Introduction

As the world’s 14th and ASEAN’s third largest nation, with a population of almost 96 million people, Vietnam is well known for a good tradition of teaching and learning as well as a strong family commitment to education. The country has achieved 92% of adult literacy, as compared to the average world adult literacy of 98.06% for those aged between 14 and 25, and an average of 94.51% for those who are 15 years old and older (UNESCO 2015). Despite remarkable achievements in basic education, health and income (Do and Do 2014), Vietnam’s Human Development Indicator (HDI) index of 0.683 in 2015 (up from 0.435 in 1990) (UNDP 2011) ranked 128 out of 187 countries (UNDP 2015). However, Vietnam’s tertiary education has been identified as the weakest sector in the education system (Nguyen 2018; Tran et al. 2014, 2017; Tran and Marginson 2018a, b).

The Vietnamese higher education (VHE) system is comprised of both junior colleges and universities, which are responsible for awarding diploma, bachelor, master and doctorate credentials. There are two national universities and three regional universities, each with its own distinctive institutional governance arrangements and member universities, and there are a large number of provincial universities and academic institutes. The system includes nonpublic and foreign-owned tertiary education institutions, accounting for 19.5% of all higher education institutions (Do and Do 2014). The number of universities and colleges in the system has expanded fourfold within the past two decades, reaching 425 by 2015 (UNESCO 2015). It is estimated that over the decade between 2000 and 2010, one new university, on average, was being established every week. Over a 6-year period from 2007 to 2013, 133 new universities were established, of which 108 were upgraded from 2-year colleges (Pham 2015). Vietnam’s institution-to-people ratio is estimated currently to be 1:212,000. Rapid and fragmented growth in the number of new higher education institutions with a limited vision of their role has posed significant risks for quality assurance and governance (Do and Do 2014).

To date, the research literature on the VHE system has not explored the role and importance of globalisation in sufficient depth. In a postcolonial country such as Vietnam, it is important to detect transnational linkages, junctures and disjunctures as well as the stoppages residing within the system. This book seeks to advance a conceptual understanding, as well as offering practical insights about the system and the extent of educational reform. The book addresses the following principal question and sub-questions:

  • Principal question: ‘How are Vietnamese higher education institutions responding to globalisation and internationalisation as well as local demands?’

  • Sub-questions:

    1. (a)

      What changes have occurred in Vietnam’s higher education system as a consequence of the impact of global forces?

    2. (b)

      What is the nature of the local forces being exerted on the higher education system in Vietnam?

    3. (c)

      What is the impact of Vietnamese culture and values on Vietnam’s higher education system in a context of global forces?

    4. (d)

      What are implications of local and global forces for reforming Vietnam’s higher education system?

Globalisation and Internationalisation

Fundamental to the tracking of VHE’s patterns and developments are globalisation and internationalisation, which are identified as global forces in this book. Initially, globalisation may be approached from top-down or bottom-up. The former approach is sensitive to global expansion of free trade and free market ideology. It unpacks the power geometry of supranational agencies such as the World Bank (WB), International Monetary Fund (IMF), UNESCO and the like, as well as the acceleration of multinational corporations (MNCs). The latter proposes an opposite path, understood as the ‘grassroots’ of globalisation in the words of Ajun Appadurai (2001b). Viewed according to this approach, globalisation must be seen as a complex site which is neither complete nor fixed. Rather, it is the combination of networks of relation, be they economic, cultural or political (Altbach and Knight 2007; Enders 2004; Marginson and Mollis 2011). Essentially, these networks of relation extend beyond the geographical boundaries of the nation-state.

Kenway et al. (2006) argue that the process of deterritorialisation occurring within the nexus of globalisation has made our social life less structured and dependent upon physical territories. Neither does it lie in the particularities of locality or place. Instead, the ‘social relations are “stretched out” across ever-widening expanses of space’ (Kenway et al. 2006, p. 44). Aspects of social and cultural life have been isolated from the notion of defined ‘place’, leading further to an advent of a ‘new scale of social action and social power’ (ibid, p.45). As a result, these scholars urge us to move away from the comfort of spatiality [the local and the nation-state] to a social space which involves and invokes transnational social and cultural activities and formations.

Kenway et al. (2006) also remind us that this social space is embedded with power geometries. As a consequence, scholars must not be completely bounded by local place and time. They must be critically aware of the importance of place and reflexively attend to both embodied and local habits and cultures. These habits and cultures become seen as observant of the ‘fluidities and mobilities’ alongside with the ‘stoppages and fixities’ which characterise the social space.

