Tạo, 2004). This means that despite having taken these subjects during the course of study, prior to graduation all students must re-take some Marxist-

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Chapter 6. ‘Chương Trình Khung’: The 1998-2005 Reforms and the ‘Core Curriculum’ Leninist and Hồ Chí Minh ideology subjects specified by the MOET. In other words, political subjects were considered a prerequisite for graduation among all students.

6.3.3 The ‘red’ discourse in social sciences and humanities

In the Core Curriculum, the strengthening of the ‗socialist‘ moral discourse found its expression in the aims and content of subjects in the social sciences and humanities. For example, the Core Curriculum for Sociology stated that the aim of a program/curriculum as stipulated in the Sociology curriculum for all HEIs was to equip a student with

(1) Political quality and professional ethics, a spirit to serve the country and the people, good health and social communicative competence.

(2) Basic knowledge and methodology of sociology, professional practical skills

(3) The ability to apply sociological knowledge to do research and solve social problems in such fields as economics, politics, national security and defence.

(Bộ Giáo Dục và Đào Tạo, 2005c)

Similarly, the objectives of a Bachelor degree in Philosophy involved:

 Providing students with basic, fundamental and professional knowledge in philosophy, so that students can have a solid grasp of Marxist-Leninist and Hồ Chí Minh thought regarding standpoint and scientific method as well as the construction of a dialectical materialistic and scientific worldview;  Applying philosophical knowledge in solving practical problems on the basis of dialectical materialism;  Progressing to master and doctoral level or transfer to related majors according to social needs.  A graduate from a bachelor degree in philosophy can work as researcher, teacher of philosophical sciences in general and of subjects relating to Marxism-Leninism and Hồ Chí Minh thought in particular. They can also work in local and central administrative and political sectors.

(Bộ Giáo Dục và Đào Tạo, 2005b)

Apart from compulsory courses in Marxism-Leninism in the general curriculum, the objectives of almost all the specialised courses in philosophy were also geared to Marxist-Leninist ideology. This reflects the continued assumption on the part of the policymakers that Marxism still plays an important role in understanding and development of all sciences, especially social sciences and humanities. The aims specified in the courses or subjects in the professional

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Chapter 6. ‘Chương Trình Khung’: The 1998-2005 Reforms and the ‘Core Curriculum’ specialised curriculum were infused with the ‗red‘ discourse of socialism. Except for such subjects as mathematics, foreign languages, informatics, physics and biology in the general base, almost all other subjects are marked with ‗Marxist-Leninist‘ philosophy. For example:

Introduction to Ethics (3 learning units): Provide students with basic concepts in ethics from Marxist standpoint. On the basis of grasping these concepts and understanding the principle for the formation and development of ethics, especially new ethics, communist ethics, the students will enhance their knowledge and judgement, and apply such knowledge in the practice of building new ethics in the process of modernization of Vietnam.

Introduction to Aesthetics (3 learning units): Provide students with basic knowledge of aesthetics from Marxist standpoint. On this basis, students will be able to live and create according to the law of the beauty; to distinguish different forms of arts; to analyse and assess a work of art and define for themselves a progressive and healthy aesthetic taste.

Introduction to Religious Studies (3 learning units): Provide students with basic and systematic knowledge on religion as a complex social phenomenon, with a long history of development and strong influence on the spiritual life of human beings. On the basis of Marxist-Leninist scientific worldview of religion, students can apply knowledge to explain the religious movements in history as well in the present (in the world as in Vietnam), while understanding and practicing well the Party and State‘s policy on religion.

Advanced Marxism-Leninism (6 learning units): Provide students with an advanced and systematic understanding of the principles of Marxist-Leninist philosophy, including: Marxist-Leninist worldview, Marxist-Leninist epistemology, theory of socio-economic forms, the theory of ethnicity, class and mankind, the theory of state, social consciousness and its role in social development. The course is also to enable students to enhance their dialectic thinking and their capacity in applying the fundamentals of Marxism- Leninism in explaining practical issues in society.

(Bộ Giáo Dục và Đào Tạo, 2005b)

Students majoring in philosophy must learn all about Marxist-Leninist philosophy, its history and development and major works. All other philosophical traditions must be grounded in Marxist-Leninist philosophy. All other subjects in the history of philosophy in different ages and across different parts of the world (such as History of Greek and Roman Philosophy; History of Indian Philosophy in ancient and medieval age; Classical German Philosophy) students are

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Chapter 6. ‘Chương Trình Khung’: The 1998-2005 Reforms and the ‘Core Curriculum’ expected to ‗enhance their understanding and ability to explain different schools of philosophical thoughts from the Marxist worldview).

The same situation went for other specialties, such as literature and history. In the literature Core Curriculum, courses in Vietnamese literature and Vietnamese History, even at the advanced level, continued to abolish all knowledge related to the South of Vietnam between 1955 and 1975. The underlying assumption of this policy was that such knowledge was ‗politically sensitive‘ because the period between 1955 and 1975 was the time when the ideological war between the Communist Party and the South regime was active. After 1975, as part of the strategy to ensure regime stability, the Communist Party in all the media in society projected the view that the South government were ‗puppets‘ and pride themselves for liberating the South from the invasion of the Americans. All other interpretations were considered dangerous and prohibited.

6.4 Instructional discourse

The concept of a division between generalist studies in foundation years and more specialist studies became an institutionalized feature of Vietnamese university education after the 1987 curriculum. As expressed in Regulation 04/1999, a Core Curriculum for any field or major typically had two major parts of knowledge: general knowledge, which accounted for one third of the program, while the two-third of professional knowledge involve basic knowledge of the field, basic knowledge of the specialty (major), knowledge of the specialty; professional internship and graduate paper or exams (Bộ Giáo Dục và Đào Tạo, 1999). The first part involved the arrangement of knowledge on a distributional basis, which involved knowledge drawn from six disciplinary areas, namely social sciences, humanities, natural sciences, mathematics, foreign languages and the study of national defence education and physical education. The second involved the acquisition of professional knowledge, which accounted for two thirds of the curriculum.

Unlike the 1987 instructional discourse, which was characterized by a flexible organisation of knowledge with an emphasis on student choice, the organizing principle of the 1998 Core Curriculum prioritized a traditional curriculum mode that was similar to Bernstein‘s (1971) concept of the ‗collection curriculum‘ (i.e., one where subjects retain their distinct boundaries).

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Chapter 6. ‘Chương Trình Khung’: The 1998-2005 Reforms and the ‘Core Curriculum’ The discourse of ‗flexibility‘ and ‗choice‘ of the course-credit system in the 1987 curriculum reform was removed with the introduction of the Regulation 04-1999, the ethos of which was to be realised in the specific Core Curricula. A Core Curriculum for different majors (majors) dictated precisely what students must study, the length of the program as well as of each course, the hours for each course, with the exception of the ‗required electives‘ (courses designated as part of the study). Following statements of the aim of the program, the Core Curriculum then detailed the list of compulsory courses with time frame and a general description of the content of each course.

With Regulation 04-1999 and the Core Curriculum, a degree program typically required all students to complete a prescribed number of compulsory study units. The specificity of each program of study for each specialty made it impossible for students to move to another specialty after getting enrolled in a program of study. The knowledge amount and its measurement were almost the same as what was indicated in the 1987 curriculum. One learning unit, for example, is equal to 15 hours of lecture classes, or 30-45 hours of lab work, or 45-90 hours of work internship. A four-year program typically required the successful completion of 210 ‗learning units‘ (đơn vị học trình), of which 90 learning units are for general education and 120 learning units are for professional education.

Despite the appearance of the discipline-mode in the 1998 curriculum, disciplinary knowledge was masked by external bureaucratic goals rather than the focus on knowledge structures to be delivered to different types of students in a coherent way. The epistemological mandates were forsaken because time and curriculum were much too strictly set. For example, the amount of knowledge stipulated in all fields in the Core Curriculum seemed exorbitant, often involving some 35 hours of weekly teaching for all disciplines, regardless of their fields.

The major problem with the 1998 curriculum was that it cuts across what is needed in the discipline from the perspective of those who understand that discipline. This is discussed in a comparative study carried out in 2006 and 2007 by a group of American specialists from Harvard University who were members of the field survey group organised by the US National Academy, with the aid of Vietnam Education Foundation (see Stephen et al., 2006; van Alfen et al., 2007). The review team undertook numerous interviews and conducted surveys with administrators, deans, lecturers and students from a number of leading universities in Vietnam. Disciplines for review included computer science, physics, electrical engineering and agricultural sciences. There were two universities in Hanoi and two universities in Hồ Chí Minh City

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Chapter 6. ‘Chương Trình Khung’: The 1998-2005 Reforms and the ‘Core Curriculum’ selected for the project. Another comparative study discussing the Core Curriculum was done by Vũ Quang Việt, an economist who did an independent comparative study of the undergraduate economic curricula between a typical US institution and a leading university of economics. Vũ Quang Việt‘s study was undertaken in 2004 and was published in a book in 2011(Vũ Quang Việt, 2011).

Comparing the undergraduate program in Economics between Vietnamese and American universities, Vũ Quang Việt (2011) argues that the Vietnamese university curriculum was too long yet superficial. Compared with a typical American undergraduate economics curriculum, the number of economics subjects in a four-year undergraduate curriculum in Vietnam tripled that of the American counterpart. Specifically, the curriculum requires 1451 hours of economics in Vietnam, while it is only 480 hours (a third of the program of study) in the US system. For example, in the economics curriculum at Hồ Chí Minh City University of Economics, a student must study

all that is to know about economics‘ that the MOET and the university can think of, from fundamental course such as macro and microeconomics, to courses such as labour economics, industrial management, accountancy, geo-economics, economic law, population study, commercial policy, economics of natural resources and the environment, analysis of economic projects, stock market, etc.

(Vũ Quang Việt, 2011, p.280)

For Vũ Quang Việt, such a broad coverage came at the cost of de-specialisation in the sense that students could only acquire a bird eye‘s view in each lecture-based course while teachers did not have enough time to invest in improving their lecturers. He argues that the length of the curriculum was because of the inclusion of ‗facts‘ rather than ‗concepts‘ or ‗principles‘. Students therefore are unable to be inducted in a coherent and systematic framework:

Students cannot understand in-depth any problem if they are exposed to bit by bit of information from various subjects. […] From an analysis of the curriculum materials, it seems that the content overemphasizes factual knowledge and skills. Several subjects seem to be equivalent to a program at graduate level in the US. This might mean that the Vietnamese curriculum prioritise economic theories. However, when looking at the detailed distribution of subjects into classes, the curriculum seems to be limited to a vocational level.

(ibid)

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Chapter 6. ‘Chương Trình Khung’: The 1998-2005 Reforms and the ‘Core Curriculum’ The Harvard specialists also observed that both Vietnamese students and teachers experienced a heavy workload because the curriculum for each semester seemed to be overcrowded, covering from 6 to 8 subjects. Under this condition, teachers did not have enough time preparing for the lessons or giving feedback to their students. The students did not have time to acquire the depth of the concepts, and principles and or to perform well with the homework and projects. In physics, the Harvard reviewers argue that the workload could be reduced by half and ‗still provide the students with a solid core of education‘:

The curriculum could easily be reduced by a factor of two, and still provide the students with a solid core education. The students get little feedback on their performance during the academic year and many do not have time to do their homework assignments, which in many cases is not registered or graded by the teaching faculty.

(Stephen et al., 2006, p.27)

There was also a problem with curriculum sequencing. The Harvard specialists suggested that although most engineering core curricula appear on the surface to parallel the American counterpart, when examining in details, the Vietnamese curricula showed weak coherence. The sequencing of subjects was not based on any explicit principle. For example, in the electrical engineering core curriculum, the unclear sequencing of the curriculum could be seen in the late introduction of technical modules due to the ossified general curriculum in the first two years covering too much knowledge having nothing to do with professional knowledge:

[…] some parts of the curriculum are significantly out of date. For example, two technical drawing courses are required during the first year of study. It is not clear what purpose these courses serve. Also, most of the curriculum for the first two years seems to be the same for all engineering students, regardless of major; and there are no engineering classes offered during the first year. Most engineering curricula in the U.S. today offer at least one engineering class during the first year.

(Stephen et al., 2006, p.26)

Another problem with curriculum coherence is the imbalance between the theoretical and practical lessons. For example, a student in agriculture did not have a chance to acquire specialised skills for a particular harvest season or work in a particular agricultural activities through internships, or learning through projects, or work-based curriculum (van Alfen et a., 2007, p.11). Moreover, practical knowledge was limited to ‗low level exercises‘ or ‗finding

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Chapter 6. ‘Chương Trình Khung’: The 1998-2005 Reforms and the ‘Core Curriculum’ correct answers rather than analytical, synthetic and evaluative thinking‘ in some engineering curricula at some leading universities (Stephen et al., 2006, p.14).

As a background to the third wave of reform in 2005, there were numerous criticisms in the press and media against the Core Curriculum‘s unbalanced disproportion between ‗general curriculum‘ and ‗career curriculum‘. A humanities lecturer expressed his concern over the breadth of the general curriculum:

The current curriculum is heavy on general subjects and much less on specialised ones. Specially, at public universities, students are to go through a ‗broad‘ curriculum, learning a lot in the first two years, focusing a lot on theories. […] Books and knowledge need to be digested, accumulated with existing ones, be updated and even eliminated. With about 1.8 million dong per month (my salary), or even much more than that, we cannot simply invest to such a process.

(a humanities lecturer, quoted in Nguyễn Hoàng Hạnh, 20 November 2008)

Another lecturer in economics lamented that due to the strict regulations of the Core Curriculum and the bulk of the political subjects such as philosophy, and political economy, specialised knowledge was sidelined:

Students do not have much chance to learn specialised knowledge. For example, a bachelor program of 125 to 130 credits spends as much as 80 to 90 credits on general subjects. The foundational subjects for the field of economics consist of only 20 credits. Those professional subjects directly related to the student‘s profession account for only 20 credits, which means about 4 to 5 subjects.

(An economics lecturer, ibid)

He also voiced his concerns over the imposed textbooks and the time required to cover a subject as regulated in the MOET Core Curriculum:

With such a textbook, a lecturer has to cover all the contents before he or she is able to extend further. We cannot go against what the MOET orders. By trying to cover all the content, the students don‘t feel motivated. The teachers hence cannot find any enthusiasm to teach more. The result is, after finishing the textbook, teachers and students go home. Meanwhile, there has almost been no renovation of textbooks so far. We have not been able to combine the advantages of foreign textbooks with our own.

(ibid)

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Chapter 6. ‘Chương Trình Khung’: The 1998-2005 Reforms and the ‘Core Curriculum’ 6.5 Concluding remarks

The period between 1998 and 2005 can be identified as having a tendency to be intimately linked with the extension of state power and control over the curriculum. The 1998 curriculum featured the policymakers‘ concern for ‗quality‘ on the one hand and ‗nation-building‘ on the other. In between, a retrospective regulative and instructional focus was settled.

Regarding the regulative discourse, the passage of the 1998 Law of Education set forth a new curricular period that featured a retrospective curriculum in which an orientation to the past was the order of the day. It was centred on social order and traditional values rather than ‗introducing students into the controversies and debates within the academic disciplines and in society more broadly‘ (Wheelahan 2010, p.108). It also represented a way to legitimate the bureaucracy‘s unlimited power to intervene in the pedagogical space of the university system and mediate the very formation of the values and personal consciousness of individual teachers and students. In doing so, the policy nullified the initial attempts at granting university autonomy over curriculum by clearly fixing the limits of academic freedom and formally guaranteeing the dependence of university education on state control through its control of academic standards.

As Young and Muller (2010) argue, disciplinary knowledge is more than bits of information or specialised concepts; rather, it involves a systematic induction into a coherent framework. Access to specialised knowledge requires a focus on coherence and continuity as opposed simply to facts. Continuity and coherence, as well as conceptual clarity, is what at the heart of ‗disciplined‘ thinking‘. The 1998 instructional discourse might create the impression that it focused on the question of ‗quality standards‘ on knowledge content, yet as shown, the curriculum policy was more driven by concerns with a bureaucratic framework that sought to impose on the whole system rather than the epistemological aspect of knowledge itself. By shifting the focus to a form of technocratic structural reorganization, the Vietnamese policymakers ignored the importance of different forms of knowledge in relation to different professions or occupations. As shown, the 1998 instructional discourse seemed to show an overemphasis on factual knowledge as opposed to the organizing of courses or subjects into well-theorised, internally coherent set of principles and concepts. Therefore, despite the appearance of a discipline-based collection curriculum, knowledge seemed to be masked by external bureaucratic goals at the expense of curriculum coherence.

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Chapter 7. ‘Chuẩn Đầu Ra’: The 2005 Outcome-based Curriculum

CHAPTER 7. ‘CHUẨN ĐẦU RA’: THE 2005 OUTCOME-BASED CURRICULUM

7.1 Introduction

Since the last decade of the twentieth century, educational policies across both developed and developing countries have increasingly been influenced by economic globalization (Yates & Young, 2010). Many countries are increasingly under pressures to enhance the skill levels of their labour force and this has resulted in similar educational discourses that are based on economic and national competitiveness (Bell & Stevenson, 2006). Bell and Stevenson (2006) argue that such discourses are underwritten by the use of principles derived from neoliberal economics generally and from human capital theory in particular. Yates and Young (2010) call this trend ‗global instrumentalism‘, which promotes an instrumental view of knowledge. What is distinctive about this global instrumentalism, argue Yates and Young (2010), is the transformation of curriculum content from a focus on subject knowledge to generic outcomes in the form of skills of various kinds (e.g., learning skills, thinking skills). Such a trend could also be observed in Vietnam in the third phase of university curriculum reform in 2005.

The third wave of university reform between 2005 and 2015 saw the increased adaptation of university education policy to international trends. This is probably because since Vietnam‘s signing of the Bilateral Trade Agreement with the US in 2001, and its 2007 participation into the World Trade Organisation, the country became greatly integrated into the global economy. By the time Vietnam entered WTO, the country had achieved impressive economic growth: its annual GDP growth was second only to China‘s in Asia. Becoming a member of the WTO was expected to increase its economic and cultural integration with the rest of the world (Welch, 2010).

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Chapter 7. ‘Chuẩn Đầu Ra’: The 2005 Outcome-based Curriculum Educational officials, government leaders and many educationalists had repeatedly expressed their concerns that the system was not responsive enough to the fast-growing economic activities, the liberalization process and higher education expansion. The Vietnamese government recognised that the factors leading to its rapid economic growth in the past two decades may not serve it as well in sustaining growth throughout the 21st century. It was already looking, therefore, at how to shift the economy away from a reliance on low value-adding industries that rely on low-cost labour and towards more knowledge-intensive industries that will improve the nation‘s chances of reaching industrialized country status by 2020. Considering investment in science and technology as the foundation for future development of the country, Vietnamese leaders were actively involved in adopting policies that leverage university education and knowledge production to its aim towards more ‗knowledge based‘ industries (N. C. Tran & Nguyen, 2011). It is against this background that the government attached importance to policies that would encourage greater cooperation between industry, universities and research institutes.

The university curriculum reform in 2005 was triggered by the Higher Education Reform Agenda (HERA) Report on comprehensive reform of higher education for the period of 2006 and 2020 (see Bộ Giáo Dục và Đào Tạo, 2005a). The Report was drafted by the former Head of Department of Higher Education at MOET (who worked between 1987 and 1997) under commission from the World Bank. The idea and thrust for reform were triggered in 2004, when the then Minister of Education and Training called for a ‗policy statement‘ for higher education in response to the Prime Minister‘s education strategies for the period of 2001-2010 (Interviewee A, August 2014). After pooling ideas for about 20 drafts, the first official Report came out in June 2005. This document is significant because it was considered to be ‗the official blueprint for the development of the system up to 2020‘ (Harman et al, 2010, p.6).

The HERA Report set a path for the overall attempts to modernize the higher system by making it more responsive and socially relevant (Hayden, 2010; Harman et al, 2010) and did so by greatly extending ‗the role and importance of market mechanisms in determining the profile and availability of higher education services‘ (Harman et al, 2010, p.4). One of the main agendas of

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Chapter 7. ‘Chuẩn Đầu Ra’: The 2005 Outcome-based Curriculum the 2005 reform was to make the curriculum more relevant to the country‘s socio-economic needs and to strengthen the international competiveness of the country‘s workforce by fostering intellectual innovation. HERA set an ambitious goal that by 2020 the Vietnamese HE system would

make a fundamental progress in quality and scope, meet the needs of human resource for the socio- economic development of the country and enhance the intellectual level of the population, approach the advanced HE system in the region and the country, produce some world-class universities, contribute to strengthening the competitiveness of national human capital and economy.

(Bộ Giáo Dục và Đào Tạo, 2005a, p. 22)

HERA was not without its critics (e.g., G. Harman & Le, 2010; Smith & Nguyen, 2010). However, most criticisms revolved around the idea that the goals of HERA were ambitious and did not focus on the detailed strategies for implementation. On the basis of this Report, the Government‘s Resolution 14/2005/NQ-CP on the Comprehensive Reform of Higher Education System for 2006-2020, dated 2nd November 2005, introduced a sweeping new reform agenda for the system, followed by several related policy documents that attempt to steer Vietnam along a ‗high skills, high growth‘ path of economic development (Chính Phủ, 2005).

This chapter seeks to examine new developments in university curriculum policies between 2005 and 2015, which featured the dominance of economic vocationalism in curriculum thinking, and the struggle between different curricular discourses (the outcome-based curriculum and the content-based curriculum). As it soon revealed in subsequent developments, the HERA Report laid the foundation for a system adapted to respond to a new conception of knowledge, in which theoretical and disciplinary knowledge was set as a major stumbling block, giving way to contextual experiential knowledge to become prioritized in the curriculum. What is brought well to the fore in this period was the Netherlands-funded Profession-Oriented Higher Education (POHE) curriculum project promoted by the government. The analysis of this prominent curriculum policy serves as an illustration for my argument that curriculum reform during this period throws into sharp relief the contradictory discourses in Vietnam‘s HE policy and a new conception of knowledge.

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Chapter 7. ‘Chuẩn Đầu Ra’: The 2005 Outcome-based Curriculum 7.2 Regulative discourse

The key documents that set major goals and important directions for subsequent policies on curricular issues during this period include the HERA Report (and its materialisation in Resolution 14/2005) and the Law of Higher Education in 2012. It will be argued that the regulative discourse of these policy documents takes a strong prospective position related to economic instrumentalism. This propensity was also expressed in the nuanced shift between the ‗red‘ and ‗expert‘ discourses and the significant reduction of the political curriculum in subsequent documents.

7.2.1 The dominance of economic instrumentalism

The HERA Report featured what Moore (2007) calls a typically ‗modernising technical- functionalist‘ approach to curriculum reform. In tone and substance this manner of announcing a call for educational change is continuous with earlier documents such as the 1987 Action Programs. It also echoed the influence of the dominant discourse of the ‗knowledge economy‘ featured in other countries. The Report announced in the opening paragraph the changing conditions of Vietnamese university education in a world-wide context of globalization, international economic competitiveness, the speedy development of information and technology, the so-called ‗remarkable trends of global higher education‘ and the discourse of ‗lifelong learning‘

[…] the philosophy of education for the 21st century has experienced major transformations, i.e., ‗lifelong learning‘ is considered to be the foundation and the overall objectives of ‗learning to know, learning to do, learning to live together and learning to be a human being‘, which are viewed as a basis to move towards a ‗learning society‘.

(Bộ Giáo Dục và Đào Tạo, 2005a, p.16)

According to Aspin et al. (2012), although international agencies in education such as UNESCO, the World Bank or OECD might differ in relation to how strongly they emphasized either the ‗instrumental‘ or the ‗progressive‘ dimension of the lifelong learning concept, they share a

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Chapter 7. ‘Chuẩn Đầu Ra’: The 2005 Outcome-based Curriculum similar conception that lifelong learning involves a primary instrumental concern with economic performance:

Lifelong learning […] is primarily concerned with the promotion of skills and competences necessary for developing general capabilities and specific performance in roles, activities and tasks that relate primarily, or in some cases entirely, to economic development and performance.

