Supporting teachers in Vietnam to monitor preschool children’s wellbeing and involvement in preschool classrooms (2017)

Vietnam is promoting active teaching and learning as a key strategy to enhance children’s learning in preschools. This change depends largely on building the capacities of teachers to implement child-centered education in practice and handover the initiative for learning to children. Vietnamese teachers need to be better equipped with pedagogical skills to enhance children’s wellbeing and involvement and to create optimal conditions for learning in classrooms. In 2016, as part of a professional development program for teachers to support the quality of their classroom practice through critical reflection, a collaborative pilot study was carried out to test the relevance and effectiveness of process-oriented child monitoring within the Vietnamese educational context. A process-oriented child-monitoring system was introduced to teachers in eight Vietnamese preschools that enrolled children aged from 3 to 5 years and which included primarily ethnic minority children. Teachers were taught observation skills to monitor children’s involvement and wellbeing during classroom activities. Through professional development activities, including coaching, mentoring, and peer learning in schoolbased and inter-school teacher communities, teachers were encouraged to adjust their practices to the learning needs of the children in their classrooms, including children at risk for low engagement and involvement. This pilot study provides a strong case for the process-oriented child-monitoringsystem to be implemented at a larger scale in Vietnamese preschools.

The final publication is available at https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13158-017-0188-2

The article was published in:

International Journal of Early Childhood, August 2017, Vol 49, Issue 2, pp 245-262

(Journal of OMEP: l'Organisation Mondiale pour l'Education Prescolaire)

ISSN 0020-7187

IJEC

DOI 10.1007/s13158-017-0188-2