Essentially, globalisation is dispelled at the local production level. The local/the single place and globalisation are inseparable entities. They precondition the existence of the other. Often, the politics of local production are subtly embedded in every activity of supranational production. In Burawoy’s (2001) critique, the interconnected political struggles should be tied up to every node of the global production lines. Burawoy (ibid.) therefore urges us to ‘replace abstract globalisation with a grounded globalisation but also how that experience is produced in specific localities and how that productive process is a contested and thus a political accomplishment’ (p. 158, emphasis added). Alongside this political struggle is the need to restore history and agency at the local reception and contestation of the global and further relocate the global as produced in the local. Here globalisation is understood and interpreted as the production of (dis)connections that link and of discourses that travel (Appadurai 1996; Burawoy 2001; Kenway et al. 2006).

Globalisation has posed numerous challenges to sociocultural life. It has changed the ways in which humans normally live (Appadurai 1996, 2001a). One typical example of this change is the vast expansion of individualism in the traditionally so-called collectivist societies. It subliminally conditions hybridisation of cultural and social tradition which would have us go beyond economic globalisation to unpack the education system and its patterns and changes (Marginson and Mollis 2011).

Neubauer’s (2012) proposal of ‘circuit’ and ‘subcircuit’ of exchange upon the profusion of globalisation is useful. This scholar locates globalisation in the landscape of higher education in East Asia, arguing that higher education is actually made of another circuit of exchange. It is constitutive of multiple subcircuits, each of which constitutes and is derivative of the delineated geography of networks. These circuits and subcircuits overlap with one another. Alternatively, according to Neubauer (2012), they are multiple and hybrid. They characterise modern higher education institutions in East Asian countries, including the Vietnamese higher education system (Nguyen and Tran 2017).

Internationalisation in higher education is habituated by globalisation. It constitutes a space where multifarious flows of international students, scholars, knowledges, programs and educational service providers stretch higher education boundaries beyond nation-state. Viewed according to this perspective, internationalisation has become seen as the realisation and the product of social spatiality. In examining the impact of spatiality in internationalisation of higher education, Larsen notes:

Internationalisation is the expansion of the spatiality of the university beyond borders through mobilities of students, scholars, knowledge, programs and providers. (Larsen 2016, p. 10)

However, internationalisation cannot be hastily or narrowly reduced to student mobility, cross-border education or curriculum-related changes. Jane Knight (2003) proposes three dimensions of globalisation: international, intercultural and global. In examining internationalisation of higher education, she alerts us to the danger of overlooking the complexities of globalisation and internationalisation. Following Knight, globalisation ideologies have been injected into internationalisation. Consequently, international and intercultural dimensions have been prioritised in higher education policies and programs. The rationale behind internationalisation is to ensure this international dimension remains central and sustainable.

Local Responses and Demands

Globalisation, internationalisation, the knowledge economy and the shifting labour market structure have created a demand for reforms of the VHE. Changes to the higher education system are critical to respond to the need to enhance human capital for a globalised knowledge economy. Nguyen and Tran (2017), upon observing globalisation and internationalisation in the Vietnamese higher education system, remark:

… the influences of global and external forces upon HE in Vietnam are inevitable. Globalisation has created the condition for the reform of VHE to take place. At the same time, the HE system is under the pressure to change in order to respond effectively to the new circumstances brought about by globalisation and internationalisation. (p. 13)

Higher education has been recognised as pivotal to national capacity building. It enhances national economic growth and national competitiveness in the global arena, while also re-enhancing political and cultural power. It prepares, equips and strengthens its citizens’ skills, knowledge and competencies, enabling those who are fully prepared to function efficiently in the more competitive global labour market. And yet, Vietnam does not seem to be well prepared for such global integration. Vietnam’s success at the Trans-Pacific PartnershipFootnote 1 (TPP) on 8 October 2015 would urge researchers and HE policymakers to reframe VHE in ways that it responds more effectively to the mega forces of globalisation and national economic development. In an interview with the Thanhnienonline newspaper, the economic specialist, Phan Van Truong (Phan 2015), expressed his concern that Vietnam was not yet well prepared to meet the human resources, strategic planning strategies and international trade relations required by TPP member countries. As Phan argued, mobilising the nation’s internal strength (inner agency) and self-determination is a critical strategy in face of TPP and intense economic globalisation.