(Aspin et al., 2012, p.xix)

The guiding rationale for change is related to the mismatch of the development of university education with socio-economic changes. While earlier HE reforms since 1986 also took economic development as their main rationale, this time the reform attempted to respond more assertively to the training needs of government, projecting the HE sector as relevant to the national and international market:

[…] the greatest weakness that has caused a lot of concern in society and hindered the process of industrialization and modernization and international economic integration is the mismatch between higher education‘s capacity and the requirements of training human resources for the cause of industrialization and modernization and the learning needs of the population.

(Bộ Giáo Dục và Đào Tạo, 2005a, p.17)

The mission for higher education, as expressed in HERA, was one that foregrounded an employability agenda:

The guiding mission of higher education is to provide human resources with knowledge, skills and high- quality for all occupations and professions, all socio-economic sectors, contributing to enhancing the intellectual potential of the country.

(ibid, p.21)

Economic instrumentalism is also expressed in HERA‘s proposal for a remarkable widening of higher education access. HERA projected a comparative scenario of trends among university students across a number of countries near Vietnam. It argued that the current enrolment rate could not gear Vietnam to a mass system of higher education, to which it linked the competitiveness of the economy. As an agenda for change, this new round of reform promoted

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Chapter 7. ‘Chuẩn Đầu Ra’: The 2005 Outcome-based Curriculum increased access and remarkable expansion of higher education. The HERA Report recommended that enrolments be tripled within 15 years, with a significant expansion of private institutions to account for 40 per cent of all university enrolments as compared to 13 per cent at present. This recommendation resonated with later governmental decisions to expand higher education and raise the price of tuition fees to boost economic growth. The massification of higher education was also accompanied by a selective scheme of state funding for different types of institutions, resulting in the stratification of Vietnamese universities in which there would be a small number of elite research universities on top of the pyramid structure differentiated from the mass profession-oriented institutions. The Report set the goal that by 2020 about 70-80% of total student population would be enrolled in profession-application institutions.

Regarding curriculum and pedagogical issues, HERA projected vocationalism as the dominant discourse. It displayed an overt discontent with the Core Curriculum, charging that it ‗overemphasized theory at the expense of practice‘, and was ‗rigid‘, ‗outdated‘, too ‗theoretical‘. The solution for this ‗problem‘ was to reverse it to a contrasting knowledge discourse: courses and programs were recommended to be more socially relevant and pragmatic, with a focus on ‗skills‘ and practical knowledge.

7.2.2 A nuanced shift between the ‘red’ and ‘expert’ discourse

Parallel with the dominance of economic vocationalism, it is possible to see the ‗nuanced‘ shift between the ‗red‘ discourse and ‗expert‘ discourse in the 2005 Reform. The Article on the purpose of higher education in the 2005 Law of Education (a revised version of the 1998 Law of Education) seemed to emphasize the ‗red‘ over the ‗expert‘:

Art. 39 (Law 2005): The purpose of higher education is to form learners with political qualities, ethics, the willingness to serve the people, knowledge and practical professional capacity corresponding to the level of training, and with good health to contribute to the building and defense of the Motherland.

(Quốc Hội, 2005)

However, in the Law of Higher Education of 2012, the ‗human resources‘ was prioritized over ‗political qualities‘(Quốc Hội, 2012). There was no indication of a ‗socialist‘ higher education, and the point on the aim of university education to provide the students with ‗political quality‘ is

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Chapter 7. ‘Chuẩn Đầu Ra’: The 2005 Outcome-based Curriculum open to interpretation. This effort entails seeking a deep secularisation of Vietnamese HE curriculum under the cover of a desire to globalise and integrate with the normative values of competition, performance and individualism:

Art. 5 (Law 2012) section 1. General purpose of higher education is to (a) produce human resources, enhance people‘s knowledge, cultivate talent; conduct scientific research, generate technological knowledge, innovation, serving the socio-economic demands, ensuring national security and defence and international integration; (b) to provide learners with political qualities and ethics; knowledge and professional skills, research capacity, development of technological applications corresponding to one‘s training level; with good health, creativity and professional responsibility, adaptability to the work environment; and the willingness to serve the people.

(Quốc Hội, 2012)

Other documents could be cited to illustrate the precedence of instrumentalism over neo- conservativism in the 2005 Curriculum. For example, the CPV General Secretary‘s advocacy of ‗high quality workforce‘ over ‗state building‘ could also be observed in the Central Party Committee‘s Resolution on Comprehensive Reform of the Education System in 2013.

Higher education must produce high quality workforce, foster talent, develop self-study capacity and competence, the creativity of the learners. [It must] Consolidate the system of higher education, the professional structure, level of training to match with those in the region and the world. [It must] Diversify institutions to match the needs of technological development, sectors and professions; the need of state building and national defence and international integration.

(Đảng Cộng Sản Việt Nam, 2013)

7.2.3 The reduced legitimacy of the ‘red’ knowledge

Although the HERA Report seemed to avoid any mentioning of the political curriculum, in the period between 2005 and 2015 it is possible to see a similar swing as in the early 1990s in the Marxist-Leninist curriculum and a challenge to the ‗red‘ approach to social sciences and humanities. It was first expressed in some critiques of the 1998 curriculum as overloaded with the general curriculum at the expense of the career curriculum. For example, Mr Đỗ Trần Cát,

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Chapter 7. ‘Chuẩn Đầu Ra’: The 2005 Outcome-based Curriculum General Secretary of the Council for State Professorship recommends restructuring the curriculum:

The MOET needs to re-structure the curriculum. Subjects in philosophy and political economy must be reduced to spend time teaching professional knowledge.

(Đỗ Trần Cát, quoted in H.L.Anh & D.Hằng, 17 May 2005)

The apparent thrust to reduce ‗red‘ knowledge could be observed in the way Marxist-Leninist discourse was treated in the two successive Regulations 25/2006 and Regulations 43/2007. Before 2006, scores of Marxist-Leninist subjects in the final graduation examination had the same value as other subjects. With the introduction of Regulation 25/2006/QD-BGDDT (Article 13, section 2, point b), the value of these subjects in the final graduation examination was not to be counted into the overall performance, although Article 14 indicated that students still had to learn these subjects and had to undertake a final gruaduation examination to get a ‗certificate‘ as a condition for graduation (Bộ Giáo Dục và Đào Tạo, 2006). However, a year later, in 2007, Regulation 43/2007/QD-BGD-DT the final graduation exam of the Marxist-Leninist curriculum was abandoned (Bộ Giáo Dục và Đào Tạo, 2007).

The separate ministerial decisions on detailed outlines of each political subject between 2002 and 2003 were replaced by Decision 52/2008/QD-BGDDT in 2008, which provided a detailed outline of the political curriculum for students of universities and colleges who were not specializing in Marxism-Leninism and Hồ Chí Minh thought (Bộ Giáo Dục và Đào Tạo, 2008). This document featured some major changes in the structuring and even the naming of Marxist- Leninist subjects. The time amount was reduced significantly by half. Some subjects were integrated into themes, namely:

 The three subjects ‗Marxist-Leninist philosophy‘, ‗Marxist-Leninist political economy‘, ‗scientific socialism‘ were integrated to become ‗Basic principles of Marxism-Leninism‘;  The subject ‗History of the Communist Party of Vietnam‘ was changed into The revolutionary lines of the Communist Party of Vietnam‘;

The objectives of these subjects remain the same, ‗to provide students with fundamental knowledge about Marxism-Leninism, Hồ Chí Minh thought, and the pathway of the Party, so

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Chapter 7. ‘Chuẩn Đầu Ra’: The 2005 Outcome-based Curriculum that they can construct a scientific and revolutionary worldview corresponding to Marxist- Leninist and Hồ Chí Minh ideology, and trust in communism‘ (Bộ Giáo Dục và Đào Tạo, 2008). Table 9 summarises the changes in the political curriculum after 2008:

Marxist-Leninist Time amount and sequencing Objectives subjects

Basic principles of 5 credits; studied in the first - To help students identify the basic theoretical Marxism-Leninism year foundations of Marxism-Leninism so that they can approach Hồ Chí Minh thought and the pathway of the Communist Party of Vietnam -To build up trust and revolutionary ideal; -To establish a general worldview and methodology to approach other subjects in their major.

Hồ Chí Minh thought 2 credits; preceded by Basic -To provide students with systematic knowledge Principles of Marxism-Leninism about Hồ Chí Minh‘s thoughts, ethics and cultural values; -To continue providing basic knowledge about Marxism-Leninism; -To help students understand the basic ideological foundation and lodestar of the Party and our country‘s revolutions -To contribute to forming the ethical foundation of the new person

Pathway of the 3 credits -To provide students with basic knowledge about the Communist Party of pathway of the Communist Party of Vietnam, Vietnam focusing on the approach and policies of the Party during the Reform (Doi Moi) era on some major social fields. -To build up the student‘s trust in the leadership, objectives and the ideal of the Party; -To help students actively apply their professional knowledge in solving socio-economic and cultural problems along with the guidelines, laws and policies of the Party and State

Table 9. The political curriculum after 2008

The challenge to the legitimacy of these subjects was not only evident in the reduction in time amount and content but also in the way the government attempted to reverse the situation by resorting to offering free tuition to students taking an undergraduate degree in Marxism- Leninism and the works of Hồ Chí Minh at public universities (Chính Phủ, 2013). Commenting on these changes in the reduced legitimacy of the political subjects, the New York Times

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Chapter 7. ‘Chuẩn Đầu Ra’: The 2005 Outcome-based Curriculum suggested that ‗market forces were working against the ideology of Marx, Lenin and Hồ Chí Minh‘, and the main reason was that potential employers were ‗not interested in these programs‘ (The New York Times, 15 August 2013). An interviewee cited in this article, a director of admission and training at Hồ Chí Minh University of Social Sciences and Humanities, acknowledged that the students themselves had become more convinced of the fact that the study of these degrees would not ensure them well-paying jobs and more and more students of social sciences and humanities had pursued degrees in communications, tourism, international relations and English.

Unlike the brief moment in the 1990s when grievances over the teaching and learning of Marxism-Leninism were allowed to be openly published in the official media, this third phase saw an increase critique of these subjects on ‗unofficial‘ communication channels such as the international press and social media such as blogs and Facebook. The internet, which has become a too powerful and widespread phenomenon to be entirely subjected to governmental control, has provided an attractive ‗outlet‘ for people inside the country to express their thoughts.

Some students interviewed by Radio Free Asia (RFA), an overseas newspaper, also expressed discontents with the Marxist-Leninist curriculum. They complained that it took too much of their time in the first year. A student from Da Nang Polytechniques commented that:

Our general years take place in year 1, 2 and 3 and our professional phase takes place in year 4 and 5. Political subjects normally take 4 credits, which are quite significant compared to others…we study about 8 subjects in a semester, some professional subjects take only 2 credits, so I can say political subjects are quite significant in terms of time amount. We don‘t consider them important, yet because they occupy considerable credits, we have to try to score high in these subjects.

(Việt Hà, 31 August 2009)

Another student in Hanoi explicitly stated that he disliked these subjects because ‗they are rigid and abstract, difficult to learn‘ while another third year student in bio-technology in Hồ Chí Minh City said that she was forced to learn these subjects ‗just to pass exams‘ and did not hesitate to say she would not choose to study these courses even if with a tuition fee waiver (Kính Hòa, 21 August 2013). A university lecturer at an economic university in Hồ Chí Minh City also suggested that the amount of time for Marxism-Leninism for economics and business

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Chapter 7. ‘Chuẩn Đầu Ra’: The 2005 Outcome-based Curriculum majors was unnecessarily overloaded. These subjects took up 60 periods in the first 2 years of the general curriculum, and 75 periods in the third year of the professional stage. The amount was even greater for master study level (90 periods and to be increased to 120 periods). Apart from these subjects, economic and business students must also study history of economic theories in 45 periods, of which 30 periods are about Marxist-Leninist economic theory (ibid).

Between 14 November 2014 and 23 November 2014, a young and influential journalist opened a Facebook public post for discussions about what former students learned from their university years (Phạm Lan Phương, November 2014). Her friends and readers were invited to share their memory of the ‗experiential‘ curriculum. Seven responses were received with more or less detailed narratives of their university experience. A businessman, who used to study economics at the National University of Economics in Hồ Chí Minh City, found the political curriculum ‗a waste of time‘:

[…] the first three periods in my student life was the subject called ‗Scientific Socialism‘. When I was little, I heard debates about this subject from my elder brothers and sisters. After listening to the lecture for a period, I tossed a piece of paper to a Hanoi female classmate, inviting her to quit class for a coffee in Vong street (café No 10, maybe). It was my first time quitting class in my student life.

Then gradually I became familiar with the university life. We had to take over 20 subjects in the general curriculum during the first two years. Of course these include the ‗classic groups‘ of political economy, scientific socialism, Marxist-Leninist philosophy, History of the Communist Party and the thought of ‗his‘ (Uncle Ho, of course). There were also some other subjects such as macroeconomics, microeconomics, demography, history of national economics, etc. Yet I did not have much motivation to come to class (except for the English course). I spent most of my time in the canteens (I didn‘t play computer games back then) where I could meet and talk with many of my university mates.

All the semesters passed peacefully like that, and it seems the only thing I really learnt was the experience for attendance check. It was not too difficult to just reach a ‗passable‘ mark (5/10), because they were all ‗theoretical‘ subjects – we could write as much as we wished, as long as we didn‘t write the lyrics of the songs into the exam paper.

I find that university education was too lax. It took us 2 years just to learn a few useful subjects. The thing is, the lecturers read out loud from the texts and all we had to do was to write down – so I think it was a waste of time to come to class. But perhaps none of us regretted our time at university. [...]

(quoted in Phạm Lan Phương, November 2014)

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Chapter 7. ‘Chuẩn Đầu Ra’: The 2005 Outcome-based Curriculum A cameraman, who used to study cinematography at a university in Hồ Chí Minh City, compares the political curriculum to ‗subjects of terror‘:

Some asks me what I had learnt from this major in cinematography – of course I learnt things about photography and film-making. This involved a lot of knowledge about film-making in different areas, such as documentaries, movie clips or films. But wait, even if you‘re studying film-making, you still need some ‗ground‘ knowledge. So we started with the science of all sciences: philosophy, of course it was all about Marxism-Leninism, or were there any different kinds of philosophy in this world? And then Hồ Chí Minh thought, the History of the Communist Party, and a bunch of other boring things that anyone studying at a university in Vietnam could imagine.

Those were days of dry lessons when we just came for the sake of attendance. The lecturers read and many students slept to the end of the first two years. All students in other departments studied these subjects with us. During those hours, apart from playing cards or flirting each other, we also competed in the sleeping game. Those were subjects of terror…

(ibid)

A social worker, a former student in Women Studies complained that those subjects were ‗as dull as dishwater‘ and had nothing to do with her major:

…then came those lessons sitting in the lecture hall feeling as boring as watching the paint dry: Marxism- Leninism philosophy, Hồ Chí Minh thought, Introduction to Law, Political Economy. During the lessons, the lecturers read and we listened; we were like the cows trying to chew and swallow up what we heard and then regurgitated afterwards. Dialectic materialism, superstructure, surplus values…all those concepts that were as dull as dishwater and had nothing to do with my major: Women Studies.

(ibid)

It seems that whenever some public dissatisfaction with the status quo of the political curriculum was raised, there was always a neo-conservative attempt to set it right. In 2013, as Vietnamese netizens became ever more infused with diverse information and heated discussions about diverse socio-economic and political issues, the Communist Party leaders seemed concerned. In particular, the State called for ideas on the amendment of the Constitution in 2013 which drew considerable comments from the public. Although not visible in the public media, ideas that demanded the separation of powers and the abandonment of the Article (Article 4) that upholds the exclusive leadership of the Communist Party were well received in the internet. In response, the General Secretary of the Party had a televised speech threatening these aspirations as being

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Chapter 7. ‘Chuẩn Đầu Ra’: The 2005 Outcome-based Curriculum ‗reactionary‘ (i.e., ‗anti-revolutionary‘) and ‗corrupted‘ and ‗deviated from the socialist ideology‘. This warning was then focused on the university curriculum, with the State‘s call for more ideological rectitude. The General Secretary stressed the importance of Hồ Chí Minh thought and dialectical materialism as a methodology for addressing political questions.

As part of the ideological rectification agenda, a review of university works in the social sciences and humanities spheres began. Ideas such as ‗constitutionalism‘, ‗civil society‘, ‗freedom of press‘ were considered crucial ideological dangers which needed to be thwarted. The rebuke of a literary master‘s thesis and the revocation of the degree from the thesis‘s author (whose pen name is Nhã Thuyên) presented one nation-wide case of the State and Party‘s attempt to block expressions that challenged the power of the Communist Party and its ideals of Socialism. The master‘s thesis discussed ‗marginalised voices‘ of contemporary Vietnamese literature and was marked in 2010 with highest distinction for being original. However, in mid-2013, some articles appeared in Nhân Dân (or People’s Daily, the official voice of the Communist Party of Vietnam) and in Tạp Chí Văn Nghệ Quân Đội (or The Army’s Arts and Letters), accusing the thesis of being ‗reactionary‘. After that, many other newspapers and articles in the official press media published similar critiques of the young scholar, drawing much attention from the public. This event, known as ‗The Nhã Thuyên case‘, sparked a heated controversy in different literary forums on the internet. Comments were polarized between those professors who argued that the thesis was infused with Western ideas challenging the social order and those who defended its originality. In the past, cases of writers or intellectuals being publicly punished by the ruling elites like this were not uncommon, yet it was not until after 2005 that voices of differing stands about the same incidence could reach many people, especially those who used the internet9.

In 2014, the Central Committee on Education and Propaganda issued decision 94 (28/3/2014) and Instruction 127 (30/6/2014) on the renovation of political curriculum in the national education system, sending out a message on the importance of research, teaching and studying political ideas associated with social needs on ‗unity, ideological consensus, political stability, the defence of revolutionary theory of science of Marxism-Leninism, Hồ Chí Minh thought, the views and policies of the Communist Party of Vietnam‘ (Phan Thanh Bình, January 2015). As

9 For a relatively comprehensive record of the event, see Duong Tu (26 April 2014)

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Chapter 7. ‘Chuẩn Đầu Ra’: The 2005 Outcome-based Curriculum part of this agenda, leaders from many universities were asked to look for ways to renovate the teaching and assessment methods of these subjects.

In November 2015, a national conference on ‗enhancing the quality of teaching and learning of political curriculum in universities and colleges‘ was held. Eighty papers from deans and lecturers of Marxist-Leninist departments raised concerns over the one-way teaching method and rote-learning assessment of these subjects and argued for increased active teaching, yet the question of content was never addressed. Phan Thanh Bình, the Rector of National University of Hồ Chí Minh City as well as the chair of the conference, started the conference with a forceful defence of the Marxist-Leninist curriculum, arguing that this body of knowledge played an important role in the formation of ‗a distinct Vietnamese identity‘:

The consistent logic is the creative application and development of basic foundation of Marxism-Leninism and Hồ Chí Minh thought in contemporary Vietnamese society, significantly contributing to the formation of a distinct Vietnamese identity. Such is the universal application of the worldview, methodology and advanced humanist conception, scientific approach of the Party to the whole society, particularly to students in all HEIs, who will be the pioneers in building and defending the nation, aspiring to the goals of a wealthy, strong and democratic, just and civilised nation.

(Phan Thanh Bình, January 2015, p.20)

In 2012, the Prime Minister issued a Decision on elevating the national centre research in social sciences and humanities and national centre for research in natural sciences and technology to what is similar to the Soviet research academy, a form of think tank in the past that closely served the political and state directions. These Academies were tasked with developing policy recommendations and consultancy to be operational by 2020. This Decision was aimed at curtailing the independence and autonomy of HE institutions and refocusing on the task of universities towards teaching rather than research.

7.3 Instructional discourse

The 2005 reform was aimed at replacing the 1998 content-based curriculum (the Core Curriculum). Its strong propensity for vocationalism entails policies that were underpinned by different, if not contradictory, pedagogical principles. As I will show below, the 2005 curriculum was full of contradictory knowledge discourses caused by the co-existence of the insulated Core Curriculum, the flexible course-credit and the hybridized outcome-based competence discourse.

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Chapter 7. ‘Chuẩn Đầu Ra’: The 2005 Outcome-based Curriculum According to the author and one of the consultants of the HERA Report, the crucial concern of HERA was the development of 'generic competencies' and diverse learning pathways for students:

The only concern expressed in HERA about this process is that it needs to be refined to provide students with more opportunities for articulation between courses and institutions. It is clear, however, that there are other issues requiring attention in relation to curriculum frameworks. A view widely expressed is that they need to relate better to industry needs, that they need to focus more on the development of generic academic competencies and that they need to encourage students to develop a broader base of knowledge in the humanities or the sciences before proceeding to more specialised studies.

(Hayden and Lam, 2010, p.26)

Particularly, I will focus on the Profession-Oriented Higher Education (POHE) curriculum, a donor-led project that received much attention during this period, to illustrate how all the contradictions and the spirit of the 2005 reform could be captured in this curriculum.

Key features of the 2005 curriculum from this mixed pallet include:

 An emphasis on the ‗learner-centred‘ ‗curricular choice‘ of the course-credit discourse and its tension with the content-based Core Curriculum;  The reconceptualization of knowledge as ‗outcomes‘ and ‗competence‘ and its tension with the course-credit discourse.

7.3.1 The course-credit approach and its clash with the Core Curriculum

Like waves on a beach, the course-credit discourse of the 1990s made a comeback in the 2005 curriculum. The reasons were well rehearsed in the HERA Report and the subsequent policy documents: greater mobility, flexible student choices, employability and openness to new kinds of knowledge, particularly knowledge contextually required from the world of work. However, it was inherently in tension with another donor-led top-down approach that arises with the parallel Core Curriculum which embedded contradictory principles of organizing knowledge, in Bernstein‘s term a collection model as opposed to an integrated one. This tension was first visible in the HERA curriculum.

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Chapter 7. ‘Chuẩn Đầu Ra’: The 2005 Outcome-based Curriculum HERA did not present a consistent view on the specific measures needed to reform the curriculum. It did not make much mention of the need to reform the existing Core Curricula, but instead held this discourse in tension with the flexible choice-based discourse of the course- credit curriculum. Specifically, on the one hand it proposed that a course-credit approach should be employed to ‗build up a relevant model for the higher education system‘ and to ‗allow learners to accumulate knowledge according to their capacity and conditions as well as to transfer their academic route among HEIs inside and outside the country‘. On the other hand, it recommended the continuation of the construction of the Core Curriculum for all study programs at university and college levels, using it as ‗a standard means to enhance quality while ensuring the autonomy of HEIs in curriculum content‘ (Bộ Giáo Dục và Đào Tạo, 2005a, pp.25-26).

This tension between Core Curriculum and course-credit curriculum gave rise to divergent readings of its subsequent policy texts, namely Regulation 25 in 2006 and Regulation 43 in 2007. Explaining the parallel existence of the two documents, the former Vice-head of the MOET Department of Higher Education suggested that since the immediate transformation of the system into the credit accumulation and transfer may be too disruptive, all institutions would first employ the ‗hybrid‘ form by 2010, while the complete course-credit curriculum would be reached when the necessary conditions for this new model would be fulfilled by 2020 (Lê Viết Khuyến, 2010).

Regulation 25 was issued in 2006 regulating the curriculum, pedagogy and assessment for HEIs in general and Regulation 43 was issued a year later for those institutions which decided to apply the course-credit system. These documents revealed different requirements for the application of the course-credit curriculum. Regulation 25 in 2006 was a modification of Regulation 04 in 1999 so that the curriculum became less ‗fixed/year-based‘ (tính niên chế) and more ‗course-credit based‘ (tính tín chỉ). Basically, like Regulation 04, it expressed the hybridization of both the year-based and course-credit curriculum design in the sense that the ‗subject‘ (học phần) was semesterised rather than year-based, yet there were no electives or flexible accumulation and transfer among ‗subjects‘. The unit of measurement for students‘ work seems to be just a matter of a change of term: the ‗learning unit‘ (đơn vị học trình) was no different from the ‗credit unit‘ (đơn vị tín chỉ). However, compared to Regulation 04, Regulation 25 seems to be more flexible

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Chapter 7. ‘Chuẩn Đầu Ra’: The 2005 Outcome-based Curriculum in two ways. First, it allowed students to register for courses at different paces (slow, normal or fast) and they could also pursue two degrees at the same time. Second, students were assessed on a formative basis. The exam of a module was the combination of constituent grades during the course.

