The HEAD Foundation provided a research grant to Prof Clive Dimmock in 2017 to investigate the training and development needs of school principals and teachers in Vietnam and design and implement appropriate programmes of tailored interventions for particular school contexts.
In 2012, the Vietnam government introduced a programme of ‘radical and comprehensive’ educational reform called Doi Moi or “renovation” for all primary and secondary schools. From a traditional centralised system, the renovations aimed at changes to the curriculum and pedagogy, assessment, teacher and leader professional training and development, and some decentralization of functions to schools. Hence, the urgent emphasis is on capacity building in schools (and other parts of the reform implementation) where- new skills and knowledge need to be acquired by principals and teachers.
In all respects, this project meets the agenda of The HEAD Foundation – K-12 development and Skills Development. It also contributes to Higher Education in that training and professional development identified by the project in terms of knowledge and skills needed by principals and teachers will guide our Vietnamese higher education partners, especially universities and training institutions in developing their capacities to train, including ‘training the trainers’ experience for them. Our proposed project will further fill a gap in the academic literature, thereby providing closer links between English-speaking universities and Vietnam higher education. The Foundation also supported another research on educational reform, “Research on Educational Policy in Malaysia: Implementation Challenges and Policy Recommendations” by Prof Tony Bush of University of Nottingham, MalaysiaOne of the most crucial issues is how to promulgate more school-based autonomy with principals as pro-active managers and leaders when their traditional role has been to line-manage.