In 2008, there were 2,162,106 students enrolled in Vietnamese tertiary education; 76% of whom were studying full time (MOET 2009). There were 74,573 lecturers. Only 10.6% of whom held a PhD qualification. The ratio of students to lecturers was comparatively high, at 29 to 1. According to World Bank (2015), the country’s tertiary gross student enrolment increased by almost 13 times, from 2% in 1991 to 25% in 2013. Such a rapid growth in higher education has slowed down since 2013. In 2016, it is reported that there were total 2.2 million students enrolling in universities and colleges, a slight decrease compared to that of 2015 and somewhat equivalent to that of 2008. However, what captivates us is the social craze and social mentality towards credentials, that is, the society-wide obsession for securing a place in the Vietnamese universities or colleges tends to fade away (Nguyen 2013; Nguyen and Lehy 2015). The yearning of Vietnamese families and students for higher education credentials appears to be not as strong as it used to be. Instead, Vietnamese families and students have become more selective and rational with their choice of universities and the undergraduate programs massively offered in the market. Never before have we witnessed such a severe competition coming from both public and private sector, with institutions now racing against one another for recruiting students via enormous marketing-driven campaigns and student recruitment strategies. Increasing local demands have been shifted towards the quality of undergraduate programs, the prestige of the university or college and the student employability rate upon graduation.

Universities and colleges in Vietnam have become subject to severe public scrutiny. More often, pressure comes directly from parents and students who have placed higher demands for teaching and learning quality, branding and graduate employability. Universities and colleges are being required to align better with market needs and stakeholder demands; they are seeking to uplift teaching and learning quality, improve graduate employability rates and build their brand identities in the higher education market. The challenges lie on the fact that their existing curriculum appears to be fairly out of tune with the labour market, new technologies and international developments in teaching and learning (Tran et al. 2018). Especially, current teaching and learning practices tend to be fairly slow to respond to the demands of the market economy. Preoccupied with pure disciplinary theories and political indoctrination, the VHE curriculum provides insufficient attention to work-integrated learning as well as the development of soft skills and attributes for students (Tran et al. 2014). Critical reflection and creative thinking have been given insufficient emphasis in current HE teaching and learning practices. Scholars have pointed out that many students ‘find it hard to think creatively or to respond flexibly to emerging challenges’ (Tran et al. 2014, p. 20). This is coupled with the disconnectedness between the VHE institutions and the industry, the decreasing university enrolment rate mentioned previously and the growing concern over university graduates’ unemployment (Pham 2015; World Bank 2012).

At the national level, the Vietnamese Government’s responses to these challenges have been comparatively aggressive; they have been manifested via a series of decades-long, post-1986 policies in an effort to create a breakthrough in VHE quality (Nguyen and Tran 2017). One of the highlights of these policy texts is Decision No.201/2001/QD-TTG of 28 December 2001. In principle, the Decision is correlated to the 2001–2010 Educational Development Strategy. It stresses the need for the VHE system to ‘create a breakthrough in educational quality compatible to international standard and at the same time, fits well into Vietnamese context’ (Vietnamese Government 2001).

Resolution No.37/2004/QH11 issued by the National Assembly on 3 December 2004 re-enhances Decision No.201/2001/QD-TTG. Overall the Resolution commands that the Vietnamese universities are supposed to choose amongst a vast array of international advanced programs to develop an advanced modern curriculum, thanks to which the VHE institutions can create through teaching and learning reforms (Vietnamese National Assembly 2004). In 2005, Vietnam’s Education Law was officially approved by the 11th National Assembly meeting. The Education Law speculates that the VHE curriculum content must be modern and advanced; in addition, it has to be synched with basic science knowledge, foreign language, information and technology literacy and specialised knowledge. At the same time, it is to meet regional and international standard (Vietnamese Government 2005). The Resolution14/2005/NQ-CP was issued on 2 November 2005; it showcases, amongst other things, the Vietnamese Government’s determination to comprehensively innovate the VHE system for the 2006–2020 period and, again, commands the VHE institutions to import and apply the so-called advanced foreign curriculum and programs (Vietnamese Government 2005).

Most prominently, Decision No.145/2006/QĐ-TTg on 20 June 2006 guides and orients VHE institutions towards building a Vietnamese university with an international standard (Vietnamese Government 2006). It is followed by the 10th National Congress’s Decision in 2010 and the National Standing Committee of the Vietnamese Communist Party’s report, focusing exclusively on transforming education and training. Anticipated to thoroughly renew the VHE system and build an international standard university, it aims to train the Vietnamese talents (Centre Committee 2010; Vietnamese Communist Party 2010). Further, the higher education law approved by the National Assembly on 18 June 2012 became effective as of 1 January 2013, and it was appended with a Chapter on International Cooperation (Chapter VI with 6 Articles).