Regulation 43 issued in 2007 served as a ‗sample‘ so that the institutions could imagine how a ‗true course-credit curriculum‘ would look like (Lê Viết Khuyến, ibid). In this ‗true‘ course- credit curriculum, the term for the measurement of study time would be ‗credit‘ (tín chỉ), instead of ‗đơn vị học trình‘ (learning unit). Decision 43 significantly reduced the number of credits in the curriculum. Accordingly, the successful completion of a six year university degree requires 180 credits, a five year degree requires 150 credits and a four year degree requires 120 credits. This was expected to look more similar to the American system. The class would be organized according to the number of students registering for modules, and not according to the whole cohort of students in the same class that extends the whole program of study. The assessment regulations also changed. For example, the academic results would be based on the accumulated credits and the GPA in each semester. The scale of assessment was based on A, B, C, D, F, instead of numeric scale from 0 to 10.

The difference between these two regulations was explained by the then Vice-Head of the MOET Department of Higher Education as follows:

Regulation 25/2006/QĐ-BGD&ĐT Regulation 43/2007/QĐ-BGD-ĐT

1. Scope

For HEIs combining the year-based curriculum with For HEIs applying the course-credit system the course-credit curriculum

2. Measurement of students’ learning

Đơn vị học trình (literally translated ‗learning unit‘) Tin chi (credit)

3. Academic monitoring system

Students‘ eligibility or ineligibility to move on to the Students‘ registration of the amount of subjects, next step is assessed on year-based criterion. It assessment of subjects, the eligibility or ineligibility is depends on the number of subjects they registered and monitored on a semester basis. the grades they get by the end of the semester.

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4. Assessment

Criteria: Average Grade of the whole academic year, Criteria: Number of subjects registered in each the number of subjects with grades below 5, the semester, average grade of each semester, the amount Average Grade accumulated from the beginning of the of accumulated subjects; the average accumulated study program. grade.

5. Class organisation

According to cohort According to the subjects registered

6. Registration of subjects

One time registration Three time registration: early, average, late

7. Grade for each subject

On a 10-mark scale Use alphabetic scale (A, B, C, D, F) before converting to a 4 level scale (4,3,2,1,0)

8. Grade Point Average

On a 10-mark scale On a non-linear 4 level scale

9. Graduation thesis

Students can graduate by conducting a graduate thesis Only a graduate thesis is allowed. or by taking a graduate exam No graduate exam

Table 10. Comparison of Regulation 25/2006/QĐ-BGD&ĐT and Regulation 43/2007/QĐ-BGD-ĐT

(Source: Lê Viết Khuyến, 2010, p. 396)

The 2005-2015 course-credit curriculum differs from the 1987-1998 model in some respects. First, it carried a somewhat different assumption from the 1990 reform: it sought to copy the ‗universal‘ American definition of a course-credit curriculum as much as possible, and it highlighted the importance of students‘ choices. Second, the 2005 course-credit curriculum also became more detailed and more ‗flexible‘ than the 1990 one. In other words, while the underlying argument behind the course-credit system in the late 1990s was to address ‗national goal‘ as the country made the initial step onto the market economy, the HERA tended to emphasize the ‗global‘ aspect, arguing that the need for the curriculum to shift from courses to credits represents the responsiveness of the HE system to globalization.

The course-credit discourse in the 2005 curriculum exhibited several modifications that focus on the ‗autonomy‘ of the learners: the learners determine their own educational pace, maximizing

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Chapter 7. ‘Chuẩn Đầu Ra’: The 2005 Outcome-based Curriculum their occupational opportunities being the guiding ideal. The illustration can be seen in Regulation 43‘s definition of the ‗unit of credit‘ (đơn vị tín chỉ), which measures the amount of student work. Here, a unit of credit is ‗equal to 15 teaching hours in theory‘ and ‗for theoretical and practical components, experiments, a credit requires 30 hours of self-study‘. Therefore, the unit of credit as defined in the Regulation 43 is equivalent to the American unit of credit (Lâm Quang Thiệp, 2012). According to this definition, a student needs 15 class hours a week (which means a total of 45 hours a week, equivalent to 9 hours a day), and one academic year (30 study weeks) can provide approximately 30 credits. In comparison, the ‗unit of credit‘ in the 1990 curriculum was equivalent to 2/3 of the American credit. According to the former MOET Head of Department of Higher Education, this difference in the definitions of credit units is due to the fact that ‗teaching and learning methods in the USA require more self-study and fewer class hours‘. He expressed his concern over this ‗anything goes‘ approach to the curriculum by arguing that:

[…] a lot of instructors still use ‗traditional‘ teaching methods which put more emphasis on knowledge transfer than on interaction. In this way, the definition of the unit of credit similar to the American definition will face a big challenge: while class work is reduced and the curriculum is trimmed, the training quality will be decreased since teaching and learning methods have not been changed yet. […] I think that the unit of credit in Vietnam should not be defined as in the regulation 43 for all HEIs.

(Lâm Quang Thiệp, 2012, p. 9)

To sum up, compared with the course-credit system adopted in the early 1990s, the 2005 version moved further towards flexibility and away from a sanctioned content structure. After some years existing in tension, these two discourses finally became reconciled through the adoption of the outcome-based approach, removing Core Curriculum from the scene.

7.3.2 The Outcome-based curriculum and its attendant tensions

One of the main agendas of the 2005 curriculum reform was to establish ‗quality assurance‘ and developed legal procedures for ‗institutional autonomy‘ and ‗accountability‘. These are discourses that reflect the world-wide trend of New Public Management in higher education (Neave, 2012; Nybom, 2012; Woelert, 2016). In Europe, for example, New Public Management since the 1980s has led to a re-conceptualisation of the mission of higher education as

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Chapter 7. ‘Chuẩn Đầu Ra’: The 2005 Outcome-based Curriculum instrumental means, functioning as a development or innovation centre. It has also turned higher education from a system of strict input control into different type of output control and brought about an ‗explosive growth of diverse evaluation and accountability schemes‘ (Nybom 2012, p.173). In curriculum terms, one of the mechanisms to realise the shift from input to output is the discourse of learning outcomes.

The outcome-based curriculum approach has gained a strong foothold in different parts of the world since the 1990s, particularly in South Africa in the early 1990s and in Europe since the 2000s (e.g., Fitzmaurice, 2008; Karseth, 2006; Mäkinen & Annala, 2012; Petkutė, 2016; Young, 2010) as well as the US (e.g., Sullivan & Thomas, 2007) and Australia (e.g., Wheelahan, 2010). The substantial time given for constructing learning outcomes is associated with what Young (2009) calls a shift from epistemological to administrative accountability, in which the basis for curriculum knowledge is no longer taken from specialist professionals but from the state and the labour market (administrators and employers), who have the most voice in the approval of learning outcomes. With learning outcome discourse, the states and governments in many countries are shifting to what are called systems of ‗steering‘, which refers to ‗the externally derived instruments and institutional arrangements which seek to govern organisational and academic behaviours within higher education institutions‘ (Ferlie et al., 2008, p. 326). Several authors have described this trend as a shift in the conception of knowledge from ‗knowing that‘ to ‗knowing how‘, which in several cases involve the thrust to reduce abstract theoretical knowledge out of the policy discourse (e.g., Muller & Young, 2014; Karseth, 2006; Morley, 2003; Wheelahan, 2010). Empirical studies in the UK have shown this trend as ‗movement away from knowledge and towards the acquisition of skills‘ (Morley, 2003, p. 42). The provision of statements of outcomes, what students should know and be able to do provide an indication of the meaning of ‗graduateness‘ (Morley 2003, p.41) and ‗provide a set of organizing principle in the face of possible chaotic innovations‘ (ibid, p.42). In doing this, Morley (2003) argues that quality control through learning outcomes of subjects (subject benchmarking) is ‗linked to hegemonic assumptions about how disciplines are interpreted‘ and hence ‗underestimate the range and depth of knowledge acquired‘. Besides, by conforming to requirements, this policy ‗overlooks diversity, complexity and change‘ in curricular knowledge (ibid, p.42).

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Chapter 7. ‘Chuẩn Đầu Ra’: The 2005 Outcome-based Curriculum In Vietnam, with Governmental Resolution 14/NQ-CP in 2005 (the policy document based on HERA Report), Vietnam began to move into the trend of taking learning outcomes as a mechanism to organize systemic aims, quality assurance and curricular knowledge. It started first with vocational education, then university education, before finally spreading to the whole system in 2013 when the Central Party Committee‘s Resolution 29-NQ-TW on comprehensive reform of the whole education system officially proclaimed a shift to ‗learning outcomes‘ at all educational levels: Learning outcomes is considered to be the ‗key‘ to modernizing the system:

Publicise learning outcomes of each level, subject, curriculum, field of study and specialty. These are steps to ensure quality of the whole system and each educational institution, a basis for evaluating the quality of the institutions.

(Đảng Cộng Sản Việt Nam, 2013)

In early 2007, the MOET issued an action program for all HEIs to join a campaign of ‗HE for social relevance‘ (Việt Đông, 1 June 2010). The campaign involved designing study programs that focus on fields that society was in need of, such as information technology, finance and banking, tourism, pharmacy, medicine, ship building, high-tech, etc. One remarkable component of this campaign was the ‗Three pillars of transparency‘ policy (‗Chính sách ba công khai’), which requires all HEIs to publicise ‗learning outcomes‘ of all their programs, the financial status and the rate of employment of students after graduating from the university within a year. The learning outcomes discourse started gaining potency in HE curriculum thinking in Vietnam.

In 2010, the MOET issued Circular No.2196/BGDDT-GDDH stating that all HEIs were required to identify and announce ‗learning outcomes‘ (chuẩn đầu ra) for all programs. This was an attempt to arrange knowledge so that the curriculum becomes more ‗flexible‘ and ‗accountable‘ to the students and society and strengthen the linkage between the institution and the employers:

The goal of constructing and publishing chuẩn đầu ra (learning outcomes):

a. to show to society the training capacity and quality assurance conditions of the HEIs so that the learners, parents, employers know and monitor; to realise the commitment of the HEIs to society on training quality so that administrators, lecturers and learners are supported in teaching and learning; renovating training management, teaching and assessment methods; identifying responsibilities and tasks of administrators,

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lecturers in teaching and learning to support learners in learning and self-learning to achieve learning outcomes.

b. to inform learners of knowledge provided after completing a major, a standard level of professional competence, professional knowledge, practical skills, the ability to solve problems and work that they undertake after graduation;

c. to facilitate the cooperation and bond between the HEIs and employers and to meet the demands of the employers.

(Bộ Giáo Dục và Đào Tạo, 2010)

This Circular was translated into pressures on universities to review the appropriateness and responsiveness of curricula to the economic imperatives of the State. The regulation on learning outcomes is a means to achieve quality control and determine equivalence among programs. In this way, the difference between knowledge fields and forms could be minimized. According to this document, ‗learning outcome‘ refers to

specialised knowledge; practical skills, understanding of technology and problem-solving and occupational tasks that a student achieve upon graduation, as well as other specific regulations on each training level and majors.

(Bộ Giáo Dục và Đào Tạo, 2010)

With the introduction of the Law of Higher Education in 2012, the ‗Core Curriculum‘ (chương trình khung) was officially removed, being replaced by ‗learning outcomes‘ as a form of curriculum steering control. Article 38 of 2012 Law of Higher Education defines ‗learning outcomes‘ as

detailed, explicit descriptors written in specific documents in the specific study programs. They express the commitment of the HEIs in providing students with knowledge, skills and attitudes that the learner will achieve after completing the study program. Such descriptors show what the learners need to know, understand and/or to do after graduation.

(Quốc Hội, 2012)

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Chapter 7. ‘Chuẩn Đầu Ra’: The 2005 Outcome-based Curriculum But nailing down the definition of ‗learning outcomes‘ to a number of features did not remove the ambiguity even among the MOET people in charge of the policy. A senior official from MOET Department of Higher Education who was responsible for instructing and guiding HEIs in implementing this policy commented that:

What is called ‗chuẩn đầu ra‘ in Vietnam is not equivalent to ‗learning outcomes‘. I don‘t agree with the translation of ‗chuẩn đầu ra‘ into ‗learning outcomes‘, but this is the legacy of the past, when several years before, all universities and the Ministry were familiar with the term ‗chuẩn đầu ra‘. They even introduce this term into the Law of Higher Education, so I had to do with this Vietnamese term and use ‗learning outcome‘ as an English equivalent. I‘m not sure of the relation between ‗chuẩn đầu ra‘ (learning outcome) and ‗năng lực‘ (competence).

(Interviewee C, Aug 2014)

Clearly, the translation of the foreign adopted terms into Vietnamese language caused much trouble to the policymakers. From the comment of the MOET official above, it seems there was some confusion between learning outcome in the form of a benchmarking tool for quality assurance, and learning outcome as an epistemological concept used in curriculum organisation, pedagogy and assessment. What Circular 2196 attempted to do was to oblige all HEIs to show how they define each study program before being approved by the MOET. The ‗learning outcomes‘ that HEIs must construct in this case consist of statements expressing general expectations about the outcome standards for different study programs.

The regulation for outcome statements in university curriculum had a particular twist: curricular knowledge was conceptualised as what students could do, shifting the curriculum from particular content knowledge to cognitive skills and from the conceptual to procedural forms of knowledge. While there was little consensus on what outcome-based education means, it is noted that a common feature was the emphasis on the same language of ‗skills‘ or ‗competences‘ in which knowledge was emphasized as a series of verb statements (know-how). An example could be observed in the realization of this Circular for a course in Sociology at Hanoi National University:

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After completing the study program, the students will be provided with the following knowledge, skills and attributes: Knowledge  Analyse and evaluate a body of knowledge on basic principles of Marxism-Leninism; Hồ Chí Minh thought; the policies and directions of the Party, State and Law. Apply such knowledge into reality;  Understand theories of psychology, society, culture, ethics, development and apply such theories to evaluate practical issues related to sociology and the current developmental model;  Apply knowledge of sociology to analyse the structure and evaluate social issue in rural areas, urban areas and issues related to labour, politics, economics, education, environment and science and technology.  Understand and identify social problems related to religion, family, gender and youth;  Analyse, evaluate issues in law, policies, and social welfares to apply creatively in managing, consulting, organizing and solving practical problems;  Analyse and evaluate the role of non-economic factors and contemporary issues in socio-political development in the community, rural areas and the economy (integrating subjects in community development, rural development, economic development, development sociology, socio-economic analysis of rural issues;  Apply knowledge from demographic sociology to evaluate impacts of emigration on social development and transformation;  Apply theoretical and practical knowledge to identify, analyse, synthesize and solve specific problems in sociology; 21.1.1.2 Skills  combine skills in the organisation of field trips, design tables, surveys, interviews of different people, in- depth interviews, group interviews to independently research social problems and phenomena identified in practice;  Skills of specialised software for analysing and treating information;  analytical and synthetic skills for data, write and present research reports in sociology;  independent dialectical thinking skills to understand, evaluate and solve political, economic and social problems in Vietnam and the world;  presentation skills;  skills for adapting to the workplace environment;  skills to work independently as well as in teams and community;  management skills in both State management and self-management of community in rural areas;  skills in using software for learning, researching and for working (Word, Excel, SPSS). Minimum IT skills at level B and good skills in researching literature and information on the internet;  good communication skills; ability to read and use English in simple conversations with minimum TOEIC level of 400 or equivalent; 21.1.1.3 Moral quality  having a trust in scientific knowledge, being self-confident, active, honest;  having trust and correct world view in judging social problems, having integrity, professional responsibility and ethics;  Conform to the policies and directions of the Party and State law; respect and preserve traditional values.

Table 11. Extract from learning outcomes statement for sociology

(Source: Đại Học Quốc Gia Hà Nội, 2010)

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Chapter 7. ‘Chuẩn Đầu Ra’: The 2005 Outcome-based Curriculum The outcome-based approach to university education involved drawing together the stakeholders in devising the curriculum, among which the government exhorted employers to engage with a whole range of activities in curriculum making, according them a privileged voice in defining what counts as valid knowledge.

The following diagram was taken from a presentation of a senior official from the Department of Higher Education who was in charge of instructing HEIs in the implementation of learning outcome policy on what is called a ‗Participatory Curriculum Development‘ of outcome-based education (Interviewee C, follow-up email, Oct 2016). She explained that with the introduction of learning outcomes, the curriculum approach required participation of different stakeholders in the process of curriculum making. That is why it was called a ‗Participatory Curriculum Development‘ (PCD) approach. This approach also involved a shift in State‘s power over the curriculum content. As could be seen in this diagram, the State would move from a direct control of curriculum content (as in the case of the Core Curriculum or Curriculum Standard) to an indirect control, via Circular 2196, of a ‗minimum amount of knowledge and required competence that the student must acquire after completing each level of higher education‘ (Interviewee C, follow-up email, Oct 2016):

Figure 2. The outcome-based curriculum development at system level

(Source: personal correspondence)

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Chapter 7. ‘Chuẩn Đầu Ra’: The 2005 Outcome-based Curriculum With this shift of curriculum control, the HEIs were allowed to specify their own curricula according to learning outcomes, with the participation of the diverse stakeholders in the process, especially the employers. Curricular direction became more economically dependent and faced more outwardly towards the workplace and the marketplace. As indicated in Circular 2196, the learning outcome statement for a study program places emphasis on the involvement of the employers at different steps:

4. The steps in constructing and publishing Step 1: the Rector/President establish a Steering committee for constructing and publishing the learning outcomes of study programs. The Committee includes: The Rector, The Vice-Rector in charge of Academic training; Head of Financial Planning Department; Head of Training Department, Head of Science Department; Deans of the Faculty/School and Heads of each Academic Departments; specialists of each program or representatives from other departments who share responsibility in designing interdisciplinary programs, as well as representatives of the employment sector. (For universities, the construction and publication of learning outcomes are undertaken by the member schools of the universities) 2. The steering committee organise meetings, discussion sessions to get consensus on the objectives, content, structure, time planning, implementation process and resources before getting each Faculty/Department to construct the learning outcomes of each program in the Faculty. 3. The Faculties organise the drafting of learning outcomes, organise meetings to get opinions from managers, scientists, lecturers, employers, alumni before completing the learning outcomes of each program. 4. The Faculty send the drafts to get feedback from employers, entrepreneurs, alumni, etc. 5. The Academic Council of the Faculty complements and completes the drafts on the basis of the collected feedbacks from entrepreneurs, employers, alumni, etc. and report to the Academic Council of the University. 6. The Academic Council of the University organise meetings to get opinions on the drafts of all study programs. 7. Publishing the drafts of program learning outcome on the website of the institution so that the administrators, scientists, lecturers, students, employers, alumni and schools/faculties of the same field in and outside the university can give feedback. 8. After revising and finalising the draft, the Rector sign and publish the program learning outcomes through the website of the institution, students‘ handbook, lecturers‘ handbooks, brochures, etc.; inform to society through the e press and send the report to the MOET (via Department of Higher Education, Centre of Educational Quality Assessment and Accreditation) 9. The learning outcomes of the study program must be reviewed and adjusted regularly to meet social demands and the employers. Each year, the HEIs review and adjust their learning outcome of the study programs to be relevant to the practical demands, the development of science and technology and especially to meet the demands of the society, and the demands of the employers in each phase.

Table 12. The construction of learning outcomes in a university curriculum

(Source: Bộ Giáo Dục và Đào Tạo, 2010)

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Chapter 7. ‘Chuẩn Đầu Ra’: The 2005 Outcome-based Curriculum Although the curriculum construction process seemed to involve diverse voices from both within and outside the university, the emphasis on the employers in the case of the Vietnamese 2005 curriculum entailed some problems. The first is that the involvement of the employers had traditionally been based on a voluntary basis, relying on employers‘ social conscience. Although the employers were given a front seat in the 2005 curriculum design, there were no accompanying policies to require the industry to play a full part in the education and training system. The second problem is that it seemed to neglect the role of professional associations. Since the output of higher education is specialists working in specialized fields, the role of professional associations in evaluating curriculum knowledge needs to be recognized. According to Nguyễn Văn Tuấn (2011b, p. 691), in many advanced systems as well as those in South East Asia, the (non-governmental) professional associations play an important role in accrediting the professional practice and curriculum quality. For example, in the US, Australia, Canada, Singapore or even in Thailand, there are medical profession associations of which members are those who have passed the examination. The examinations are composed and held by these associations. When a HEI plans to introduce a new training or a study program, they always consult the professional association, and the approval of these associations is one of the signs of quality. In the US, one of the standards for quality of a HEI is based on the percentage of courses accredited by the professional association. However, Nguyễn Văn Tuấn argues that in Vietnam the professional associations have not (or have not been allowed) to take these tasks. Even if they are allowed to do so, this criterion cannot be applied because the role of professional associations remains relatively blurred in areas related to training and education.

The learning outcome policy set in motion after the issuance of Circular 2196 resulted in large amounts of detailed institutional level documentation relating to standards and quality assurance. The HEIs began incorporating some of the thinking on outcomes-based description and generic competencies into their curriculum revisions in an attempt to seek better integration of practice and theory and to try and improve curriculum coherence and clarity about curriculum objectives. Leaders of the National University, one of the leading universities in Vietnam, took up the process actively. The expression of ‗learning outcomes‘ on its website was infused with the language of ‗learners‘ empowerment‘:

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An outcome-based curriculum is a learner-centred‘ approach to curriculum designing; it marks a shift from content (what is transmitted) to outcomes (what the learner can do after finishing a subject or a study program) […] The first step is to change the thinking about designing a curriculum among administrators and lecturers: the construction of learning outcomes must be based on feedbacks from related stakeholders (teachers, learners, employers, administrators, etc.), taking learners as the centre instead of starting from the given content. (Đại Học Quốc Gia Hà Nội, 2014) However, the whole process caused much confusion and complaints abound in the news media. Thanh Niên Online newspaper reported that many HEIs complained that their staff (administrators and lecturers) found it hard to distinguish ‗hard skills‘ and ‗soft skills‘, and that the ‗learning outcomes‘ approach was impractical. The institutions submitted their Reports as a way to fulfil their obligations, while what were deemed ‗learning outcomes‘ statements on their websites remained the same each year (Thanh Niên, 19 October 2011). Different institutions invested the concept ‗learning outcomes‘ and its components with different meanings. For example, some confused ‗skills‘ with ‗attitudes‘, and even grouped ‗English language skills‘ into ‗specialised knowledge‘. Some lecturers complained that the MOET misunderstood themselves about the understanding of ‗skills‘ by instructing HEIs that hard skills involved ‗problem- solving‘ while foreign languages and keyboard literacy belong to ‗soft skills‘ (ibid). A look into the MOET‘s instruction for HEIS to construct learning outcomes in Circular 2196 proves this is the case:

Learning outcomes of a study program include: a. the name of the program: Vietnamese and English b. level of training: college or university c. Knowledge requirements: specialised knowledge, professional competence; d. Skills requirements: -hard skills: professional skills, professional practical competence; problem-solving skills, situation solving skills; - soft skills: communication skills, teamwork skills, foreign language skills, informatics skills, etc. e. Attitudes: -moral quality, professional ethics, citizenry responsibility; -responsibility, morality, service attitude; professional style; -ability to update knowledge, creative in work f. Jobs or tasks students can perform after graduation g. The ability to learn and update knowledge after graduation h. Curricula, documents, materials of international standards that the universities use. (Bộ Giáo Dục và Đào Tạo, 2010, my emphasis)

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Chapter 7. ‘Chuẩn Đầu Ra’: The 2005 Outcome-based Curriculum In the analysis below, I seek to shed light on the government‘s attempt to forge an integration code in the HE curriculum as well as the tensions it entails. The case of Profession-Oriented Higher Education (POHE) curriculum provides the most remarkable illustration of the spirit of the 2005 curriculum reform and this tension. The significance of an analysis into the POHE curriculum is that it reveals how the policy on the categorization of universities associated with specific types of curriculum had confused ‗formal access‘ with ‗epistemic access‘ (Young, 2010). As the analysis will show, while the POHE approach attempted to incorporate more knowledge from the ‗world of work‘, it had emptied theoretical, disciplinary knowledge out of the curriculum.