The Vietnamese Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) has introduced various policy texts in attempt to respond timely and effectively to the local Vietnamese needs. It, at the same time, has to align well with global trends in higher education. The most prominent policies are the Higher Education Reform Agenda (HERA) – Resolution 14/2005/NQ-CP (Vietnam Government 2005) and Resolution 73/2012/ND-CP, both of which were aimed at VHE’s ‘fundamental and comprehensive’ reforms (Vietnamese Government 2012). These policies have, nevertheless, been subjected to scrutiny; they are said to lack comprehensiveness, vision and practicality (Hoang et al. 2018; Nguyen and Tran 2017; Tran et al. 2014; Tran and Marginson 2018a). Neither do these policies could help tackle VHE crisis at root, nor can they embody a sophisticated educational philosophy driving higher education reforms. Except for an over-ambitious goal of producing 20,000 PhDs by 2020 regarded as one of strategic human power plans and massive state funding, these alarming issues have posed numerous constraints to government authorities (Harman et al. 2010; Hayden and Lam 2010; Hayden and Thiep 2007; London 2011; Pham 2010; Tran et al. 2014).

The burgeoning local demands for the VHE reforms are clearly felt in the field of university governance and structure, including institutional autonomy, accountability and academic freedom. The lack of autonomy, accountability and academic freedom is rooted in the highly centralised and bureaucratic system with top-down management style and overlapping control of different ministries (Nguyen et al. 2009; George 2011). Consequently, VHE institutional governance falls below standard and expectation and is commonly tied to power hierarchy. Do Minh Hoang and Do Thi Ngoc Quyen (2014) further argue ‘the lack of well-planned reforms and synchronic solutions and measures has led to an unmanageable higher education system in terms of educational quality’ (p. 48). As a consequence, academics have been familiar with poor autonomy, underpay and lack of research funding and professional development. Limited resources and insufficient empowerment have been commonly cited for hindering Vietnamese academics’ commitment to their duties and responsibilities. Many of them have turned to ‘informal’ sources of income so that they could make their ends meet. More alarmingly, they tend to marginalise their institutional duties rather than seeing them as being core to their professional life. Apart from selecting, developing, resourcing and regulating academics’ quality, enhancing academics’ commitment to their university and their professional duties is key to ensure teaching and learning quality.

Higher education reforms and massification of the VHE system over the past three decades since economic reforms in 1986 have constrained university leaders and MOET authorities. The VHE institutes appear to fall short of academic staff. The consequence is academic staff’s workload has been increased. Further, Decision No.1400/QĐ-TTG (Vietnamese Government 2008) raised the bar of English communication skills and standards required for university lecturers. The Decision was officially approved by the Vietnamese Government to launch Project 2008–2020 on 30 September 2008. It is considered a timely response to the need to teach English for Vietnamese students, public servants and staff nationwide. The project costs approximately VND 9400 trillion, an equivalent of US $540 million.

Alongside with Decision No.1400/QĐ-TTG, in the field of teacher education, there has been a burgeoning need for an effective professional training model for academic staff and professional ethics and morality. This is because this model is expected to improve teacher competences and, thus, assist Vietnamese teachers, especially primary and secondary English teachers, in meeting the new English teacher standard as is outlined in the Joint Circular No.21/2015/TTLT-BGDĐT-BNV by MOET (MOET 2015).

MOET has acknowledged the importance of research in universities and national capacity for shaping an innovative, dynamic economy. Paradoxically, a large number of Vietnamese universities and colleges have been deploying the Soviet higher education model after 1954 in Northern Vietnam and post 1975 in the South of Vietnam. In light of this model, universities and research institutes are separate bodies, those whose domain is to mainly focus on teaching and those whose function is research focussed such as government research institutes. This long-standing Soviet model is criticised for failing to respond to the country’s scientific, economic and social needs (Tran et al. 2014). The disconnection between higher education and research institutes, according to World Bank (2012), has been identified as one of five key weaknesses of the VHE system. Albeit massive funding poured into higher education research, limited research achievements have been gained compared to other Asia Pacific developing countries. The Vietnamese HE research capacity tends to lag behind, as is observed by World Bank (2012).