7.3.3 When the Bologna Process met Vietnam: The case of the POHE curriculum

7.3.3.1 Background of the POHE curriculum

On 19 June 1999, Ministers of Higher Education from 29 countries in Europe met in Bologna (Italy) and signed the Declaration of Bologna as a joint effort to unify and harmonize the university systems into one common space called ‗European Area of Higher Education‘ in response to pressing economic challenges (European Higher Education Area, 2015). The model has since gained prominence and influence in most parts of Europe and beyond. Among several major changes in governance and qualification, one of the key features of this agenda is a new idea of a curriculum that is ‗learner-centred‘ and ‗compentence-based‘, shifting the traditional discipline-based curriculum to one that takes ‗learning outcomes‘ and ‗skills‘ as its principle of knowledge organization. With the Bologna Process, the profession-oriented discourse in HE curriculum has become part of a wider policy discourse on the relevance of knowledge and skills to the world of work (Afdal, 2017).

The former official at MOET, who was also one of the consultants for the POHE project, said that the embryonic indication of ‗learning outcomes‘ in the HERA Report drew its inspiration from the Bologna Process and was designed to align itself with the best of European practice (Interviewee B, August, 2014).

In March 2005, the Profession-Oriented Higher Education Project (Profed) was adopted. It was funded by Nuffic, the Dutch organisation for internationalization in education. In this project, the

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Chapter 7. ‘Chuẩn Đầu Ra’: The 2005 Outcome-based Curriculum MOET would work with three Dutch universities and a research and training consultant agency to develop experimental programs on 8 Vietnamese universities. The principal objective of the project was to develop curricula that would be closely coupled with the labour market and provide students with knowledge, skills and attitude relevant to specific professional or occupational groups (L.-H. Nguyen & Vaan Staa, 2007). It was greeted with much fanfare from the public and little controversy or critiques from the educational research community in Vietnam.

In Vietnam, the POHE curriculum approach was considered by policymakers in the HE sector to be a vehicle to drive the outcome-based education reform and realise the administrative objective of a three-tier higher education system set out first in Resolution 14/2005 and subsequently in Article 9 of the Law of Higher Education in 2012 (see Quốc Hội, 2012). According to this article, the university system is to be divided into three ‗kinds‘ with different missions, scope, curriculum approaches and performance regulation. At the top of the hierarchy lies the research- oriented universities, such as the two national universities and the new jointly established international universities between the Vietnamese government and some countries including Germany, Japan and France. The curriculum of these universities is supposed to be more research-oriented, as opposed to the other ‗kinds‘ at the second (career-oriented) and the third (practice-oriented) tier, of which curricula are geared to the world of work and practice. The third kind of universities, which include many former technical and vocational schools, seems to be associated with the idea of the ‗community college‘ in the US.

The POHE curriculum was designed to be applied at the second and third tier universities, with the aim formed in Resolution 14/2005/NQ-CP in 2005 that by 2020, Vietnam should achieve 70- 80% of all students in these profession-oriented programs. It was deemed ‗profession-oriented‘ in the sense that professional subjects (‗modules‘) were introduced early in the program, as compared to the existing curricula, in which the professional subjects were introduced only from semester 5 or so.

According to Nguyen and van Staa, the two project directors, the project was designed in a ‗policy learning‘ pattern, in which ‗national stakeholders are actively involved in developing their own policy solutions so that ‗context fit‘ and ‗local ownership‘ are central to them‘

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Chapter 7. ‘Chuẩn Đầu Ra’: The 2005 Outcome-based Curriculum (Nguyen & van Staa, 2007, p.3). Thus, the project management board was a joint steering committee including a Vietnamese chairman (the Deputy Minister of Education), a Vietnamese Head of the Project Management Unit and a Dutch Chief Technical Adviser. The main focus of the project was to align with the Vietnamese government‘s wish to link universities with the labour market, and this is laid out into three overall objectives:

 to develop a new responsive curriculum with a decentralised approach at eight universities selected by the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET);  to design a concept of profession-oriented higher education, linked to a more decentralised management philosophy and  the enhancement of Vietnamese universities‘ position in the international knowledge networks through increased cooperation.

With the completion of a first four year POHE project (2005-2009), the Vietnamese Minister of Education and Training expressed his request to the Dutch government to extend the project to other study programs because the overall assessment of the four year experimentation was ‗successful‘, thus calling for further investment in this project. But it should be noted that the idea of ‗successful‘ here was entirely drawn from the review taken by the policy actors themselves. There was no independent group reviewing the results. This request was favourably responded to by the Dutch government. Another 3 million euros was disbursed to further advance the project in Vietnam for the period of 2012 and 2015.

The project finished its first phase in 2009, and continued with the second phase (2012-2015) after further funding from the Dutch government was approved. The second phase focused on developing regulatory policy frameworks for the POHE curriculum and establishing five POHE training centres as a preparatory step to multiply the model across the system up to 2020.

In the first phase, from 2005 to 2009, eight Vietnamese universities (National Economics University (NEU), Thai Nguyen University of Teacher Education (TUE), Thai Nguyen University of Agriculture and Forestry (TUAF), Hanoi University of Agriculture (HUA), Hung Yen University of Technical Education (HUTE), Hue University of Agriculture and Forestry

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Chapter 7. ‘Chuẩn Đầu Ra’: The 2005 Outcome-based Curriculum (HUAF), Hồ Chí Minh University of Agriculture and Forestry (HCMUAF) and Hồ Chí Minh University of Agronomy (HCMUA) developed nine new curricula in the areas of:

 tourism & hospitality  teacher training,  agriculture,  construction engineering,  information technology (IT),  and electronic engineering

(Profession-Oriented Higher Education Project, 2008)

As analysed below, through a blurring of boundaries between education and training spheres, between everyday knowledge and academic knowledge, and between disciplines, as well as reducing structural distinctions and articulation between them in order to meet industrial demands, it could be argued that the shape of the POHE curriculum follows what Bernstein (1971) calls an integrated code curriculum: it is a de-specialising curriculum in which knowledge is arranged, pedagogised and assessed through a competence-based approach.

7.3.3.2 Some epistemic features of the POHE curriculum

A competence-based approach

The concept of ‗competence‘, when used in education, generally refers to a person‘s capacity to perform ‗up to standards‘, the key occupational tasks required by a profession (Kouwenhoven, 2009, p. 3). In this respect, the starting point for curriculum development is no longer the academic disciplines, but the competencies needed for employment and to participate in the changing society. Basically, competence-based education emerged as the response of education to be more relevant to the economy through a process of defining the tasks to be performed in industry, besides its rhetorical claim to be a progressive philosophy of education (Gonczi, 1996). This explains why proponents of this approach come not only from the industry leaders but also from many educational reformers and social scientists who see the ‗standards‘ set largely by employers not as a conservative force, but as the ‗fruition to better economic circumstances‘ for all (ibid).

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Chapter 7. ‘Chuẩn Đầu Ra’: The 2005 Outcome-based Curriculum Since its advent in the 1960s in the USA, competence-based approach has been evolving from a behaviouristic to a generic principle and recently to what is called a ‗holistic‘ conceptualisation. The behaviourist approach involves the central role of job analysis which results in a predetermined set of behaviours or tasks, which are normally isolated from those in the real world of occupations and are reduced into sub-components to ensure optimal transparency (Gonczi, 1996; Wesselink, 2010). In the UK, it is found in the national vocational qualification (NVQ) framework (Hager, 2004).

Recent developments in competence-based approaches have arrived at what they refer to as a holistic conceptualisation of competence. As a response to the behaviourist and generic traditions, the holistic approach attempts to engage learners in authentic, real-world contexts and ‗bring together a multitude of factors in explaining and developing successful occupational performance‘ (Gonzci 1996, p.17). Evidence of competence, as this approach claims, is not limited to tasks, but also includes ‗attributes‘, which are the ethics and values underlying observable performances. The theoretical principle underpinning this approach is ‗social constructivism‘, rather than the earlier ‗individual constructivism‘ (Wesselink 2010). This principle is centred on the assumption that knowledge and skills are not simply products that are transferrable across contexts or persons, but are results of learning activities. Through learning activities that take place in a social setting, individuals could construct their own knowledge through interacting with others.

The concept of ‗competence‘ is considered a ‗paradigm shift‘ in the POHE curriculum

A world-wide educational paradigm shift can be observed from an input-based approach to an output-based approach, from a teacher-centred to a student-centred approach and from teaching objectives to learning outcomes. In this shift education is perceived as an output-based process expressed in the knowledge, skills and attitude to be achieved by the learner.

(Profession-Oriented Higher Education Project, 2008, p.6)

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Chapter 7. ‘Chuẩn Đầu Ra’: The 2005 Outcome-based Curriculum The POHE curriculum uses ‗Competency Profile‘ to define learning outcomes of the study program. In all the documents related to this project, competence or competency is commonly defined as

the ability to integrate knowledge, skills and attitude into an adequate professional action, given a specific situation in the field of the professional involved. It is the ability to adequately fulfil professional requirements that are essential for a position/role in the professional domain.

(Profession-Oriented Higher Education Project, 2008, p.5)

The Vietnamese POHE curriculum designers acknowledged that the concept ‗often raises considerable discussions in the traditional academic world‘ and ‗is not always correctly understood‘ because:

Some academics feel that this might reduce higher education to the training of skills, forgetting that a competency essentially includes the integrated application of knowledge, skills as well as attitudes in the required professional behaviour.

(ibid)

This ambiguity is partly expressed in the view of the MOET official responsible for instructing HEIs for implementing Learning Outcomes benchmark. She said that it was difficult for her to distinguish between ‗learning outcomes‘ and ‗competency‘, and argued that the concept of ‗competency‘ is more holistic than ‗learning outcome‘:

Competency is a personal attribute allowing individuals to successfully carry out a particular activity and achieve desired outcomes under specific conditions. Such attribute is represented in a combination of both physical and mental actions corresponding to a particular activity, based on personal characteristics (biological, psychological and social values), and is carried out voluntarily and leads to results relevant to the practical level of the activity.

The core of any competency involves skill or skills. Other components like knowledge, attitudes, emotion, health, etc. are also important. However, without skills, competency becomes devalued although not necessarily useless.

Competency has a complex structure, yet the basic components include: knowledge, skills, affective and attitudinal behaviours. Of course each of these components is also a combination of biological, psychological and individual consciousness. Competency is not simply a vague entity consisting of

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knowledge, skills and attitudes as previously misconceived. Even all such components are measurable, they cannot be called ‗competency‘. An individual can have all of these components, even with health and good physical condition, yet it‘s not possible to call such an individual ‗competent‘. Because it is not a mere sum of such components; when combined competency becomes a different ‗substance‘. That is the marvel of competency, having biological, psychological and social nature.

[…] Therefore, to say competency is a sum of knowledge, skills and attitude is a partial and mediocre view of competence. Competency is not an object of psychology. Psychology itself cannot explain the nature of competency. Psychology can only explain the psychological component of competence. And the psychological component is only in a potential, not a realised, form of competence.

(Interviewee C, follow-up email October 2016)

This conceptualization of ‗competence‘ among Vietnamese curriculum reformers seems to concur with what Barnett (2004) calls a ‗Mode 3‘ learner-based knowledge. The Mode 3 is learner-based in the sense that the curriculum shifts from knowledge to the ‗knowing self‘ by focusing on the more personal dimension of the students. In other words, the emphasis is not on the different forms of knowledge, but more on the ‗potentialities‘ of the individual. However, there was a break between this ‗therapeutic‘ conceptualization and the actual shape of the POHE curriculum. It could be argued that the progressive elements of the concept of ‗competence‘ were ‗appropriated‘ by the technical instrumentalism of Mode 2 knowledge. There is evidence, regarding the process of curriculum development, of an overemphasis on the role of the labour market at the expense of academic expertise and professional bodies and a marginalisation of disciplinary knowledge, and a dominance of procedural knowledge and generic skills in the curriculum structure, as further elaborated below.

An emphasis on the role of employers

The POHE curriculum-making process was based on a multi-stakeholder process, with inputs coming mostly from international standards, the Dutch experts and the surveys from the world of work (WoW):

We did find references to international standards in the POHE booklets. Internationally in the world of higher education, there is agreement over the qualifications that should be reached at Bachelor, Master and PhD level. In the Bologna process (in which 46 countries participate) the so-called ‗Dublin descriptors‘ have been formulated for this purpose (annex 3). They are quite commonly used as a reference in quality

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assurance and accreditation of Bachelor and Master programs […] In the project POHE materials we also found reference to a list of 10 key qualifications for POHE as developed and used in The Netherlands and translated to the Vietnamese context. It may be concluded that in the current POHE pilot programs, international standards and competencies served as a frame of reference. Besides, the resulting curricula were mostly based on WoW’s survey results and Dutch and Vietnamese experts’ inputs.

(Profession-Oriented Higher Education Project, 2008, p.7, my emphasis)

The POHE curriculum took ‗job analysis‘ and the world of work as the major input for competence development. Two of the diverse roles prioritised for the labour market, or the world of work, were featured in the document on the POHE principles in the curriculum development process as follows:

• To give input for the execution of World of Work (market) surveys, the development and fine tuning of sector-specific professional profiles and curriculum revision and improvement;

• To have a frequent dialogue with university management/faculty to discuss current and future needs, through advisory, consultation or supervisory boards;

(Profession-Oriented Higher Education Project, 2009)

The curriculum-making process is conceived as follow:

Figure 3. Curriculum development process for POHE program

(Source: Profession-Oriented Higher Education Project, 2008, p.8)

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In giving the employers a prominent role in the curriculum making process, the POHE approach used surveys on the labour market‘s requirements to define necessary competencies as a basis of curriculum content. As the POHE professionals explained:

The process started with the World of Work (WoW) survey – not with opinions of famous professors or academic experts in the field. The WoW surveys specified current needs of potential employers, competencies gaps of recent graduates, and pitfalls of the current education programs. These pieces of information served as the starting point of curriculum development. Opinions of famous professors or experts could be invited later for how to design a curriculum that best addresses the needs of the WoW, identified in the survey.

The anchor point and key guidance of the curriculum development is the graduates‘ competencies profile – not core curricula. While core curricula were given by the Ministry, competencies profile was developed based on the university‘s WoW survey. The curriculum developers‘ interpreted the survey and decided which competencies their graduates should possess in order to work effectively. These competencies could also serve as the university‘s differentiation with other similar programs in the nation. This means that the university and program leaders need to be given and fully take advantage of their autonomy in developing curricula that fit best with the needs of WoW.

(Profession-Oriented Higher Education Project, 2008, p.8)

Representatives from the world of work varied among the pilot universities. For example, Hue University of Agriculture and Forestry (HUAF) defined the world of work ‗mostly as alumni who are working in different sectors‘ (Profed Subproject Monitoring Reports July 2008, p.18). In their survey, they received most responses from these people, especially those currently holding senior positions in their organisation. Meanwhile, Hung Yen University of Technical Education (HUTE) defined world of work mostly as companies in their neighbourhood.

The genericism of knowledge in POHE curriculum

Bernstein describes the development of what he refers to as a generic form of knowledge which emerged initially in vocational education and work-based training in the 1980s but has quickly become dominant in today‘s university education. This generic mode ‗is constructed and distributed outside the educational context, taking methodologies of ‗functional analysis‘ of what

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Chapter 7. ‘Chuẩn Đầu Ra’: The 2005 Outcome-based Curriculum is taken to be the underlying features necessary to the performance of a skill, practice or even area of work‘ (Bernstein 2000, p.53). Genericism is embodied in the generic skills required by the workplace such as ‗thinking skills‘, ‗teamwork‘, and ‗learning skills‘, to name a few (Beck and Young 2005). Young (2008, p.156) further explains that genericism presents a radical break away from disciplinary knowledge, whereby the place of disciplinary knowledge is given way entirely to procedures that are ‗assumed to apply to all subjects, all regions and all fields of practice‘.

A synthesis of the collected documents on the POHE curriculum approach reveals a strong priority for the generic knowledge mode by using competences as the overarching principle for organising the curriculum::

The curriculum of a profession-oriented study program is focused on professional practice. Based on a professional profile, the curriculum reflects an integrated approach in combining theoretical (subject knowledge) with practical experience and soft-social skills training. Job orientation, practical assignments, skills lab, field trips, study visits, project work and internships are supposed to be typical characteristics of POHE curricula. The curriculum promotes an active and student centred learning approach, and student assessment includes practical components related to the WoW.

(Profession-Oriented Higher Education Project, 2008, p.5)

POHE curriculum deviated from the traditional one in its inclusion of generic skills, including interpersonal skills and business-oriented skills. It was assumed that these ‗soft skills‘ could be included in the way teaching and learning is structured in modules, projects and assignments, as well as in specialised courses in the curriculum. Most universities added a course on communication-related skills (worth about 2 credits) to their programs. Students were expected to practise their soft skills even more in team projects and internship assignments. POHE curriculum organisation reveals a radical reduction in disciplinary knowledge and a domination of practical knowledge and skills.

The implementation of the POHE approach in eight universities resulted in some important changes in knowledge structure in the curriculum: there was a decrease in the time spent on basic science subjects (e.g., maths, physics, biology, chemistry), ranging from a 25% to a 60% decrease in time. The contents of courses in those basic science subjects (e.g., chemistry,

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Chapter 7. ‘Chuẩn Đầu Ra’: The 2005 Outcome-based Curriculum biology) in the POHE study programmes were reported to be different from those of traditional courses in that they were claimed to be more closely related to the professional context/world. Where basic sciences accounted for a major part of the earlier curriculum, they are restricted to a maximum of 25% of the curriculum in POHE‘s guidance on principles (Profession-Oriented Higher Education Project, December 2009). An argument given by the POHE project management unit for the reduction of teaching time for basic science subjects (physics, chemistry, biology, etc.) was that most students failed in these subjects in their first year (Báo Điện Tử Dân Trí, 17 December 2009). The inference from this move is that basic sciences or disciplinary knowledge were the factors that demotivate students in their learning.

The comparison in knowledge organisation in the discipline-based programs and the competence-based program at the Thai Nguyen University of Agriculture and Forestry shows that basic sciences were reduced from 34.2% to 12%, with complete removal of physics, as can be seen from the graph below:

Figure 4. Comparison of POHE curriculum and replaced curriculum

(Source: adapted from figure 2 in Profession-Oriented Higher Education Project, 2008, p.9)

Corresponding to the decrease in time given to theoretical knowledge was the increase in time given to practice, as reflected in the whole curriculum (more time for integrated projects and internships - i.e., time spent in workplaces) as well as in each practical subject (more team project, practice hours, etc.). These changes radically increased practical knowledge and skills at

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Chapter 7. ‘Chuẩn Đầu Ra’: The 2005 Outcome-based Curriculum the expense of disciplinary knowledge. Projects, group work, practical training and internship are prioritised: they now constitute 25%-40% of the curriculum.

The clash of POHE and the course-credit system

By yielding to the social demands and external actors at the expense of both academic expertise and professional bodies, by overemphasising practical knowledge and skills, the POHE curriculum is an example of a case where disciplinary or specialised knowledge is underrepresented. This phenomenon is not unique to Vietnam, given how Mode 2 curriculum has been celebrated worldwide. Nevertheless, as I have argued elsewhere this Mode 2 approach is problematic. But in the case of Vietnam there was an additional problem. The tension between the competence-based discourse and the ‗choice‘ discourse in the course-credit approach resulted in a major stumbling block for the implementation process.

Both the credit-system and the outcome-based system met at two ideological grounds: the progressive elements (empowerment of learners) and the instrumental elements (to meet market needs). Yet these two policies came into conflict on pedagogical grounds. The Reports from the Project reveal that the main reason for difficulties was because of a clash between the course- credit system that emphasizes learners‘ choice and the competence-based discourse that required learners to follow the program according to competences:

During different occasions it was stated that it is difficult to link POHE to the renewed credit system: The subject-oriented (input-based) credit system in most universities does not adequately support the implementation of a POHE curriculum. Universities refer in writing and interviews to the current MOET regulations as an obstacle.

(Profession-Oriented Higher Education Project, 2008, p.14)

In the POHE curriculum, knowledge was organised into a group of subjects called ‗large modules‘ that correspond to a competence or a group of competences. For example, to achieve a range of competences in transferring technologies into production, designing landscape and solving problems in the field, a student of horticulture and landscape at Hanoi Agriculture University must study a general module consisting of Advanced Math, Biology and Non-organic Chemistry in the first semester. This came into conflict with the course-credit system that was applied across the system from 2006. In the course-credit system, learners were required to

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Chapter 7. ‘Chuẩn Đầu Ra’: The 2005 Outcome-based Curriculum accumulate content in each subject, each taking up about 3 credits taught across the semester. The learning unit here was a subject. Meanwhile, POHE requires learners to accumulate learning outcomes relevant to each competence (or groups of competences), which was consist of a group of subjects. This also means the students did not have the flexibility to choose subjects to suit their learning pathway as the course-credit system promises. Besides, assessment within POHE curriculum must go with a group of subjects requiring a number of lecturers sharing the same ‗module‘ to co-operate in the assessment task as opposed to the one-lecturer-one-subject principle in the course-credit system.

A further tension is related to the different conception of ‗self-study‘ time in these two systems. In the course-credit system, the reduced class hour was designed so students have more time to learn independently, while in the POHE system, students must spend more time for practicum and internship as part of the program.

Notwithstanding the formal adoption of competences and learning outcomes and a huge amount of funds invested, the actual implementation of POHE came into disarray when it approached the second phase. The main motivation of POHE was to rely on the input from the employers; however, the Report of the Project reveals that the involvement of the world of work and the HEIs was low:

It was stated that there still is rather low interest in for instance taking students for internships, that it is still difficult to integrate practical assignments and internships within the developed curricula (it often comes on top of the ‗fixed‘ curricula), that the WoW should receive specific incentives (e.g. tax reduction) in order to become more active, that there is a relatively danger of WoW councils becoming only formal bodies without actual interaction between the university and the professional world. On different occasions the importance of well-developed and thorough program evaluation - quality assurance practices and procedures - was stressed.

(Profession-Oriented Higher Education Project, 2008, p.3)

As discussed above, the POHE curriculum was driven by a strong instrumentalist motivation in its design. This instrumentalist regulative was used as a ‗fix‘ for the two conflicting pedagogical principles: the organisation and assessment of knowledge in terms of ‗competences‘ and a learner-centred constructivist view of teaching and learning. However, in practice it was too

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Chapter 7. ‘Chuẩn Đầu Ra’: The 2005 Outcome-based Curriculum difficult to reconcile these contradictions. A survey of 6 universities in phase 2 in April 2014 reveals that:

some of the most basic features of POHE were not seriously followed in phase 2 of the project. First, few universities maintained the module or domain curriculum. Second, all universities required learners to accumulate knowledge based on each subject and not on competences corresponding to each module. For example, at National University of Economics, although there were competence outcomes, they were not designed in detail in each level. The curriculum was also module-based yet each subject in the module was taught in different semesters, and was assessed separately. Therefore, in fact the curriculum was still subject-based like other programs in Vietnam (using the credit system). In terms of academic organisation, due to the small number, students were not allowed to choose modules and decide on their own progression. Assessment was subject-based. Representatives from the world of work only took part in the practice modules.

(Lê Viết Khuyến, 2014)

At the time this thesis is finalized, there has been no agreed solution for the POHE tension between a fixed outcome-based approach and the flexible credit-based approach. However, the discussions among the consultants seem to rest on a technical view of knowledge, i.e., by introducing some new terms in the regulations and gear POHE along the previous ‗Core Curriculum‘:

Recommendation for a new regulation for POHE: mediating between regulation 25 and regulation 43:

 Modify article 3 in Regulation 43 by o introducing the concept of ‗independent subject‘ and ‗connective subject‘; o introducing the concept of module and divide modules into four types: knowledge module, internship module, professional project module; graduate project module.  Modify Articles 5, 14 and 20: When comparing regulation 25 and 43, drawing on feedbacks, we notice that regulation 25 shares more similarities with POHE. Therefore, we could use articles in Regulation 25 on student assessment criteria and ranking, as well as the use of a 10-level scale for POHE.  Modify Articles 10 and 11: Because POHE requires students to accumulate knowledge according to each module, the POHE regulation shall not allow students to choose their own path of learning as in Regulation 43 – students can only register electives on their own will. Therefore, the students shall be organised in two ways: a stable class (organised according to connective modules or modules of each program for each semester) and independent class (for independent module)

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 Modify articles 14, 17, 19, 20 and 24: POHE emphasizes practice and the role of the labour market. Therefore, the POHE regulation must stipulate that students can only move on to the next semester when the grade of the minor project, projects and professional modules achieves average grade; the grades for the ‗skill‘ component in the minor project or project must be over 50%; All lecturers of connective subjects or belonging to the same module must participate in assessing that minor project of that module. Besides, the assessment of a graduate project must involve at least one lecturer invited from the world of work. POHE lecturers and ‗experts‘ from the world of work must co-ordinate in managing and guiding students during the time of internship and in assessing students‘ graduate project.

Table 13. Recommendations for modifying POHE regulations

(Source: Lê Viết Khuyến, 2014)

7.3.3.3 Some remarks on the problem of knowledge in the POHE curriculum

This section draws out some implications of analysis in relation to the social realist theory of knowledge outlined in the conceptual chapter (Chapter 3). As discussed earlier on the POHE background, the principal thrusts of this project were that university education should become more professionally oriented and should increase its relevance and responsiveness to employment needs. The ultimate purpose was to provide the society and the economy with a high quality labour force, the chief source of innovation in the sphere of global competitiveness.

Young (2006) points out that the increasing complexity of knowledge, technology, work and society means that the knowledge demands of most occupations are increasing. Workers are increasingly required to draw on general, principled knowledge to understand the particular in the workplace. He further explains that while all jobs require context-specific knowledge, ‗many jobs also require knowledge involving theoretical ideas shared by a community of specialists that are not tied to specific contexts‘ (Young, 2006, p.15). Workers need to be able to transcend specific contexts and use decontextualized theoretical knowledge in different ways and in different contexts as their work grows in complexity and difficulty. They need to be able to access theoretical knowledge to do so, and this means that occupational progression is strongly related to educational progression, because education is one of the main ways in which most people are provided with access to theoretical, disciplinary knowledge.

However, it is argued from the analysis that the POHE curriculum has shown a lack of conceptual coherence by aligning itself with labour market contexts and needs. This might result

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Chapter 7. ‘Chuẩn Đầu Ra’: The 2005 Outcome-based Curriculum in graduates having a weak knowledge base, thus limiting their ability to perform effectively in their profession. This also has important implications for possibility of Vietnam creating a high quality workforce as a source of innovation for economic growth and global competitiveness as intended by the Vietnamese government. Let us examine these points in detail.

POHE curriculum overemphasizes its contextual coherence

Chapter 3 discussed on Muller‘s work (Muller 2009) to identify two broad principles of recontextualisation of disciplinary knowledge structures. These are (a) conceptual coherence, which emphasises an abstract and internally coherent structure, and (b) contextual coherence, which aligns with specific contexts of application by drawing on characteristics of everyday knowledge to provide the basis of recontextualisation, and thus containing segmentally organised knowledge. The previous section indicated that there is a clear alignment between the POHE curriculum and the principle of contextual coherence. In this model, knowledge is ‗segmentally connected, where each segment is adequate to a context, sufficient to a purpose‘ (Muller, 2009, p.216). In other words, curriculum knowledge has shifted from generalising principles to procedural principles. The face of theoretical knowledge in the curriculum has been overshadowed by ‗common sense‘ and everyday knowledge.

While the modularization of the POHE curricula with its loosely coupled blocks may increase students‘ responsibility for their own learning, it also could give rise to fragmented learning experiences and deny students epistemic access to conceptual scientific knowledge. When scientific knowledge is shifted to the background and is subordinated to practical problems, there would be less room left for learners to reflect on theory and the relevance of theoretical insights for their professional work.

The intrusion of generic competencies is also another attack on the knowledge base of the curriculum. It is assumed that these ‗generic skills‘, typical of the generic modes, are ‗relevant‘ to the changing conditions of employment. Moore (2007b) comments that such ‗relevance‘ is largely rhetorical and ‗invariably suppresses theory in order to disguise and protect the particular construct of ‗common sense‘ they promote‘. In Bernstein‘s (1996, p.72) view, in contrast to the ‗inwardness‘ and ‗inner dedication to knowing‘ features of singular modes, the move to generic modes is associated with the displacement of the inner by the outer. He further explains that

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Chapter 7. ‘Chuẩn Đầu Ra’: The 2005 Outcome-based Curriculum generic modes ‗have their deep structure in the concept of ‗trainability‘, where ‗a skill, task, area of work, undergoes continuous development, disappearance or replacement‘ (ibid).

Even if POHE is occupationally driven, which also means that the curriculum tends to be regionalised (like engineering), or recontextualised into a more generic mode (like hospitality and tourism) , the degree of contextuality may vary across occupations (e.g., a tourism and hospitality curriculum may be more ‗contextual‘ than an electronics curriculum), there are strong epistemic, economic and social justice reasons for some conceptual knowledge to become a common platform of all forms of occupational knowledge (Muller, 2009).

Finally, students without a proper induction into disciplinary knowledge structures are not provided with access to the conceptual tools they need to ‗move beyond the contextual to access systems of knowledge and their generative principles‘ (Wheelahan, 2006, p.17). The constructivist principle in the competence approach, in overemphasizing the role of learners‘ experiences and practical learning while giving little effort to inducting them into a specialised discipline, which requires a strong theoretical and vertical knowledge base, constitutes one of the major factors that lead to this situation.

POHE curriculum shows a weak professional knowledge base

A professionally oriented curriculum like POHE has to incorporate both knowledge from disciplines and knowledge from the world of professional work. However, the analysis has revealed that in the POHE curriculum the state and market demands became rules that regulate the recontextualisation of knowledge into curriculum, thus neglecting the importance of disciplinary knowledge and professional knowledge from academic specialists and professional communities. The likely result is that the knowledge base for all the professional-oriented programs concerned will become fragile. Moore (2007, p.134) argues that the competence approach that is oriented directly towards the world of work is ‗behaviouristic‘ because ‗[its] content is the everyday world rather than a body of contextualized academic knowledge or expertise‘. This content is selectively recontextualised from the social relations and the practices of working life to align them with ‗its own particular principles and criteria as a ‗skill matrix‘, ‗job inventory‘ or diagram of competences required in a particular occupational roles‘ (ibid). Indeed, the problem with the ‗market surveys‘ employed by the POHE approach, which over-

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Chapter 7. ‘Chuẩn Đầu Ra’: The 2005 Outcome-based Curriculum relied on the needs and perceptions of the company representatives or alumni at the expense of academics or specialists from professional bodies, is that they can only cover part of the contexts they need to describe, and thus the nature of practice is only partially understood.

In summary, by yielding to the social demands and external actors at the expense of both academic expertise and professional bodies, by overemphasizing practical knowledge and skills, the POHE curriculum illustrates a case where disciplinary or specialised knowledge is underrepresented. This phenomenon is not unique to Vietnam, given how Mode 2 curriculum has been celebrated worldwide, as discussed earlier. It has been increasingly recognized that any country aspiring to an effective participation in the global economy can no longer afford to rely on low-wage, semi-skilled labour, but increasingly on professional knowledge workers who can make proficient use of expert or specialist knowledge, utilize autonomous thought and judgement as well as make a commitment to a set of principles, all of which are attributed to a good command of conceptual, theoretical knowledge as a prerequisite (Muller, 2009; Young & Muller 2010; Brown et al, 2011). A socially driven curriculum like Mode 2 that largely undermines the role of Mode 1 instead of keeping the two modes in tension, clearly ‗puts the cart before the horse‘.

7.4 Concluding remarks

The principal thrusts of the 2005 curriculum reform were that university education should become more vocationally oriented and should increase its relevance and responsiveness to employment needs. Although the moral discourse underpinning the 2005 curricular reform involved seemingly contradictory elements of different principles and purposes: cultural traditionalism (the reduced legitimacy yet persistence of the ‗red‘ discourse), vocationalism and constructivist learner-centeredness, it could be argued that the period was strongly influenced by economic instrumentalism. It is possible to see how the reform has moved towards integrated curricula and a shift to Mode 2 knowledge.

A combination of flexibility (the course-credit discourse) and fixity in the view of knowledge as a set of performative and procedural descriptors becomes enshrined in the competence model that is underpinned by a pragmatist assumption of knowledge, i.e., the prioritization of ‗practice‘ over ‗theory‘. The ultimate purpose is to provide society and the economy with a high quality

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Chapter 7. ‘Chuẩn Đầu Ra’: The 2005 Outcome-based Curriculum labour force, the chief source of innovation in global competition. In other words, the reform geared strongly to the formation of individuals strongly shaped by economic exigencies. This approach emphasizes the significance of interdisciplinarity and the arbitrariness of curriculum divisions, focusing on the interdependence of content, processes and organisation. Hence, it is to some extent associated with Mode 2 knowledge and ‗serves to challenge traditional academic and disciplinary divisions‘ (ibid). What was at most stake, and of which the implication was the least recognized by the policymakers, was the marginalization of conceptual knowledge in the POHE curriculum in contemporary curriculum reform in Vietnam.

The appropriation of technical-functionalism over the epistemic not only resulted in a genericist curriculum, but also masks the contradictory messages that were sent out to educators. The educators were not only faced with an incoherent policy framework but also a loss of autonomy to the state and educational bureaucrats as well as to the international standards of the world of work. Despite the melioristic assumption that the ‗international best practices‘ could bring about improvement in teaching and learning, the ‗reformist‘ nature of the policies seems rather murky. Instead of working out the debate on what knowledge students should learn to achieve professional competence, the aggressive top-down adoption of a curriculum based on skills, competences and outcomes brought about another prescriptive and authoritarian curriculum. This could be best observed in the POHE curriculum which, while attracted considerable amount of attention and labour, became after all a program fraught with epistemic problems. These features comprise a range of conflicting discourses (behaviourism and progressivism) harmonized by instrumentalism to result in a curriculum that strongly prioritises procedural and generic forms of knowledge at the expense of conceptual knowledge.

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Chapter 8. The Enduring Dilemmas in Vietnamese University Curriculum: Some Reflections

CHAPTER 8. THE ENDURING DILEMMAS IN VIETNAMESE UNIVERSITY CURRICULUM: SOME REFLECTIONS

Of all the many things education is and is about, at its core there is the ‗play‘ of reality and reason and not merely of illusion and the arbitrary. That is why it is important.

(Rob Moore, 2007b, p.xvi)

8.1 Introduction

This chapter adopts a reflective stance by looking back at the three phases of reform analysed in chapters 5, 6 and 7 and identifying what may be certain critical issues regarding the problem of curricular knowledge, specialisation and social order in Vietnamese university education. I also take the opportunity to discuss two general themes that underpin this study, specifically the epistemic and regulative dilemmas of the university curriculum and their implications for university education in Vietnam.

To achieve this intent, the chapter first recapitulates a number of points in light of the analyses made in the earlier chapters. Reflecting on the Durkheimian theory of knowledge, the chapter attempts to make more explicit some problems that arise when curriculum policymaking is divorced from any theoretical consideration of knowledge.

As a reflection on the problem of an approach to specialisation and social order, I argue that the quandary observed in the curriculum policy across the three reforms in Vietnam could be interpreted in Durkheimian terms as a double bind between moral authoritarianism (the Comteian thrust to reinforce the role of social consensus and state moral imposition) and industrial authoritarianism (the Saint-Simonian thrust to drive specialisation on the basis of economic ends). I also argue that Durkheim‘s critique of Comte and Saint-Simon provides a powerful critique of schemes such as Doi Moi university curriculum reforms.

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Chapter 8. The Enduring Dilemmas in Vietnamese University Curriculum: Some Reflections 8.2 Changes and continuities in the three phases of university curriculum reform

Chapters 5, 6, and 7 analysed higher curriculum policies between 1986 and 2015 by examining how the curriculum knowledge shifted over time, focusing on the key question:

As I noted in chapter 2, a number of higher education researchers have characterised the government‘s approach to educational policy and policy making in this period as a hybrid of a dominant ‗state-centric‘ discourse and a subordinate neoliberal discourse (e.g., Đặng Văn Huân, 2012; St George, 2003, 2010; Trần Hiền, 2009). For example, St George (2003) argues that the state-centric agenda involves ‗socialist‘ aims, such as the promotion of the socialist moral curriculum, while the neoliberal agenda involves the use of new public management to restructure the public sector through privatisation and competition. In a similar vein, Trần Hiền (2009) employs the term ‗pragmatic dualism‘ (which was originally drawn from a Vietnamese HE researcher Lê Thạc Cán in 1995) to explain the Government‘s similar policy tensions in different aspects of higher education including the curriculum. According to Trần Hiền (2009), ‗pragmatic dualism‘ expresses an ‗adaptive strategy‘ between the socialist orientation and the neoliberal orientation. Conceptualising these tensions in the policy regarding institutional autonomy, Đặng Văn Huân (2012) also argues that such a pragmatist approach to reform has resulted in complexity and confusions, with piecemeal and even contradictory policies.

Here, my study has also shown tensions that arise out of the ambiguity and confusion within the policy documents. For example, up to the present, some provisions of the legislative framework such as the Law of Education and the Law of Higher Education remain ambiguous, inconsistent or overlapping (e.g., the role of the government over the curriculum and that of the individual institutions), and some even overtaken by events (e.g., the provision on the Core Curriculum being replaced by the course-credit system). However, my study has added further substance, a new perspective focusing on curriculum and knowledge, by examining the curriculum policies with a social realist approach, one that is grounded in the Durkheimian sociology of knowledge

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Chapter 8. The Enduring Dilemmas in Vietnamese University Curriculum: Some Reflections and education, to curriculum analysis in relation to the epistemic and moral purposes of university education.

Drawing on Bernstein‘s concepts of regulative discourse and instructional discourse, which are employed as key heuristic tools for analysing curriculum changes, I have examined what curriculum approaches and regulative positions were employed in three major phases of curriculum reform and how knowledge organization in the policy documents had shifted over the period of reform. At the same time, I have also identified major problems in the way curriculum was rationalised and constructed in each phase and have argued that these hindered students‘ access to coherent and systematic bodies of knowledge. Together, the historical accounts contribute to an understanding of the context and changing assumptions regarding knowledge, specialisation and order behind the curriculum reforms.

It could be argued that the curriculum patterns did not simply follow a linear process, but rather that there were shifts and re-shifts on both instructional (epistemic) and regulative discourses in the three phases of reform. Specifically, changes in curricular knowledge were illustrated by shifts and re-shifts in the traditionalist ‗red‘ discourse, which was in tension with other discourses, especially economic instrumentalism. Meanwhile, shifts and re-shifts in the organizing principles of knowledge from insulation to hybridization were identified in the instructional discourse of the period between 1986 and 2015. The continuities and changes, as well as general trends across the three waves of reform in the previous chapters, could be recapitulated as follows.

8.2.1 Summary of the three phases

8.2.1.1 The 1987 curriculum

The period between 1987 and 1998 was a period of considerable policy experimentation in the search for a curriculum model that was very different from the one inherited from the Soviet influence prior to 1986. There was an attempt of the policymakers to adopt the American model in the organisation of curricular knowledge. The major agenda of this reform period is nested in the discourse of ‗breadth‘, with the intention of fostering ‗experts‘ with a broad profile of knowledge.

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Chapter 8. The Enduring Dilemmas in Vietnamese University Curriculum: Some Reflections Two major American-inspired curriculum initiatives were adopted that involved changes in both the structure and the organization of knowledge. First, the replacement of the year-based disciplinary curriculum inherited from the Soviet HE model with a course-credit system, which was aimed to increase students‘ choice and flexibility by organizing knowledge into flexible modules. Second, the decision to introduce a two-phase curriculum system aimed to fundamentally restructure curricular knowledge into two levels: a generalist foundation program incorporating studies from many disciplines and a higher level specialist phase; students would sit a national ‗screening‘ exam to be qualified for the latter. These two broad policy measures had significant impact on both the moral knowledge and the disciplinary knowledge structure.

Regarding regulative discourse, chapter 5 showed that although political education and the politicised social sciences and humanities were still present, some minor changes were made to the conventional ‗red‘ approach. This was evidenced in the reduction of exams in red knowledge and an attempt to model the first phase curriculum based on the idea of the American ‗liberal arts‘ discourse, which was considered to be an antidote to the Soviet model‘s over-specialised curriculum. The rationale for the emphasis on phase 1 was to broaden students‘ worldview by making sure that students of all disciplines would be exposed to a broad base of knowledge, with courses to be chosen from different areas on a distributional basis, i.e., the arrangement of the ‗common core‘ general curriculum that included subjects drawn from disciplines in both social sciences and humanities and natural sciences. However, as indicated by the aim of the general curriculum, the broad worldview was intended to go together with correct worldview, which implies little deviation from ‗red‘ approach to these disciplines. In this way, the autonomous form of the American individual order was constrained to conform to the Vietnamese authoritarian order.

Regarding the instructional discourse, the shift from a time-based to a course-credit structure was associated with the delivery of knowledge in bite-sized pieces delivered in different orders and accumulated at different speeds. This presented a radical change to the linearity of the traditional disciplinary mode. However, the danger of incoherence and fragmentation of this approach was not the main concern for the policymakers. This could be seen in the way little evidence was found regarding the requirements for prerequisite rules for courses organised in the course-credit system that emphasized students‘ choice. Another indication of the lack of concern for

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Chapter 8. The Enduring Dilemmas in Vietnamese University Curriculum: Some Reflections curriculum systematicity was expressed in the way the policymakers separated responsibility on the two phase curriculum to different administrative departments, neglecting the fact that a smooth and logical journey for students from phase 1 to phase 2 required smooth coordination among teachers and curriculum makers in the different departments.

8.2.1.2 The 1998 curriculum

The second wave of curricular policy reform that dated from 1998 to 2005 discussed in chapter 6 was relatively static in terms of policy innovations. With the appointment of the new educational minister and the introduction of the 1998 Law of Education, the 1998-2004 period saw a backtracking tendency towards the pre-1986 curriculum model which was intimately linked with the extension of the power and influence of the state in curriculum policy.

Regarding the regulative discourse, the key agenda was to foster a commitment to the socialist order and academic standards. There was an emphasis on ‗socialist‘ order, in which ‗red‘ discourse was foregrounded; this was explicitly stated in the Law in terms of the purposes and principles of university education. ‗Red‘ knowledge in both Marxist-Leninist courses were strengthened and regulated in details, and examination of these subjects was required for students before graduation.

Regarding the instructional discourse, this period saw the construction of a ‗Core Curriculum‘ (or Curriculum Standard Frame), which involved a departure from the 1987 document and a tendency to revert to the pre-1986 curricular model. The MOET set up hundreds of ‗councils‘ consisting of scholars appointed from leading universities and research institutions to draft hundreds of curriculum standards for all disciplines to be applied nation-wide. Each Core Curriculum regulates the aim, content, structure and time amount of each discipline. The idea of the Core Curriculum expresses an emphasis given to the traditional disciplinary mode. Knowledge was organised into fixed insulated modular courses. The elective course-credit system in the 1987 reform was removed, shifting to an emphasis on lecture time. This also means a restriction on students‘ control of knowledge.

The main problem with the 1998 reform is that the idea of a Core Curriculum, as a preparation for Quality Assurance procedures, seemed to fail to promote academic excellence and merely to

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Chapter 8. The Enduring Dilemmas in Vietnamese University Curriculum: Some Reflections substitute one political mechanism for another. The standardisation of curriculum had been achieved at the cost of the specialised discourse. First, the development of common curriculum frameworks agreed among the state politicians and bureaucrats seemed to reflect a naïve conviction at that level that knowledge could be treated as facts which could be divided into arbitrary stacks. Despite the appearance of a discipline-mode, the epistemic mandates were forsaken because considerations of the inherently different forms of disciplines, professions and local contexts of the HEIs were not a central driver of the Core Curricula. Second, by binding the epistemic question to a multitude of regulative restrictions and intensifying the moral discourse this policy clearly strengthened the check on academic freedom and the dependence of university education on state control.

8.2.1.3 The 2005 curriculum

The third phase of university education reform between 2005 and 2015 discussed in chapter 7 was marked by an intensified integration of the higher education policy arena to the wider international community. The move towards the end of the period seemed to favour a strong forward-looking position, in which pragmatist thinking of knowledge became prevalent.

This period was associated with two important major curricular agendas and policy initiatives: re-introduction of the course-credit curriculum to replace the insularity principle of the Core Curriculum yet also an approach based on an ‗outcome‘ and ‗skills‘ discourse to maximise flexibility and learner‘s ‗choice‘. These approaches encompassed shifts in both regulative and instructional discourses.

Regarding the regulative discourse, the analysis shows that there was a nuanced shift in both the ‗red‘ and ‗expert‘ discourses in the key policy documents, and an economic utilitarian orientation was foregrounded. This was first expressed in the aim of the HERA document to prioritise a profession-oriented program for 70 to 80 per cent of undergraduate students for the period between 2005 and 2020. Secondly, since 2008, there was a major restructuring of Marxist- Leninist courses, and the time amount was reduced significantly by half. However, despite a reduction in ‗red‘ discourse, the MOET regulation of learning outcomes also implied that the ‗red‘ approach in the compulsory Marxist-Leninist courses and the diverse disciplines of social sciences and humanities remained unchanged.

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Chapter 8. The Enduring Dilemmas in Vietnamese University Curriculum: Some Reflections Regarding the instructional discourse, the 2005 reform rampantly promoted a de-specialised approach to knowledge by taking employers‘ demands as the main basis for curriculum organisation. In an attempt to seek better integration of practice and theory, the curriculum approach began actively incorporating some of the thinking on outcomes-based description and generic competencies with some ‗progressive‘ ideals of ‗learner‘s choice‘ and ‗learner-centred‘ pedagogy into their curriculum revisions. Knowledge was cast in terms of ‗learning outcomes‘, ‗skills‘ and ‗competence‘. The Profession-Oriented Higher Education (POHE) project, a joint project between the Vietnamese and Dutch government, was considered by policy makers and educators in the HE sector as the vehicle to drive outcome-based education reform through a blurring of boundaries between the education and training spheres, between everyday knowledge and academic knowledge, and between disciplines, as well as reducing structural distinctions and articulation between them in order to meet the demands of industry. The ethos is to make the curriculum as relevant as possible to ‗the world of work‘. In this curriculum policy, the priority for procedural contextual knowledge was achieved at the expense of conceptual, disciplinary knowledge.

8.2.3 Some comparative notes across the three phases of reform

Some comparative notes could be taken about the general trends across the three curricular forms since 1986 regarding both the regulative and the instructional discourses. Regarding the regulative discourse, contradictory discourses of neo-conservatism and economic instrumentalism combined to make up the picture of the reform since 1986. Among the three phases of reform, the 1998 curriculum embodied a dominant neo-conservative policy position by strengthening the ‗red‘ discourse. In contrast, the 1987 and 2005 curricula highlighted a modernising position, emphasising the students‘ adaptability to changes associated with the pragmatic values of the market. Specifically, the 2005 reform showed a marked intensification of the role of ‗social relevance‘ in university reform. The market seems to have become the key shaper of the higher education field, and the employers were placed at the dominant position in curriculum policy formulation. The ‗red‘ discourse increasingly lost its legitimacy over the course of the three decades and increasingly the State became a promoter of commodification in higher education, encouraging the encroachment of economic rationality in curriculum thinking.

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Chapter 8. The Enduring Dilemmas in Vietnamese University Curriculum: Some Reflections Curriculum knowledge was geared to meeting the perceived demands and requirements of the nation‘s economy and of its business and industries.