Since Vietnam Economic Reforms (Doi Moi) in 1986, numerous efforts have been done to improve higher education equity and equality. However, there exists a gap, especially for the underprivileged and disadvantaged students. Access to tertiary education and quality of tertiary education in general and between regions has been deviated and granted to different student cohorts.

Vietnamese Higher Education in a Globalised Context

The edited collection of chapters is accessible to global readers. It offers an alternative and comparative approach to more critical, sustainable VHE reforms. This is because it, perhaps for the first time, reinvigorates the higher education in Vietnam as a field of knowledge enquiry. Within this field are complexities and geopolitical, historical and economical forces, be they global, national or local. These forces are intertwined, inhibiting in themselves numerous circuits and subcircuits (Hawkins et al. 2013; Marginson 2008; Neubauer 2012). At every node of the global-national-local intersection, it is possible to observe subtle translation and interaction of these forces writing and rewriting the local landscapes including education.

Of particular emphasis of the book is the way in which the book multiplies and shifts its referencing points that locate Vietnamese higher education as an important node in the ‘global-national-local’ circuit and subcircuits of the network. The edited book chapter advances the conceptual understanding of higher education; it not only contributes theoretically to research scholarship but also holds significant methodological implications for reading and interpreting higher education reforms from a critical and sustainable approach.

Part I proposes a conceptual framework of approaching and interpreting education reforms and puts forward an alternative approach to higher education. Specifically, it utilises an inside-out perspective via looking inwardly into the system structure and agency of Vietnam higher education. Nhai Thi Nguyen, for instance, in Chap. 2 travels the concept of cultural identities, core values, being and becoming into the cultural field of higher education. The author traces the historical development of Vietnamese higher education and identifies the hidden linkages, disconnections, disjuntures, fixities and stoppages residing in this cultural field that have overturned, translated and reshaped the landscape of higher education in Vietnam.

In Part II, the authors address in great detail issues associated with VHE structure, policy and governance including university leadership and management, government policy, university governance and financing. Khanh Van Dao and Martin Hayden in Chap. 3 review a variety of the VHE policy texts on university leadership and management in light of a comparative framework and analyse the sector’s prospects up to 2020. Mai Tuyet Ngo in Chap. 4 focuses on four comparative case studies of the models of public university governance in four East Asian countries including Thailand, China, Hong Kong and Vietnam. Her multilevel thematic framework and the cross-case comparisons indicate, to a certain degree, the similar patterns as well as specificities of every single case, proposing a novel model of Vietnamese university governance in the public sector in which academic excellence is promoted and remedies for minimal research-led universities in Vietnam are touted out.

Financing, another key aspect of VHE structure and governance, in the analysis of Hiep-Hung Pham and Huyen-Minh Vu in Chap. 5, has been shifted from being fully government-subsidised to be the cost-sharing one. The new financing model is associated with educational socialisation and differs considerably from the Western model. This is added by the fact that the Vietnamese Government has been no longer solely responsible for financing the VHE institutions. Consequently, educational costs and financial commitments have been shared and transferred to students and their parents. Clearly inherited from Western neoliberalism, these policies raise concerns over social equity and equality and access to higher education as well as quality and sustainability of VHE. Measures for effective HE financing, as Pham and Vu propose, will be addressed meticulously in this chapter.

Part III assembles research studies on curriculum, quality assurance and equity in higher education. Thi Tuyet Tran in Chap. 6 sees the strategic importance of enhancing employability and factors such as higher education massification, traditional features of family/career orientation in Confucian Heritage Countries (CHC), teaching philosophy, and internal and external connectivities within the education system and between the education system and the labour market have been decisive to the Vietnamese graduates’ job readiness and employability after graduation. The complex interplay of various parties calls for a society-wide effort in which, a part from other equally important factors, student and their family must take the central role and responsibilities for choosing appropriate discipline, career and university alongside with equipping themselves with a suitcase of generic skills, soft skills and employability skills, in order to make sure that they are job ready and perform well in the field they were trained at university. In the subsequent chapter, Nhai Thi Nguyen, Ly Thi Tran and Truc Thi Thanh Le draw on a case study in an Australian branch campus in Vietnam in which the authors measure the efficiency of this model against their employability and work readiness. The authors also investigate in depth how work-integrated learning (WIL) has been merged into curriculum design, conditioned teaching and learning practices and helped build a robust support system, as well as insinuated and strengthened cross-sectoral staff mobility. The authors urge to relocate the work-integrated learning (WIL) from margin to the centre of curriculum and pedagogy, the heart of teaching and learning practices. Fuelled by high unemployment rates amongst Vietnamese university graduates, the WIL model is expected to make university teaching and learning closer to local market demands, enhance students’ work readiness and promote industry linkages. It aims at preparing a generation of graduates equipped with necessary skills, knowledge and a set of generic skills, soft skills and employability skills (Tran et al. 2014). It enables university graduates to fully capitalise on their flexibility, mobility and practicality.