Regarding instructional discourse, the oscillation between insularism (a form of Mode 1 curriculum) and genericism (a form of Mode 2 curriculum) constitutes one of the remarkable features of the curriculum reforms between 1986 and 2015. This was epitomised as the swing between the traditional curriculum mode that was concerned with linearity and the relative weight given to factual knowledge and the imported approaches that prioritized procedural knowledge. The 1998 reform represents a backtracking tendency to the pre-1986 form of curriculum, the organizing principle of which rests on a highly structured sequence of subjects arranged in linear and well-insulated fashion. Meanwhile, both the curriculum reforms of both 1987 and 2005 may be considered as an attempt to ‗flexibilise‘ knowledge arrangements. We can see some striking similarities between the 1987 and 2005 curricula, albeit not without differences. Both employ credit-course discoures to organise knowledge in chunks to allow for students‘ choice and flexibility. The difference, however, lies in the intensity of the spirit of economic instrumentalism in the most recent period, tightening the curriculum to the immediate short term demands of the market.

There was a remarkable shift over the period towards pragmatist thinking about curricular knowledge. This was epitomized in the epistemic shift from ‗knowing that‘ to ‗knowing how‘, which was strongly visible in the remarkable change in thinking about the nature of knowledge in the third phase (the 2005 outcome-based curriculum). This phase saw an increasing emphasis on a generic mode of knowledge, prioritizing discourses of ‗learning outcomes‘ and ‗competence‘, which are forms of know-how knowledge, at the expense of specialised disciplinary knowledge. It can be argued that the POHE project was a serious experiment with the idea of genericism (see Chapter 6), particularly its transformation of the shape of curriculum knowledge by privileging ‗practice‘ and ‗skills‘ over conceptual knowledge. The project has strengthened the centrality of labour market and the employers in HE provision. Curricular direction has become more economically dependent and faced more outwardly towards the workplace and the marketplace, which is evident in the way that competence has been ‗placed‘ in a central position and is seen as synonymous with job-related performance.

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Chapter 8. The Enduring Dilemmas in Vietnamese University Curriculum: Some Reflections 8.3 Reflections on some enduring epistemic and regulative paradoxes

What is immediately striking when one sets out to trace the history of Vietnamese university reforms in general and curriculum reforms in particular after 1986 is its extraordinary instability. The policies during this period seemed to be in a perpetual state of flux. This is what Higham and Yeomans (2007) call ‗policy amnesia‘, a situation when policy approaches keep shifting and re-shifting within a limited period of time.

Throughout the period of almost 30 years, it is possible to see that each educational minister sought to leave their own mark; though through the force of circumstances, their conception did not meet their expectations. For all intents and purposes, most approaches failed to take root as intended; successive reforms were abandoned only to be taken up again shortly afterwards. Numerous promulgations, decrees and circulars were modified to a greater or lesser extent, reflecting negotiation of constantly evolving aspirations and expectations. Despite successive borrowing of several ‗trendy‘ or ‗progressive‘ approaches from the outside, the changes induced from the reforms were not for the better. After almost 30 years, the epistemic base of the university curriculum remained fragile, being defined by multiple fractures and inconsistencies.

The state of flux in curriculum policies leads me to conclude that the university curriculum policy approaches in Vietnam remain varied and vaguely formulated, with unfruitful attempts to reconcile competing demands of both nation-building interests and economic responsiveness with concerns around efficiency and effectiveness. Such continual fluctuations constitute the best evidence that the university education in general and the curriculum policy in particular have been suffering from an unhealthy state. If various combinations of approaches have been tried out one after another within a short period of time, this is because policymakers refused to recognise the extent of the problem which they were seeking to solve.

I will therefore suggest one way to put an end to this state of flux by courageously confronting the enduring dilemmas that have haunted the Vietnamese university curriculum. But before doing so, let me start by drawing together the themes from the previous chapters, explicating the key epistemic and regulative paradoxes underpinning the successive curriculum reforms between 1986 and 2015.

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Chapter 8. The Enduring Dilemmas in Vietnamese University Curriculum: Some Reflections The epistemic problems result from the dominance of the technical-functionalist approach expressed in the paradox between neo-conservativism and genericism. Reflecting on Durkheimian theory of knowledge, I argue that both approaches are underpinned by an ‗externalist‘ fallacy, denying the intrinsic autonomy of knowledge by reducing it to either contexts (outcome intent for specialisation) or student interests.

The regulative problem relates to a paradox between trying to maintain the commitment to the neo-conservative ‗red‘ and the economic instrumentalist ‗expert‘ discourses. Drawing on Durkheim‘s theory of specialisation, I argue that the aim of university education in Vietnam could be interpreted as the quandary between a Comteian approach and a Saint-Simonian approach. Though seemingly contradictory, both deny the moral nature of specialisation.

8.3.1 Technical-functionalism and the epistemic paradox

One common denominator of the successive curriculum policies during the period under study is what Moore (2007) calls a ‗technical-functionalist‘ policy approach, whereby policies are driven by external socio-economic purposes rather than by attention to the specific purpose of the university system and particularly the complexity of different forms of knowledge. As analysed in the three previous chapters, the major aims of the reforms were to drive knowledge to both political and economic ends. Each has attempted to find ways of harnessing the curriculum to external purposes, such as to meet the demands of the market, to re-impose neo-conservative values or serve the choice of learners-as-consumers.

A problem with the externally-driven curricula is that the curriculum ceased to have a stable epistemological form, since knowledge was not seen as intrinsically but rather as extrinsically valid. The curriculum is treated just as a response to political needs or economic needs rather than as an opportunity to acquire robust bodies of knowledge. By gearing the curriculum to external concerns, such approaches contributed to deflecting the reformers‘ attention from investing on the crucial social and institutional conditions for scholarship despite the efforts of borrowing the ‗best international practices‘.

Throughout the period of almost 30 years, the policymakers had adopted several far reaching reforms aiming at replacing the traditionalist curriculum as well as many other aspects of the

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Chapter 8. The Enduring Dilemmas in Vietnamese University Curriculum: Some Reflections university system to meet international standards. They had learnt experiences from various countries, particularly those from the US or EU, implementing these under the supervision of overseas consultants though various bilateral or international projects funded by wealthier Western governments or supra-national bodies like the World Bank.

Clearly the establishment of a Western university model ‗with Vietnamese characteristics‘ was among the major aims of the reform. And the perpetual state of flux in the policies also seems to indicate that the only way to achieve it was to jump, to undertake a ‗great leap forward‘, similar to a ‗revolutionary‘ process. With this thrust, the Vietnamese policymakers adopted quick-fix curriculum initiatives from the US or the EU and implemented them through a top-down approach without critically considering the conditions for their application. Rather than paying attention to how such systems developed or how they have been supported institutionally, the main concerns of the curriculum reforms between 1986 and 2015 were limited to the technical and bureaucratic aspects of the borrowing process or gearing them to external socio-economic purposes. The reforms that were achieved were ones in which the major part was re-naming institutions, courses or programs, making them externally more Western-like, whatever it is supposed to mean. Meanwhile, such issues that are conducive to genuine scholarship, such as investment on libraries, improvement of teachers‘ living condition and their professional development, determination to end the enduring historical legacy of the separation between teaching and research functions as well as the promotion of institutional autonomy and academic freedom in higher education, were not seriously addressed.

But more importantly, as elaborated below, since a technical-functionalist approach does not take into due account the question of knowledge, the reforms were caught in an epistemic paradox: a neo-conservative ‗red‘ approach in which knowledge from certain disciplines in social sciences and humanities were treated as fixed on the one hand, and, on the other hand, a set of generic approaches in which any forms of knowledge were assumed to be as valid or invalid as any other, as long as they serve the pragmatist goal of economic development. However, despite the seemingly contradictory appearance of these approaches, I argue that both approaches deny the intrinsic autonomy of knowledge by relying on what Young (2008) calls an ‗externalist‘ fallacy, which has opened the door to various forms of anti-intellectualism and the marginalization of the power of reflection.

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Chapter 8. The Enduring Dilemmas in Vietnamese University Curriculum: Some Reflections 8.3.1.1 The neo-conservative ‘red’ approach

After almost 3 decades of reforms, the social sciences and humanities in general and the subjects drawn from these disciplines to form the general political curriculum in particular are still placed under the tutelage of the Communist Party of Vietnam‘s (CPV) resolutions and must conform to the ‗red‘ discourse, i.e., the canonized ideas and principles drawn from Marxism-Leninism. Consider the State direction for social sciences and humanities in Resolution 26 NQ/TW in 1991:

Social sciences must become a sharp tool in renovating thoughts, constructing scientific arguments for the path to socialism of our country, establishing a correct standpoint and worldview, building up socialist consciousness and personality, correcting wrong thoughts. In the years to come, the main task of social sciences is to creatively employ and develop Marxism-Leninism, Hồ Chí Minh thought, and summarizing practical experiences in our country and to receive selectively international scientific achievements, researching basic theoretical foundations to consolidate and deploy the Political Program, socio-economic development strategies and the Resolution of the Congress. To overcome the delay of social sciences, it is necessary to reform the content and methods of Marxist-Leninist subjects, economic sciences, management sciences; quickly develop fields of philosophy, economics, sociology, law, political sciences and management sciences, especially economic management and state management sciences.

(Đảng Cộng Sản Việt Nam, 1991a)

After over 2 decades, the principle remained more or less the same in the Central Resolution 20- NQ/TW on science and technology in 2012:

Social sciences and humanities are to focus on theoretical research and summarizing the practical results of the Doi Moi process and to make prognostications for development. Specifically, it must continue to provide evidence to shed light on the pathway to socialism in Vietnam, support the directions, developmental policies and national defence in the new times. It must also focus on models and developmental strategies by consolidating the socialist-oriented market economy as well as the Party building tasks; establish a socialist law-ruling country; explain the trends in society, culture, ethnicity, religion and the Vietnamese people; enhance historical research; project the development trends in the region and the world, international integration; enhance the role of Vietnam in solving regional and global problems.

(Đảng Cộng Sản Việt Nam, 2012)

Commenting on the state of social sciences and humanities in Vietnam, Phạm Xuân Yêm (2011) argues that it is because of the political intervention over the aims and content of these forms of knowledge, not only in the university curriculum but also in the intellectual spheres where disciplinary knowledge is produced, that the search for scientific truth has been made unattractive. What goes on under the name of research was not an advancement of knowledge,

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Chapter 8. The Enduring Dilemmas in Vietnamese University Curriculum: Some Reflections but an exploration of some problem considered socially relevant by common decision of a particular political group rather than the republic of scientists. At a conference held by the Ministry of Science and Technology on 12 August 2010, some participants frankly suggested that social sciences and humanities just ‗reflect the principles of the state policies and do not create new knowledge, nor shed new lights on major problems‘ (see Trần Văn Ái, 2013, p. 32). Such research focused more on obtaining results consistent with prevailing ideological ideas than to creating new knowledge.

Because of the political aims over the intellectual fields, in most cases not only research but study also suffered. In the university teaching of these disciplines, there still exist several ‗restricted zones‘ that are deemed politically incorrect. The study of philosophy, history or literature, for example, must be told in a particular direction, as expressed by a former student in History:

Although History of Vietnam is not the history of the Party, many events were still kept in the dark and hardly brought out for discussion. If we had a chance to discuss some ‗politically sensitive‘ topics, the lecturers always added a warning by the end of the lesson: ‗none of those topics must be discussed outside the classroom; if you talked about them outside, you have to be responsible for your actions‘. My thought is that studying history involves learning about the unknown that needs explanations and not the known or things everyone finds familiar. What would be the point of studying history then?

(A former history student, quoted in Phạm Lan Phương, November 2014)

From an historical perspective, the enduring ‗red‘ approach in the Vietnamese curriculum policy is an expression of the play of legacy and the political order over the reform. At the same time, from a theoretical point of view, it expresses Bernstein‘s argument that the regulative might affect the transmission of uncommonsense knowledge or specialised knowledge.

Bernstein (1996) argues that specialised knowledge (or vertical discourse) draws its source from disciplines – which are highly conceptual, theoretical and abstract. Specialised or conceptual knowledge is not bits of information or facts; nor is it derived from external concerns or everyday context. Rather, it involves an induction of the novice into a systematic coherent framework because it is based on organised and principled knowledge structures that aim at generality and abstraction. In other words, specialised knowledge possesses special reflective powers and is differentiated from mere beliefs. This knowledge is produced by communities of inquirers and professionals and is strongly rooted in certain practices and cultures, which in turn

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Chapter 8. The Enduring Dilemmas in Vietnamese University Curriculum: Some Reflections determines its potential to combine with other forms of knowledge (Muller, 2009; Young, 2008). Therefore, the boundary between these two forms of knowledge is not to be arbitrarily decided, because the tension between these two forms of knowledge has an epistemological cause rather than social interests.

The enduring ‗red‘ approach, or the incorporation of particular ‗canonised ideas‘ into various social sciences and humanities in the Vietnamese curriculum is typical of what Young (2008) and Moore (2007b) call the ‗neo-conservative‘ approach to knowledge. This approach views knowledge as a fixed body, unchanging over time. The representation could be found in efforts to stick to a ‗canon‘, which in the case of the Vietnamese curriculum is an absolutist doctrine of Marxism-Leninism. In this perspective, since knowledge is considered transcendental, timeless and universal, the nature of knowledge and its condition for acquisition in this approach is not open to debate: it must be kept unchanged in the curriculum and be transmitted to the learner as it is. In this way, this approach has impoverished both the ‗social‘ and ‗real‘ characters of knowledge by reducing the social basis to a particular doctrine associated with a particular perspective, which in turn collapses conceptual knowledge with mere beliefs. As a result, it has hampered the specialisation of social sciences and humanities by blurring the boundary between specialised and unspecialised knowledge.

It should be noted that the so-called ‗red‘ approach in Vietnam, although a form of neo- conservativism in the sense that it gears knowledge to a form of social order, it is different from Young‘s (2008, p.95) concept of ‗neo-conservative‘ approach, which is associated with the traditionalist European discipline mode, in which knowledge was ‗located in a history of real social networks and real trust among specialists‘. According to Young (2008), the European ‗neo-conservative approach‘ is supported by thinkers who view ‗knowledge as given and something has to be acquired by anyone to see themselves as ―educated‖‘ (Young, 2008, p.95). Meanwhile, the neo-conservative ‗red‘ approach in Vietnam was not located in the ‗history of social networks and real trust among specialists‘ but in the social networks of a particular political group that defends the canon of such knowledge not on epistemological basis but for political purposes.

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Chapter 8. The Enduring Dilemmas in Vietnamese University Curriculum: Some Reflections 8.3.1.2 The generic approaches

The reforms between 1986 and 2015 also witnessed the prevalence of generic approaches in which the curriculum was forced into a delivery model based on administrative principles. Such approaches find expression in the celebration of the view that learning could be organised in bite-sized chunks and a blurring of the distinction between academic and vocational knowledge. Unlike the ‗red‘ neo-conservative approach, which views knowledge as fixed and absolute, the generic approaches take an over-provisional view of knowledge, equating the logic of curricular knowledge with that of production, particularly market demands. Although it looks as if it is contradictory to the ‗red‘ absolutist approach, these generic approaches share a similar ‗externalist‘ fallacy about knowledge by treating knowledge ‗as just another instrumentality designed to serve the goals of whatever government is in power‘ (Young, 2008).

From a Durkheimian view of knowledge, both the ‗red‘ approach and generic approaches are underpinned by an assumption that all knowledge is fundamentally the same and thus the organisation of knowledge in the curriculum could be based on arbitrary principles. In assimilating all knowledge to an equal value, both approaches made no effort to seek for demarcation criteria.

In this ‗externalist‘ framework, knowledge is conceptualized as entirely driven by social factors, thus forgetting the important principle as discussed in chapter 3 that knowledge also retains an epistemological basis that keeps it relatively independent from social constraints. By downplaying the role of specialised knowledge, both approaches represent a false distinction between theoretical and everyday knowledge. From the perspective of the reforms, boundaries between disciplinary knowledge and other forms of knowledge are not features of knowledge but a product of interests. It follows from this point of view that decisions about curriculum can depend on political, not educational, priorities.

By reducing knowledge to social interests, the ‗generic‘ approaches also fail to take account of the conditions for knowledge production and transmission. In privileging the industrial demands at the expense of the ‗community of specialists‘ such as scientists, academics and professional associations, the generic approaches currently operating in the Vietnamese curriculum policy

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Chapter 8. The Enduring Dilemmas in Vietnamese University Curriculum: Some Reflections tends to suppress the important aspect of ‗knowing that‘ by giving procedural knowledge primacy in the curriculum foundation at the expense of disciplinary knowledge.

In an updated curriculum review at some major Vietnamese universities in 2014 after the introduction of the 2005 reform, the American specialists from the Harvard Review Team raised concern over the contemporary drastic cut in basic disciplinary knowledge in response to the call for more practice and socially relevant knowledge. The authors of the review report are concerned that the emptying out of basic disciplinary knowledge, particularly those in STEM fields, in the curriculum reform after 2005 puts curriculum quality at risk with serious unforeseeable consequences for innovation:

[C]are should be taken not to eliminate important fundamental classes in order to meet the appearance of more actively engaging in applied research. Fundamental knowledge and research is the foundation upon which innovation can be built, but not necessarily in foreseeable ways.

(Silvera et al., July 2014, p. 13)

By weakening the voice of specialised knowledge, the contemporary trends of outcome-based and skill-based curriculum also blur the distinction between higher and vocational education. As Muller and Young (2014) argue:

To give priority to skills over disciplines in university curricula, whether through outcomes or skills based stipulations, is not only to silence the voice of knowledge in the curriculum and the classroom but it is also a form of de-differentiation and de-specialisation, in two senses. The first sense is that it blurs the distinction between higher and vocational education, and masks the particularity of each. The second sense is that by conflating skills and knowledge it de-differentiates the difference and particularity of ‗conceptual‘ and ‗practical‘ knowledge, two specialised building blocks of the curriculum which are required in different proportions in qualifications that are vocationally or academically oriented (Muller 2009; Shay et al. 2011). Finally, it also de-specialises when it emphasises generic skills at the expense of specialist content.

(Muller & Young, 2014, p.138, my emphasis)

Young and Muller‘s argument echoes Durkheim‘s (1977, p.320) emphasis that the education for a profession or an occupation in the university is characterized by its conceptual intensity, and

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Chapter 8. The Enduring Dilemmas in Vietnamese University Curriculum: Some Reflections this is what makes university education different from other levels of education. In Durkheim‘s words,

What is characteristic of the function for which university prepares people is that these functions cannot be learned by mere mechanical training; rather they require theoretical training, which is indeed the very thing which is essential to them. In order to prepare young people for them one does not start by teaching them certain movements; rather they are taught ideas. Of course every profession is concerned with action and practice; it is an essential element; sometimes (as with scientific professions) it constitutes virtually the whole of them. In order to be able to fulfil these functions it is not enough to possess technical skills, one must in addition know how to think, to judge and to reason. A certain degree of development of the reflective faculties, the speculative faculties, is quite indispensable. The reason is that in all these fields practice is too complex and depends on too many factors, too many variable circumstances, for it ever to be able to become something mechanical and instinctive. It must be guided by the light of reflection with every step it takes.

(Durkheim, 1977, pp.314-315, my emphasis)

Muller (2009) adds that in today‘s world the role of conceptual knowledge is even more important than Durkheim‘s time. As Wheelahan (2007, p.648) similarly argues, conceptual knowledge drawn from disciplines plays a crucial role in enabling students to get access to the underlying generative principles of a discipline, without which they cannot ‗decide what knowledge is relevant for a particular purpose‘ and unable to transcend the local circumstances of everyday life and the workplace. The instrumentalist principle in the generic approach, in overemphasising the role of learners‘ experiences and practical learning while giving little effort to inducting them into a specialised discipline, which requires a strong theoretical and vertical knowledge base, constitutes one of the major factors that lead to this situation. The worst consequences are likely to be suffered by students of underprivileged backgrounds.

8.3.2 The regulative paradox

Bernstein (2000) makes the point that the curriculum is bound up with the ‗regulative‘ in the sense that the bodies of knowledge from diverse disciplines are drawn together to form the whole curriculum on the basis of what are decided to be the purpose of education, the needs and interests of different stakeholders such as learners or employers at any point in time. The conception of what constitutes the individual in a society, the purpose of education and the curriculum are very important because they affect all processes of the teaching and learning process, particularly the construction and selection of curriculum content.

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Chapter 8. The Enduring Dilemmas in Vietnamese University Curriculum: Some Reflections The analyses of the three waves of curriculum reforms have shown how each reform has replicated a paradox between the ‗red‘ and the ‗expert‘ discourses. From the beginning of the reform, depending on what educational minister was in power, depending on whether it was by preference oriented towards the future or the past, university education oscillated between these two opposing poles. In a sense, the stand-off between ‗red‘ and ‗expert‘ discourses in Vietnamese curriculum reforms could be understood as a historically produced dilemma on the role of the university in relation to external forces, particularly the State and the market, which reflects the distinctive political culture of a country that has affected how the university and its curriculum were thought about.

With Doi Moi in 1986, the traditional criteria for what it means to be ‗red‘ or ‗expert‘ were no longer sufficient. These discourses might be undisturbed during the war time when the State could submit the economy, the university and the whole society under its single hand. In university education after 1986, the State was no longer the only employer of all university graduates, but had become one of many diverse employers. It therefore must share with other stakeholders in other social spheres, particularly in the private economic sector, the right to define the criteria, values, concepts related to the university aims in general and the curriculum in particular.

After 1986, the red/expert framework was reconstituted among the policymakers who aspired to transform university knowledge to serve explicit goals of economic modernisation while not compromising knowledge patterns linked with the ‗socialist‘ doctrine which was seen as essential to the maintenance of the political order. The argument the CPV had persistently put forth was that ‗socialism‘ was the most reliable path of development but it needed a period of ‗transition‘ that could be help people live through a period of great collective unease and insecurity. Because of this, Marxist-Leninist doctrine should be employed in the service of ‗social consensus‘. In doing so, the policymakers thought it would be possible to construct curriculum policies for all levels of education that could meet certain ‗global‘ standards while not compromising the socio-historical distinctiveness of Vietnamese culture.

The 1986 curricular reform began with a vision of an ideal ‗new socialist man‘ and a broad notion that such an identity could be moulded through a ‗balanced‘ acquisition of both ‗red‘ and

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Chapter 8. The Enduring Dilemmas in Vietnamese University Curriculum: Some Reflections ‗expert‘ knowledge. The quandary and conflicts between the will to preserve the traditional ‗socialist‘ society and the project of economic reforms have rendered difficult the search for a settled image of an individual as a ‗broad vista‘ for society in general as well as the university in particular. The traditional ‗new socialist man‘ was no longer relevant, yet the policymakers have not arrived at an alternative. What are the criteria for the new individual of the so-called ‗socialist-oriented market‘ society? What is the ideal of the individual that the Vietnamese university is attempting to achieve? Should that individual be more ‗economic‘ or more ‗socialist‘? Is he/she an engineer that is both ‗red‘ and ‗specialised‘? Up to the present, there has not been a proper solution for this question.

The crisis of an ideal individual in society leads to a dilemma in identifying settled criteria and values about the moral and epistemic purposes of the university. The contradiction in the aims of university education led to uncertainty in applying means. On the one hand, to meet the demands of the labour market, particularly those related to the ‗expert‘ dimension, the policymakers issued several regulations and policies on curriculum reforms as well as management. On the other hand, to preserve the political quality criteria, they preserved the ‗red‘ dimension in the curriculum, especially in social sciences and humanities. In curriculum terms, this paradox manifest in the structural division between the political ‗red‘ curriculum and professional ‗expert‘ curriculum. As the policymakers drew some inspiration from the US model, the earlier ‗red‘ education and ‗expert‘ education became epitomized in the general curriculum and career/professional curriculum. In general, as in pre-Doi Moi, the Vietnamese university curriculum continued to be used as a tool to reproduce values and standards of the State, while it might not be relevant to the demands and standards of the employers, especially private and foreign investors, those who were employing a majority of labour in the country. These employers require students to be equipped with solid professional knowledge, skills, foreign languages, professional ethics that might not be relevant to the ‗political qualities‘ required by the politicians. The policies seemed to be caught between two options. First, in the 1998 curriculum, the State increased the control on society in general and the university in particular to adjust and redefine the social needs according to their will. In this solution, the conflict between curriculum quality and social needs could be solved by increased regulative force. Second, in the 1987 and 2005 curricula, the curriculum policies seemed to be more responsive to market rules, particularly the 2005 curriculum. The policymakers‘ mindset also had to change

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Chapter 8. The Enduring Dilemmas in Vietnamese University Curriculum: Some Reflections to suit the spirit of the market economy, from which they change all other processes of the curriculum.

The 1987 reform started with the view that a specialised professional curriculum was ‗instrumental‘ and hence the need for a broad-based curriculum through expanding the ‗general curriculum‘ based on the distributional requirements. The 1998 curriculum reacted to the uncertainty with the ‗red‘ discourse by intensifying ‗red‘ knowledge in the general curriculum. With the increased influence of economic instrumentalism, the 2005 saw a reversal in the status of the two curriculum discourses: the general curriculum was minimized and the professional curriculum emphasized.

It is evident that increasingly the domination of the ‗red‘ or the ‗socialist‘ moral discourse has shifted and increasingly come under challenge since 1986. The relevance of the Marxist-Leninist curriculum was increasingly questioned on several occasions after 1986, even before that (St. George, 2003). As analysed in chapter 7, reduction of content and time amount of the ‗red‘ subjects was also observed particularly with the introduction of the 2005 curriculum. Common criticisms were levelled not only at the outworn content and old-fashioned teaching methods of these subjects (K. Harman & Nguyen, 2010) but also at its psychological effects on the students. A professor in literature observed that

almost 100 per cent of students suggest that they struggle with these subjects out of boredom. The result is ironical: after being ‗armed‘ with Marxism-Leninism through the outdated curriculum, the students are unable to have a new worldview or working method; on the contrary, they become poor slaves, without critique spirit and creativity, developing a hatred for not only Marxist-Leninist philosophy but also to all philosophical thoughts, especially those about objectivity and freedom.

(Trần Văn Chánh, 3 September 2016)

Despite this fact, it should be highlighted that the shifts in the ‗red‘ discourse have not been a difference in principle: the differences are, after all, matters of degree and emphasis. In any case, any forceful critique or proposal for alternatives of the Marxist-Leninist curriculum offerings were often ‗met with a forceful defence by party officials who argue that any attack against continuing such study is essentially an attack against the socialist fabric of Vietnam‘ (Harman & Nguyen, 2010, p.80). Up to 2015, the Marxist-Leninist curriculum still occupied a place of some importance, despite its loss of legitimacy. In the last phase of the period, the one which is still

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Chapter 8. The Enduring Dilemmas in Vietnamese University Curriculum: Some Reflections dominant at the time this thesis is finalized, the disturbed ‗socialist‘ discourse seems to be suppressed by the dominant vocationalist discourse as the goal of university education. This toing and froing has continued until the present moment.

The stand-off between the ‗red‘ and ‗expert‘ discourses, between the general curriculum and professional curriculum, takes us further towards the question of the value of specialisation and the role of specialised knowledge. It could be argued that there are two main assumptions about specialisation which are at work in contemporary Vietnamese curriculum policy: a tendency to associate specialisation with economic progress on the one hand, and a tendency to minimize and weaken it on the other. The first tendency would gear the curriculum goal to economic instrumentalism as much as possible; the second would compel the curriculum to subordinate itself to moral consensus at the service of the State. These competing approaches, while setting up an exhaustive dichotomy over the curriculum and knowledge, both imply a common logic: they both deny the moral role of specialisation. To support the argument that these assumptions are problematic, let me return to the conceptual starting point on Durkheim‘s theory of specialisation.

In the section that follows, the above discussion on the regulative paradox is taken to a deeper level in order to reflect on this issue. Drawing on Durkheim‘s critique of August Comte and Saint-Simon on specialisation and social order, I argue that to a significant degree, the contemporary curriculum quandary reflects mistaken views of specialisation and the role of specialised conceptual knowledge. Specifically, it has been both underpinned by the Comteian assumption that specialisation leads to social disorder, hence the need to offset it by ideological ‗common values‘ imposed by the State, as well as the contradictory Saint-Simonian assumption that specialisation is merely a matter of economic development.

8.4 The Durkheimian interpretation of the regulative paradox in contemporary Vietnamese curriculum policy

8.4.1 Durkheim’s critique of August Comte’s moral authoritarianism

In chapter 3 I argued briefly that Durkheim is critical of Comte‘s position that increased specialisation requires a re-assertion of a separate regulatory order. Given that this is one of the

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Chapter 8. The Enduring Dilemmas in Vietnamese University Curriculum: Some Reflections features of the reforms this thesis has discussed, I want to look here in more detail at Durkheim‘s argument about the problem with this position.

In The Division of Labour in Society (1984), Durkheim‘s points out that Comte‘s view of specialisation and his overemphasis on social order harbour a contradiction. On the one hand, Comte views specialisation as both useful and necessary. On the other hand, Comte sees specialisation as a source of social disintegration. Unity, for Comte, does not arise naturally from the diversity of functions. Accordingly, he concludes that specialisation, ‗by its very nature, may therefore exert a dissolving influence‘ (Durkheim, 1984, p.259). Comte‘s solution is to check differentiated functions (specialisation) with ‗a permanent discipline, capable of constantly forestalling or containing their discordant upsurge‘ (ibid). Such a ‗permanent discipline‘ involves opposing forces in the social, intellectual and moral spheres. Specifically, in the political sphere, Comte argues for the role of the state or government to extend its moral function in checking the rise of specialisation; in the social sphere he argues for the role of a religion of humanity that is hierarchical and instils obedience; and in the intellectual sphere he argues for the need to unite sciences with general forms of knowledge.

Durkheim rejects Comte‘s attempt to address the issue of excessive specialisation through an emphasis on moral consensus (moral norms). In his sociological analysis of the division of labour, Durkheim argues that Comte fails to see that social solidarity produced by specialisation is gradually replacing the earlier ‗mechanical solidarity‘, which had rested mainly on shared moral beliefs or on uniformity in their ‗collective conscience‘:

Although Comte recognized that the division of labour is a source of solidarity, he does not appear to have perceived that this solidarity is sui generis and is gradually substituted for that which social similarities engender. This is why, noticing that these similarities are very blurred where the functions are much specialised, he saw in this process the disappearance of a morbid phenomenon, a threat to social cohesion, due to excessive specialisation. He explained in this way the fact of the lack of co-ordination which sometimes accompanies the development of the division of labour.

(Durkheim, 1984, p.301)

Durkheim argues that specialisation is ‗natural‘ and believes that the solidarity it generates is characterized by a society of higher civilization (the organic solidarity). Unlike Comte who argues that the state must take on a new function to intervene in other organs to ensure a normal functioning of the whole, for Durkheim the role of the state becomes intensified but extends no

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Chapter 8. The Enduring Dilemmas in Vietnamese University Curriculum: Some Reflections further. Each organ, while not arranged in a juxtaposed position, co-operates with each other through their autonomy. The members of society are also obliged to specialize because their survival can no longer be maintained through similar roles with others. This process of division of labour is seen in all spheres of life, from the sexual division of labour in the family to all other functions. Thus, members of these organized societies are related to each other through difference and functional interdependence. This kind of solidarity is characterized by greater autonomy among the organs, yet at the same time greater unity in the organism.

Durkheim observes that being a specialised person, one who usefully fulfils a specific function, had increasingly been considered ‗the categorical imperative of the moral consciousness‘ (Durkheim 1984, p.4) in an increasingly differentiated society. In other words, the individual in a modern differentiated society becomes ‗social‘ when he or she is led to see his or her real commitment through practice (Callegaro, 2012, p. 465). This ‗real commitment‘ presupposes the opportunity of the individual to function effectively through specialisation. The person who has dedicated himself to a specific role is ‗reminded at every moment of the common sentiment of solidarity through the thousand and one duties of professional morality‘ (Durkheim, 1984, p.334). In contrast, the dilettantes and those who ‗are too much absorbed with a culture that is exclusively general‘ are those who tend to ‗shrink from allowing themselves to be wholly caught up with the professional organization‘ (ibid, p.334) and hence are prone to ‗a state of detachment and indeterminateness‘. Without a determinate goal, one can ‗scarcely lift oneself out of a more or less refined egoism‘ (ibid, p.4).

Durkheim then is cautious of any attempts that view specialisation and specialised knowledge as the source of social disorder, in policy as well as in education. Durkheim takes issue with Comte‘s proposal that specialisation should be checked by ‗means of the opposite‘, through outside influence such as state reinforcement. Viewing the state as having an absolute role in exercising moral authority along Comteian lines, for Durkheim, is a way to revert to the past, whereby the individuals must internalize moral regulations without criticism or reflection. He explains that

For it [specialisation] to be able to develop without having so disastrous an influence on the human consciousness, there is no need to mitigate it by means of its opposite. It is necessary and sufficient for it to be itself, for nothing to come from outside to deform its nature.

(Durkheim, 1984, p.308)

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Chapter 8. The Enduring Dilemmas in Vietnamese University Curriculum: Some Reflections Durkheim‘s critique of Comte‘s moral authoritarianism is also a powerful critique of Comte‘s anti-individualism and condemnation of freedom of thought (Stedman Jones, 2001). In Durkheim‘s view, a modern order that recognizes the sui generis moral nature of specialisation requires not only the relinquishment of arbitrary authority, but also the formation of a new kind of authority, which goes with a respect for moral individualism and reason. In Moral Education and his discussion of the role of discipline, Durkheim argues that an individual is treated as a person in the modern sense when social rules prescribing his behaviour ‗must be freely desired, that is to say, freely accepted‘ (Durkheim, 1961, p. 121). He argues that such a willing acceptance of social rules is a form of ‗enlightened assent‘ in which the power of reflection or reason ‗has become and is becoming an element of morality‘ (ibid). This also means that preaching social rules without recognizing an individual‘s willing acceptance is to ‗condemn him to an incomplete or inferior morality‘ (ibid).

He also notes that the form of reason associated with moral individualism is not the one that is associated with the calculative reasoning preoccupied with rigid bureaucratic procedures or quantifiable measurements, the form of reason that is also most criticized by Max Weber as the ‗iron cage‘ of modernity. The form of reason Durkheim refers to is what he calls ‗the faculty of reason comprehensive‘, which is distinguished from the Cartesian rationalism or the form of rationalism proposed by the 19th century liberal economists (Durkheim, 1977, p. 348). He argues that individuals of the modern world needs to be ‗rationalist‘ who are ‗concerned with clarity of thought‘, yet they ‗must be rationalists of a new kind who know that things, whether human or physical, are irreducibly complex and who are yet able to look unfalteringly into the face of this complexity‘ (ibid).

For Durkheim, in modern society whose existence and persistence depends on both specialisation and cooperation, the form of moral order, the sacredness of society, is refracted in specialised institutions (Muller and Hoadley, 2010, p.165). The goal of education is to internalize individuals to these associations. Rather than religious beliefs, sacred knowledge has become increasingly secularized in the form of the sciences, or specialised knowledge. Induction into symbolic relations or knowledge forms and their internal articulations is to be socialized into complex modern society. Giving students access to such impersonal forms of knowledge is a

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Chapter 8. The Enduring Dilemmas in Vietnamese University Curriculum: Some Reflections means to inducing them into these institutions, and is a condition of fostering individual autonomy, which is a characteristic of modern moral order.

So in relation to the tension between ‗red‘ and ‗expert‘ discussed in this thesis, a Durkheimian perspective drawing on his critique of Comte would argue first that drawing on an older form of authority is out of keeping with the current specialized social form characterized by both autonomy and functional interdependence; and secondly the aim of interdependence requires recognizing and supporting specialized forms of knowledge.

Durkheim‘s critique of Comte‘s moral authoritarianism and his defence of specialisation and moral individualism provide a powerful critique to any curriculum policies that subject learners to a particular discourse that does not respect reason and academic standards. This has important implication for the the ‗red‘ discourse in contemporary Vietnamese curriculum policy as well as the debate on the general curriculum.

From Durkheim‘s point of view, the enduring ‗red‘ discourse in the Vietnamese curriculum is underpinned by the assumption that specialisation is the cause of social disintegration and therefore that it is necessary to check it through opposing forces, particularly through the role of the state and its imposition of a moral doctrine to maintain social order. However, for Durkheim the authority of the regulations that is crucial for fostering the modern individual must be based on trust and reason. Modern morality, for Durkheim ‗cannot be internalized in such a way that it is beyond criticism, or reflection‘ (Durkheim, 1961, p.52). Such a curriculum policy would authorize a simplistic return to the traditional attitudes towards life in which the primary importance was given to a form of individual passivity.

The current interests in the liberal arts curriculum can be seen as a response to the dominance of economic rationality in many curriculum policies across diverse contexts. For example, many commentators in the US show concerns about the commodification and marketization trends in education and lament that curriculum makers, both in universities and in the policy-making realm, tend to avoid broad debates about the meaning of education and the formation of character (Giroux, 2014; Roth, 2014). The question involves what would provide the unifying force that would bring together the moral and intellectual purposes of the undergraduate curriculum. In curriculum terms, most emphasize the role of the ‗general curriculum‘ in the formation of the

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Chapter 8. The Enduring Dilemmas in Vietnamese University Curriculum: Some Reflections well-educated American individual, which emphasizes the ranges of studies in humanities, arts and social sciences (e.g., Ebels-Duggan, 2015; Gutmann, 2015; Nussbaum, 1997). Roth (2014, p. 95) writes,

Specialised knowledge was all well and good, but the pursuit of narrow technical expertise could produce a breed of narrow technical men who did not know how to deal with the world beyond their particular specialty.

(Roth, 2014, p.95)

Nussbaum (2010, p. 7) also contends that the ability to think critically and universally as a ‗citizen of the world‘ as well as the capacity to ‗imagine sympathetically the predicament of others‘ are ‗mainly associated with the humanities and the arts‘. She prides on the American liberal arts education in the US university system, which she believes to play a significant role in forming citizens who are informed, independent and sympathetic.

In many developing countries, the general curriculum is increasingly argued to be important for professionals to enable them to adapt to the forces of globalization (Peterson, 2012). According to Godwin (2015), in many cases the general curriculum is the place for curriculum designers to prioritise generic knowledge and skills as a basis for job flexibility, and critical and creative thinking skills. In 2000, the World Bank- UNESCO Task Force on Higher Education and Society also exhorts developing countries to invest more in general education to prepare students for flexible knowledge careers for the world of work and develop a broad range of social attributes which could enhance their understanding of global (Task Force on Higher Education Society, 2000). In this argument, the general curriculum is not justified in terms of its having a ‗moral check‘ on specialisation, but rather as contributing to fostering a form of individual that can be more adaptable to the economic world. The solution becomes an emphasis on more ‗generic attributes‘, ‗soft skills‘ or ‗generic skills‘ (Barrie, 2007).

Similarly, in contemporary curriculum discourse in Vietnam, there has been a renewed interest in the discourse of the liberal arts curriculum that was adopted in the early 1990s. In 2016, Fulbright University, the first non-profit private university, was established. It was greeted with great fanfare when it announced that its priority would be the construction of a ‗liberal arts‘ program. One of the key university reformers in the 1990s also wrote several articles on this topic recently, expressing his hope that such a discourse would be brought back into the contemporary curriculum policy (Lâm Quang Thiệp, 8 December 2017). He argues that a narrowly specialised curriculum cannot be relevant to a knowledge economy, which requires a broad vision and generic skills, as one is required to be flexible in the 21st century. While this is

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Chapter 8. The Enduring Dilemmas in Vietnamese University Curriculum: Some Reflections surely an attractive argument, I think it is necessary to point out that there are other considerations that should be attended to before these deliberations are taken.

Here, it is important for policymakers to remember the lesson of the past as well as the danger of ‗half-learning‘ and ‗egoist dilettantes‘ raised by Durkheim. First, the lesson drawn from the 1987 curriculum is that the reformers or educators or researchers that adjusted their aspirations in line with these developments may be reinventing themselves to accept their place within existing societal relations. This may reinforce the making of social rules that are not based on reason but on compulsion in which the individual is subordinated to the interests of the group.

The implication of Durkheim‘s emphasis on the role of impersonal rules based on reason for the cultivation of the modern person is that knowledge based on reasoning and conceptual clarity is of great significance not only for professional education but also for citizenship education. Durkheim‘s critique of Comte‘s disregard for the moral nature of specialisation also has implications for those who put forth the proposal that students need to be exposed to a smorgasbord of liberal arts disciplines, whether it is to ‗complement‘ or to ‗counter‘ the ‗narrowness‘ of the professional education. Durkheim does not deny the role of these subjects, but the point is that it is underpinned by a mistaken assumption that specialised knowledge required for a particular function might make a person ‗narrow‘, and hence needs to be checked with a wide variety of knowledge to make him ‗open-minded‘. For Durkheim, such a curriculum is based on a mistaken view of specialisation. More importantly, by exposing students to diverse ideas through bird‘s-eye views, such a curriculum might generate dilettantes or generalists. In Durkheim‘s words:

Occasionally the remedy has been proposed for workers, that besides their technical and special knowledge, they should receive a general education. But even assuming that in this way some of the bad effects attributed to the division of labour can be redeemed, it is still not a means of preventing them. The division of labour does not change its nature because it has been preceded by a liberal education. It is undoubtedly good for the worker to be able to interest himself in artistic and literary matters, etc. But it remains none the less wrong that throughout the day he should be treated like a machine. Moreover, who can fail to see that these two types of this existence are too opposing to be reconciled or to be able to be lived in the same man! If one acquires the habit of contemplating vast horizons, overall views, and fine generalisations, one can no longer without impatience allow oneself to be confined within the narrow limits of a special task. Such a remedy would therefore only make specialisation inoffensive by making it intolerable and inconsequence more or less impossible.

(Durkheim, 1984, p.307)

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Chapter 8. The Enduring Dilemmas in Vietnamese University Curriculum: Some Reflections In a conference paper (given in 1900) dedicated to the topic of moral education in the university, Durkheim argues that the general curriculum, particularly for the working class, should not be too occupied with literary and artistic culture, although these subjects are ‗hardly useless because they elevate and refine the spirit‘ (Durkheim, 1976, p. 387). However, for students whose struggle for life is so challenging, these subjects are less essential. Durkheim stresses that even if students are to take these subjects, the curriculum must be ‗given sequentially and systematically‘ (ibid).

8.4.2 Durkheim’s critique of Saint-Simon’s industrial authoritarianism

Whereas Durkheim‘s critique of Comte elaborates the problem of reverting to an older form of authority and also of an insufficient respect for specialized knowledge forms, his critique of Saint-Simon explicates the problem of driving specialisation by an entirely instrumental economic end.

Durkheim‘s Division of Labour in Society was originally entitled ‗The Problem of Socialism and Individualism‘. He was interested in the development of socialist ideas by the end of the 19th century in Europe. Socialism emerged as a response to the need to place economic interests on par with political interests in industrial societies during the 19th century (Dawson, 2012). The sociologist‘s critique of socialism was presented in a series of lectures to future teachers at the University of Bordeaux between November 1895 and May 1896, three years after he published his first major work on the Division of Social Labour (Fournier, 2013).

Durkheim‘s critique of socialism (see Durkheim, 1959) is not only unique in its view and methodology (Dawson, 2013), but illustrative of his unique take on the moral dimension of specialisation, and I would further argue, of the sui generis moral nature of institutions such as the university.

Durkheim defines socialism as any doctrine ‗which demands the connection of all economic functions, or of certain among them, which are at the present time diffuse, to the directing and conscious centres of society‘ (Durkheim,1959, p.19). The economic principle of socialism is based on the assumption that economic life had increasingly become the only useful function for society and therefore should be subjected to collective control. Other functions such as military

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Chapter 8. The Enduring Dilemmas in Vietnamese University Curriculum: Some Reflections or theological functions are ‗vestiges of a past which should have already disappeared‘ (Durkheim, 1959, p.122). The political principle of socialist doctrines is based on the assumption that ‗government restraint will have no basis since social relationships will be essentially relationships of economic interests‘. In other words, the State (the ‗directors of society‘) will ‗have no function in telling people what is true or false, what is advantageous or not‘ (Durkheim, 1959, p.124).

Durkheim argues that although Saint-Simon rightly perceives the loss of the archaic regulative principles (such as the military principle and the theological principle) that had curbed the industrial function, he arrives at a problematic conclusion that such a trend means the nature of the industrial function is not to submit to any order. The socialist doctrines is based on the moral principle that the only goals of State‘s collective administration

will be to make the production of wealth as fruitful as possible, so that everyone can receive the most…If earthly interests are the only possible ends of human activity, they must have value and dignity and this is not possible when the divine is conceived as outside the things of this world.

(Durkheim, 1959, p.122)

Saint-Simon also applies the absolute role of industry to other social functions, for example, the intellectual one. He argues that ‗scholars render very important services to the industrial class, but receive services from it that are much more important […] The learned form but a ―secondary class‖‘ (Saint-Simon, quoted Durkheim, 1959, p.87).

For Durkheim, in contrast to Saint-Simon, the new moral order cannot come into being merely by being stripped of all that exists in the previous order, but must be premised on and transform what has gone before. The problem with Saint-Simon‘s view of the regulative is that it reduces human nature to a one-sided view. It is underpinned by an impoverished view of the ‗social‘ as the origin of moral order. For Durkheim, society is not only about power struggles nor is it reduced only to economic function. The foundation of morality, for Durkheim, rests on a sense of solidarity because the fundamental basis, the ‗point of departure for humanity‘ (Durkheim, 1984, p.144) is not egoism, but altruism. This idea, when translated into education, means that for Durkheim the task of education is to mediate the internationalization of moral order ‗from egoism to altruism, to beneficial associations outside the ego and the family‘ (Muller and Hoadley, 2010, p.166).

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Chapter 8. The Enduring Dilemmas in Vietnamese University Curriculum: Some Reflections Durkheim insists that social life would collapse if individual interests are subject to nothing higher than themselves. He argues that an egotistical view of human nature only partially reflects one part of man, which can be lessened when man becomes more rationally enlightened and organically interdependent. For Durkheim, egoism is not the motive force of the human person; rather, it is the ‗sympathy for all that is human, a wider pity for all sufferings, for all human miseries, a more ardent desire to combat and alleviate them, a greater thirst for justice‘ (Durkheim, 1969, p. 22).

Durkheim‘s critique of Saint-Simon‘s socialist principle applied to university curriculum policy raises the spectre of the dominance of the market ideology in all spheres of social life, including university curriculum policy. The Saint-Simonian view that specialisation or the industrial function needs no regulation reflects the encroachment of economic rationality in curriculum aims and knowledge conception in the three waves of curricular reforms in Vietnamese higher education policy. Durkheim‘s critique of Saint-Simon‘s amoral view of specialisation provides a sharp critique of this trend of economic instrumentalism (neoliberalism). Such a critique entails at least two implications.

The first is that it raises the danger of promoting an economistic re-writing of society in general and education in particular. It urges us to think about the economic re-writing of curriculum purpose, in learning outcomes as well as in a curriculum that spares no space for the moral formation of individuals. As Young (2010, p.7) argues, these trends fail to recognise that they are ‗replacing educational concepts concerned with intellectual development by economic concepts concerned with optimizing choice behaviour‘.

Durkheim‘s view that specialisation is a moral phenomenon implies that the teaching of specialised, professional knowledge for a specific function in society is not merely an instrumental role of schooling, but it is inherently a moral issue in a modern society characterized by differentiation A ‗real commitment‘ to a certain profession/occupation also means that individuals have the ability to access to knowledge available to that field through collective association (Callegaro, 2016; Dawson, 2013). For Durkheim, this is one aspect that contributes to securing the role of ‗professional ethics‘ as a means of renewing public morality (Durkheim 1984, xxxi-lvii). Durkheim‘s implication is that a curriculum that truly seeks ‗epistemic accesses must allow access to functional knowledge through the collective association

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Chapter 8. The Enduring Dilemmas in Vietnamese University Curriculum: Some Reflections (professional associations/community of scholars. This demands attention to the role of specialised professional knowledge and reminds us of the need to guard against any attempt to suppress specialised disciplinary knowledge in the curriculum.