Quyen Thi Ngoc Do, in Chap. 8, addresses another important aspect of VHE, that is, the national quality assurance (QA). The scholar investigates the ways in which various local demands and international practices in QA implicitly inform the importation of foreign approaches and concepts into the education system. While stressing that modification and adaptation of the borrowed policies need to take the ‘host’ and ‘home’ contexts into careful consideration, Do concludes that maintaining the core principles of the borrowed model is as equally important as modifying and adapting specific practices.

The development of Vietnam’s national quality assurance system is characterized by the import of foreign-born concepts, policies, models and instruments. They have been adapted to different extents to fit local contexts. By looking into the degrees at which original models and methods are adapted, the chapter sheds light on how local demands and international practices have driven the borrowing of foreign approaches and concepts into the local education system. The discussion covers accreditation, a widely known QA instrument, and a mix of ranking and stratification, which is newly introduced into the system. The chapter stresses that adaptation is essential in model transfer. It also argues that during the transfer process, the fundamental principles of the borrowed model or instrument should be retained, while specific practices could be considered for modification and adaptation. It is also recommended that a thorough analysis of the both ‘home’ and ‘host’ contexts be conducted for effective transfer.

Drawing on Bourdieu’s theory of social reproduction and the notion of educational capital, scholars such as Thuy Thi Ngoc Bui, Nga Thi Hang Ngo, Hoa Thi Mai Nguyen and Hang Thu Le Nguyen in Chap. 9 argue that factors including geographical location and financial and nonfinancial factors have held main responsibilities for maintaining and balancing equity, access and social justice for students in this disadvantaged region, and education capital could support this student cohort to narrow these gaps in Northwest Vietnam.

Part IV is devoted to exploring VHE research. Since research capacity building always plays a pivotal role in national strategic development, attempts have been made to build research-led universities and revitalise research capacity in the VHE institutions. Amongst many others, central to the VHE reform agenda is the strategy to create a giant leap for Vietnamese universities. The agenda indicates an overambitious aim to have a couple of Vietnamese universities listed in the top 200 universities in the world by 2020. Quy Nguyen and Christopher Klopper in Chap. 10 investigate the spectrums associated with research capacity, policy and programs under the impacts of globalised forces. Using a comparative perspective of Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea and Vietnam, these scholars reconnoitre research environment, research capability and productivity of academics in HEIs in the above-listed countries and conclude that building research capacity is within our reach if sufficient time allocation, research funding and scholarly resources and the surround support are in attendance.

Part V looks in depth at VHE professional development which is central to national capacity building in the fast-changing context of globalisation and the rise of the knowledge economy. Such external global forces would have every single government to sufficiently train its human resources in ways that they are well equipped with prerequisite skills and knowledge to respond to and thus perform well in the global, national and local labour market. So does English language education in Vietnam. Foreseeing the emergence and the imperative of English language in global economic integration, the Vietnamese Government introduced the National Foreign Language 2020 Project (NFLP2020). Chapter 11, written by Mai Tuyet Ngo, offers a critical lens into the introduction of the new Vietnam English teacher competency standardisation as is commissioned by the NFLP 2020.

Hoa Thi Mai Nguyen and Thu Dinh Nguyen in Chap. 12 investigate the perceptions, beliefs and attitudes of Vietnamese academic staff at the VHE institutions. These authors indicate factors affecting the professional development (PD) of the Vietnamese academics and propose a viable model for lecturers’ PD. Alongside with lecturers’ PD is the shifting of Vietnamese academic’s identity. Conditioned by globalisation and English imperialism, Linh Thuy Le and Leigh Gerrard Dwyer in Chap. 13 use the social positioning theory to investigate the ways in which teachers of English perceive themselves as a moral guide. Their research reveals that Vietnamese teachers are more likely to perceive their moral identity in a less traditional way, and there are criss-crosses, mixing and crossover of their moral guide and other emerging identities borne as a result of globalisation and urge teachers of English to draw on their moral identity as a compass to guide and encourage a fuller understanding, an appreciation and an enactment of moral identity traits in their students.