The moral function of specialisation is not that it is merely ‗the necessary conditions for the intellectual and material development of societies‘ (Durkheim, 1984, p.12) but rather that it is the social bond of a higher order that values the dominant principles of reason, enterprise and relative personal autonomy. Such a view of specialisation would be cautious to any curriculum attempts that might result in the generation of dilettantes who do not master specialised forms of knowledge:

The man of parts, as he once was, is for us no more than a dilettante, and we accord no moral value to dilettantism. Rather, we do perceive perfection in the competent man, one who seeks not to be complete but to be productive, on who has a well-defined job to which he devotes himself, and carries out his task, ploughing his single furrow.

(Durkheim, 1984, p.4)

The current outcome-based skill-based curriculum policy in Vietnam has shown how specialised knowledge is undermined by either the dominance of instrumentalist discourse or by the encroachment of everyday knowledge, in the form of life skills of various kinds integrated in the curriculum. For Durkheim, such a skill-based curriculum cannot foster students‘ power of reflection because skills do not present the mind with any object to think about. In his words,

The mind is not an empty vessel which can be directly moulded in the same way as one moulds a glass, which one subsequently fills up. The mind is made for thinking about things, and it is by making it think about things that one fashions it. Right thinking is a matter of thinking aright about things. It is by confronting the intellect with the reality which it should reflect that one can teach the mind how to tackle it in such a way as to form correct views about it […]The only way of developing a capacity for thought is to represent the mind with things to think about, to teach it how to come to understand them, to approach them from the direction in which they may most easily be grasped, to demonstrate to it how best it can tackle them in order to arrive at clear and distinct conclusions.

(Durkheim, 1977, pp. 318-320)

The emphasis on generic and employable skills orientates students not to a body of theoretically systematic knowledge but to the demands of labour markets or social demands (Young, 2008; Wheelahan, 2010). The ‗progressive‘ tone of ‗choice‘, ‗flexibility‘, ‗competence‘ and ‗learned- centred‘ might sound attractive and might help students to be elated for a while, yet they run the

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Chapter 8. The Enduring Dilemmas in Vietnamese University Curriculum: Some Reflections risk of turning them into permanent dilettantes since they deny them access to specialised forms of knowledge necessary for their occupational function and citizen worldview.

The second implication of Durkheim‘s critique of Saint-Simon‘s celebration of economic rationality is that a university curriculum that denies students access to moral education is no less problematic. Durkheim argues that instilling a collective sense of moral order, or the society‘s ‗sacred‘, in individuals is the principle of education. The ‗defining aim of education‘, for Durkheim, is not to equip students with different pieces of knowledge but to ‗create in him a general disposition of the mind and the will which will make him see things in a particular life‘ (Durkheim, 1977, p.29). Because a university is first and foremost an educational institution, the moral formation of the student is no less important. This is partly because intellectual intensity can harm students‘ moral development. He suggests that there have been many examples showing how intense intellectual development can ‗produce moral skepticism in its wake‘ (Durkheim, 1976, p.381) because an individual has a tendency to consider himself or herself an autonomous world. He emphasizes that the university has a unique status for it to contribute to this task:

Only the university can make the habits, which primary and secondary schools could hardly develop in other than a purely mechanical manner, as fully self-conscious and reflective as the present state of science allows.

(Durkheim, 1976, p.381)

Durkheim rightly argues that confusion of ideas is one of the causes of social malaise that hamper both social transformation and social solidarity. Modern societies are characterized by greater complexity, mobility and speed of change, and especially, an intensification of the faculties of reflection. Unlike Marx or some contemporary thinkers who overemphasize the role of ‗practice‘ over ‗theory‘, Durkheim does not think that the determinant of social change lies in technology. For him, reflective thinking is the transformative force of modernity. He stresses that it is the faculties of reflection that are indispensable in modern societies:

For societies to be able to live in the conditions of existence now available to them, the sphere of consciousness, whether individual or social, must be extended and clarified. Indeed, as the environment in which societies live becomes increasingly complex, and consequently more fluctuating, they must change frequently in order to survive. Furthermore, the more the consciousness remains unenlightened, the more averse it is to change, because it does not perceive rapidly enough either the need for change or the direction change should take. On the contrary, the enlightened consciousness has learnt how to prepare itself beforehand for the way in which it has to adapt. This is why intelligence, guided by science, requires us to assume a greater role in the processes of collective life.

(Durkheim, 1984, p.14)

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Chapter 8. The Enduring Dilemmas in Vietnamese University Curriculum: Some Reflections There is one more reason for Durkheim‘s emphasis on rationalism: that is its role in the ideal of justice in modern society. In times of social turmoil, it is reason that can do a great service to society in working out ‗new objectives‘ beyond the achieved. The ability to grasp reality and make precise judgment through critical reflection not only allows us to prepare for change but can assist us in orienting our conduct. As modern societies rely on a more general and indeterminate system of rules, reflective thinking is required to apply them to particular cases. Besides, the intervention of reflection is necessary in finding relevant remedies for social pathologies. This is because the capacity for freedom and critical reflection depend on the capacity to see what is wrong and oppressive in ‗constraining‘ and ‗anomic‘ forms of society. Thus, an enlightened conscience can help us fight against the yoke of regressive traditionalism, to orient our conduct and define the ideal that is immanent in all our tendencies yet remain latent in the heart of our society. Durkheim thus emphasizes the need of justice in ‗not stifling rational faculties‘ and in ‗completing, extending, and organizing individualism, not of restricting or struggling against it‘ (Durkheim, 1969, p. 29).

The important implication from Durkheim‘s defence of the power of reflection for education is that knowledge essential for any purposes, be it for citizenship formation or professional formation, requires sufficient understanding of concepts and principles organised systematically. Unlike both the ‗red‘ supporters and their radical opponents, such as some critical social reproduction theorists, Durkheim is not of the idea that the university curriculum should induct students to an ‗alternative consciousness‘ by sensitizing them with a certain ideal and knowledge of ‗what ought‘ rather than ‗what is‘. In this way, the curriculum might commit the sin of reductivism, reducing knowledge to practical or contextual goals. Without access to the most reliable knowledge in the production field as well as a systematic coherent disciplinary framework, students are left with a false objectivity and become averse to change. In other words, students need ‗precise notions‘ to guide their political action by being inducted into a meaningful framework and accounts that enable them to engage with new ideas and insights offered by a wider community of specialists. Such knowledge must be clearly distinct from mere myths or common sense thinking. Therefore, continuity and coherence are crucial when teaching moral subjects.

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Chapter 8. The Enduring Dilemmas in Vietnamese University Curriculum: Some Reflections Here, the question of what subjects contribute best to the formation of citizenship remains open to debate, and it might take another thesis to fulfil this task. Durkheim‘s list of recommended subjects might be different from those offered by the Vietnamese policymakers or Martha Nussbaum (1997), for example. And the issue is also underpinned further by the problems with the different values assigned to social sciences and humanities on the one hand and natural sciences and technology on the other. However, what is relevant to this thesis is that, to reiterate the earlier point, conceptual clarity and a curriculum based on reason is important to any subjects. For Durkheim, a general curriculum based on distributional requirements in which students are exposed to too many problems and systems of thought might go against this principle.

8.5 Some concluding thoughts

This chapter has summarized key themes emerging from the analyses and has argued that one of the crucial elements of all problems in contemporary Vietnamese university education starts from the disregard for the intrinsic autonomy of education and knowledge as well as the dilemma between industrial authoritarianism and moral authoritarianism, which has affected both the regulative and the epistemic functions of the university education, depriving it of a consistent common goal from which to build the necessary steps in teaching and learning. Vietnamese educational policymakers may wish to fulfil their aims of the new curriculum vision that provides space for both social order and economic development, yet by focusing more on political and economic expediency rather than on pedagogical principles, disregarding the intrinsic autonomy of knowledge and the moral dimension of specialisation, and hence specialised knowledge, they face the danger of reinforcing generations of half-learning individuals or egoistic dilettantes. Such an approach is unlikely to lead to durable social cohesion and innovation.

By drawing on Durkheim‘s theory of specialisation and his critique of Comte and Saint-Simon, my intention is not that it could serve as an alternative that could be applied directly to the contemporary society characterized by both specialisation and homogenization and fast-paced change. Also, as Dawson (2013) rightly argues, his view that one‘s life is attached to a particular profession or occupation would need some rethinking. However, my point is that the core thesis

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Chapter 8. The Enduring Dilemmas in Vietnamese University Curriculum: Some Reflections of his critique, that specialisation is a moral phenomenon sui generis as well as its associated principles relating to modern moral order, specialised knowledge and the individual, may prove worthwhile for our discussion on the specialisation-order dilemma that has entrenched the university curriculum reforms in Vietnam so far. Specifically, it raises concerns about the possible social and moral consequences in neglecting the moral dimension of specialisation in the curriculum, treating it either through coercive social rules or through market principles and hence marginalizing specialised knowledge.

It is not the ambition of this project to speculate on whether the future reformers of the Vietnamese university curriculum would favour a market-based approach and totally remove the ‗red‘ approach. The reform process is complex and unpredictable because at a given time there would be different external and internal drivers influencing the discourse of the curriculum, such as national and global economic imperatives and national needs. But either choice, between Comte and Saint-Simon, is like that between a rock and a hard place.

One of the most important messages from an engagement with Durkheim‘s theory of knowledge and specialisation is that one of the ways to avoid the danger of both moral authoritarianism and industrial authoritarianism is to provide students with opportunities to get access to knowledge of the criteria based on true scholarly merit, i.e., their validity is recognized both within and beyond the community of specialists. This entails taking seriously the relative autonomy of education and knowledge. Therefore, what is needed is to step back from the idea that knowledge can be arbitrarily defined and to pay attention to policies that are conducive to scholarship.

In my view, the main challenge facing the Vietnamese university reformers and educators at the present time is not the framing of curricula in terms of learning outcomes, but the very need to promote verticality and coherence. The challenge for teachers and curriculum designers is to construct vertically robust and coherent pathways from disciplinary knowledge in order to induct students into conceptual understanding. Such an epistemic approach is not only applicable to certain bodies of knowledge (for example, the STEM disciplines), but it is relevant for any subjects students are to acquire in a university curriculum, be it for moral or professional purposes. Such forms of knowledge cannot be developed within a short time frame without any connection between policymakers and curriculum theorists and educational researchers. Nor can

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Chapter 8. The Enduring Dilemmas in Vietnamese University Curriculum: Some Reflections it be developed through reductivist approaches to knowledge that reduce knowledge to external goals or contexts.

A society that respects specialisation, i.e., one that respect differentiation and diversity relies on the capacity to think with reason. This entails exposing students to public opinion, to diverse ideas going on in society in a way that students have the opportunity to get access to clear concepts to take political action in their civic life. While the question over what subjects or disciplines are to be included in the curriculum to realize the moral goal of university education remains an open debate, my view is that the distinction between commonsense and uncommonsense knowledge and the need to attend to conceptual clarity matters in such an endeavour.

However, it should be born in mind that the calibration of policy goes much wider than the curriculum. As Bernstein (2000) argues, education cannot make up for society. There is no magic wand to resolve many challenges relating to university education in Vietnam, particularly curriculum issues. Genuine reforms in education cannot be effective unless other spheres are well in sync. All parts of the system would have to inch forward slowly together so that they would create an effective synergy rather than the policy tensions currently being witnessed.

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Chapter 9. Conclusion

CHAPTER 9. CONCLUSION

9.1 The journey summarised and key insights

This thesis has attempted to understand what happened to curricular knowledge in the successive university curriculum reforms in Vietnam between 1986 and 2015, and through the analyses it has sought to make a constructive critique of the reforms and contribute to reflecting on the theoretical question of educational knowledge and the principle of specialisation and social order in contemporary times.

Much like the history of the Vietnamese society itself, the account given in this thesis of the changes and continuities in knowledge approaches between 1986 and 2015 is one of experimentation and integration into the outside world. The trajectories of university curriculum changes between 1986 and 2015 in Vietnam were shaped by heterogeneous external and internal forces: the country‘s changing of socio-economic context and its adaptation to a new world order with the rise of globalization and the spilling over of pedagogical ideas from diverse developed regions such as the US and EU.

The study employed a particular approach to curriculum analysis. Specifically, it drew on some key insights and analytical concepts (the instructional discourse and the regulative discourse) developed by Basil Bernstein (1971; 2000) and others in the Durkheimian sociology of education to analyse curriculum changes in relation to the question of knowledge, specialisation and social order. In this approach, while the influences of socio-political factors are acknowledged as factors in shaping curriculum discourse, the focus is on the forms of knowledge and tensions between knowledge selection principles and regulative principles that were set up through different curriculum approaches in the three phases of the reform period.

Regarding methods, the evidence base of the research included official policy documents supplemented by semi-structured expert interviews. Since the interest of the study lay in approaches to knowledge in national HE reforms, the focus was on the intended curriculum policy at the macro level. My analysis looked at both what the policies say about aims and key

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Chapter 9. Conclusion agendas as well as what organisation and structure for curriculum each phase set up in relation to both moral and epistemic discourses. The analysis approach was both interpretive and critical through which the analytical assumptions and possible tensions or problems can be teased out.

Through analysing major reform documents situated within contextual backgrounds of the period, the study provided a socio-historical account of the changes in, and the interplay of, both the instructional and regulative discourses in the three phases of university curriculum reforms during the period. The study attempted to show how dominant ideas and assumptions conditioning and informing the university curriculum reforms reflected the peculiarities of the Vietnamese university tradition within which it was constructed. At the same time, by taking a social theory of knowledge in analysing the curriculum, the study also identified major problems in rationalizing and constructing each curriculum that hindered students‘ access to coherent and systematic knowledge structures. Drawing on Durkheim‘s critique of August Comte and Saint- Simon on specialisation, the study raised concerns about the possible political and pedagogical consequences of neglecting the moral dimension of specialisation in the curriculum, treating it either through coercive ideological ‗common values‘ or through market principle and hence marginalizing specialised knowledge in contemporary university curriculum policy in Vietnam.

The key themes emerging from the analyses were threefold. First, the analyses of the three phases of curriculum reform in the period under study showed that the curriculum patterns did not follow a linear process, but there were shifts and re-shifts in curricular approaches in the three phases of reform. Such shifts reflect an uneasy attempt on the part of the policymakers to try to put together the American-European style while maintaining a consistent ‗red‘ approach, each with unsatisfactory results. This is evidenced in the way the reformers kept shifting and re- shifting approaches to knowledge within a limited period of time.

Second, the policy analyses also showed that the reforms were caught in an epistemic paradox: a neo-conservative ‗red‘ approach in which knowledge from certain disciplines in social sciences and humanities were treated as fixed on the one hand, and, on the other hand, a set of generic approaches in which any forms of knowledge were assumed to be as valid or invalid as any other, as long as they serve the pragmatist goal of economic development. However, despite the seemingly contradictory appearance of these approaches, I argued that both approaches deny the

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Chapter 9. Conclusion intrinsic autonomy of knowledge by relying on what Young (2008) calls an ‗externalist‘ fallacy, which has opened a door to various forms of anti-intellectualism and a marginalization of the power of reflection.

Third, the analyses of the three waves of curriculum reforms showed how each reform has replicated a paradox between the ‗red‘ and ‗expert‘ discourses. In one sense, the stand-off between ‗red‘ and ‗expert‘ discourses in Vietnamese curriculum reforms could be understood as a historically produced dilemma on the role of the university in relation to external forces, particularly the state and the market, which reflected the distinctive political culture of a country that has affected how the university and its curriculum were thought about. In a more general sense, from a Durkheimian perspective, the stand-off between the red and expert discourses can be seen as related to a more general issue regarding how specialisation is understood. In the reforms discussed in the thesis, it seems the policies tried to hold together two conflicting tendencies. On the one hand, specialisation was assumed purely as a matter of economic progress, and on the other hand it was seen as a threat to social order that needed to be minimized and weakened. The first tendency would gear as much as possible the curriculum goal to economic instrumentalism; the second would compel the curriculum to subordinate itself to moral consensus at the service of the State.

Drawing on Durkheim‘s critique of August Comte and Saint-Simon on specialisation, I argued that the quandary between ‗red‘ and ‗expert‘ discourses, while setting up an exhaustive dichotomy over the curriculum and knowledge, both imply a common logic: they both deny the moral role of specialisation and hence the role of specialised, conceptual knowledge. Specifically, the 1986-2015 reform period was both underpinned by the Comteian assumption that specialisation leads to social disorder, hence the need to offset it by ideological ‗common values‘ imposed from the state, as well as the contradictory Saint-Simonian assumption that specialisation is merely the matter of economic development. From this reading, the reforms did not generate knowledge approaches, both epistemic and moral, that truly reflects an increasingly differentiated society in terms of both work and values.

The implications of the analyses are that undesirable consequences may follow in relation to students‘ acquisition of knowledge and moral formation. And evidence in the study also

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Chapter 9. Conclusion indicated that such consequences did in fact become apparent. Through this, the study problematizes any attempts that disregard the intrinsic autonomy of education and knowledge by equating these categories with socio-economic interests.

9.2 Limitations of the research

Some limitations of this study are inevitable due both to the choice of approach and the research interest. The analyses of university knowledge were at a ‗macro‘ generic level, not at practical institutional levels – that is, at the level of what was enacted on the ground. However, the conceptual and critical approach is justifiable in relation to the nature of the questions under investigation, namely curriculum at a policy and conceptual level rather than at a practice level. Besides, as Muller (2016, p. 93) rightly remarks, ―without a rational basis to decide between good and bad policies, policy arguments could only lead to rule by the powerful‖ .

I have written from a certain standpoint and focused mostly on two dimensions of knowledge (moral, epistemic) among diverse issues. Unlike many studies of Vietnamese higher education, I have not focused in any detail on the direct political infighting, nor has the study been framed in terms of administrative theories or theories of development or implementation studies, though all of these are also relevant to the question of higher education policy.

This thesis is a study of one country, Vietnam, and focused on its explicit agendas, and on the external sources on which its policies drew. Further insights may be gained by doing similar curriculum policy studies in other socialist or communist countries trying to merge political and market interests (in particular China); or by taking the questions raised in this thesis to the university curriculum developments currently seen in the US and Europe.

9.3 Significance of the research

Unresolved tensions in higher education in Vietnam have been pointed out by some scholars within the educational community in Vietnam (e.g., Hiền Trần, 2009; Đặng Văn Huân, 2012; St George, 2003). In different ways, they all share a picture of striking paradoxes in contemporary higher education of Vietnam, expressed by Sykes (1996, p.2) as a complex picture of ‗the new against the old, free market against government control, the prosperous against the devastating poor, semi-trucks side by side with ox carts‘.

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Chapter 9. Conclusion In some ways, my study shares with these scholars a ‗paradox story‘ of changes and continuities in Vietnamese university curriculum policy, drawing attention to the tensions of the system as a means of economic modernization and as a guardian of political control. However, by focusing on the knowledge issue, this study also has provided a much more detailed account of the specific form of curriculum policy changes in three phases within this period, analysing their emphases, their administrative arrangements, how their curriculum discourses navigated the cultural and political contradictions, and the tensions that were evident.

My analysis has shown different knowledge forms within the university curriculum that remained sensitive to political control. It has also examined the contradictions brought about by Vietnam‘s interweaving of genericist approaches to knowledge borrowed from outside, particularly from the US and EU, into the existing knowledge patterns situated within the politics of Vietnam and its universities. In this regard, the study has contributed important new details and perspectives of an under-explored area in higher education research in Vietnam: the question of knowledge, specialisation and social order. It has provided a systematic account of the changing formulation of curricular knowledge both in terms of instructional discourse and regulative discourse.

The thesis has used the experience of Vietnamese curriculum policy to engage with educational issues across a broad spectrum. It illustrates how education policy is shaped by economic and social pressures and attempted to problematize the relationship between education, politics and labour markets. The study has also contributed a fresh perspective on the issue of university curricular knowledge compared to existing literature on Vietnamese university education. In chapter 3 and later in chapter 8, it explored a range of theoretical approaches to thinking about knowledge and social order in education and made a case for focusing on the sociality and the specialised differentiation of knowledge in not only problematizing the underlying assumptions of the current curriculum but also in proposing more adequate way to think about it. Through a focus on both epistemic and moral discourse and an interpretation drawing on Durkheimian sociology, the study has identified issues and tensions unrecognised in more politically-focused accounts of university curriculum policy. Specifically, this study has drawn attention to the epistemological and moral foundations of curriculum in Vietnam, that is, to critically evaluate how changes, both epistemologically and sociologically, were influencing the contours of

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Chapter 9. Conclusion curricular knowledge discourse and to critically evaluate the emerging ideological paths that are in contest with the old curriculum model. It has also drawn attention to an under recognized issue for educational research: the relation knowledge, specialisation and social (and moral) order. The questions identified here, which are particularly visible with Vietnam‘s trajectory as a market- oriented socialist State, are also relevant to other countries and are a potential arena for a range of further national and international studies of these questions.

This study has important implications for policy makers, curriculum researchers and educators on a range of key contemporary issues within university education, especially in Vietnam and similar developing countries which seek to elevate the quality of teaching and learning for both economic development and social cohesion. The documentation of different curricular approaches is aimed to help policymakers to become more informed about the implications of choices they might make. The outcomes of this study are to remind them of the importance of paying attention to developing a solid conceptual knowledge base for all the regions of knowledge. This is to ensure that the learners, especially those of disadvantaged background, have optimal access to the powerful knowledge that takes them beyond their local context.

For teachers, the model for forms of knowledge and the conceptual development in this study highlight the importance of a pedagogy in which the role of the teacher is not merely taken as a facilitator, nor as a one-way dispenser of knowledge, but more importantly as an specialist who is aware and committed to mastering issues in their disciplines while being dedicated to inducting learners into that discipline or knowledge area. The question university teachers should always keep in mind is whether the curriculum they are offering can provide students with powerful knowledge that enables them to move beyond their local situations and beyond the knowledge to which they are introduced at one point in time.

9.4 Looking ahead

The Vietnamese story of struggling with the dilemma between specialisation and order offers some stimulating points for thinking about the issue in different countries. I suggest that it would be interesting to see how agendas of knowledge in relation to the problem of specialisation and moral order are taken up in other contexts where the moral purpose of university education is not an explicit concern in national policies, focusing on two questions:

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Chapter 9. Conclusion  What elements of university curriculum, at different levels, can make contributions in both fostering intellectual development and moral engagement in university education?  How are these agendas taken up in contexts where the moral question seems implicit in contexts that are different from the Vietnamese system?

Given the limitations of the research, a means of extending the current study would be to analyse specific cases of curriculum developments, particularly those of particular specialist fields. Further empirical work could explore the perceptions and outcomes of teachers and students in relation to the changed approach to teaching and learning, thus shedding light also on possible changes in their academic identities and capacities. Such results will be important in providing a more reliable guide to educational policy in the future.

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Appendices

APPENDICES

Appendix 1 – Plain language statement

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Appendices Appendix 2 – Letter of consent

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Appendices

Appendix 3 – Key interview questions

Key policies on higher education reforms in Vietnam between 1986 and 2013 include:  The 1987 Four Program of Actions on Higher Education Reform;  Decision 2677/QD-BGD-DT/1993 on the Curriculum Framework and Decision 2678/QD-BGD-DT/1993 on the Minimum Knowledge for Phase One of Higher Education Curriculum  Law of Education in 1998  Policies on Curriculum Standard Frame in 2001  Higher Education Reform Agenda in 2005  Law of Higher Education in 2012  Other relevant policies on curriculum approaches and initiatives acquired during the interview Proposed research questions to informants on the key higher education policies in Vietnam between 1986 and 2013:  How is the context referenced in the policy?  Why is the policy adopted?  What are the key curricular focus, rationale and ideas in the policy?  What are the core curricular issues underpinning the problematisation?  What recommendations/solutions/strategies are made regarding the problems identified in the curriculum?

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Minerva Access is the Institutional Repository of The University of Melbourne

Author/s: Nguyen, Thi Kim Quy

Title: University curriculum reforms in Vietnam 1986-2015: knowledge, specialisation and social order

Date: 2018

Persistent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11343/213186

File Description: UNIVERSITY CURRICULUM REFORMS IN VIETNAM 1986-2015: KNOWLEDGE, SPECIALISATION AND SOCIAL ORDER

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