Improving skills and capacity for vocational teachers in Vietnam to meet international standards in vocational teaching is one of core activities in the International Skills Partnership (ISP) project between Vietnamese vocational colleges and Westminster Kingsway College (WKC), United Kingdom. The project creates opportunities for Vietnam colleges to access many up-skilling training courses which meet international standards of City and Guilds, United Kingdom.
“The main difference in vocational teaching of City and Guilds is all steps of teaching cycle focus mainly on learners, taking learners to the center of the system. Taking analysis about individuals is implemented carefully and thoroughly before planning for teaching and learning. Evaluation is applied during the learning process and feedback from learners is taken seriously, which I think are strong advantages of City and Guild standards. In addition, every step of the process is given with detailed instructions with related forms and tools which are very accessible for teachers” stated Nguyen Hong Tin, Hue Vocational College of Industry.
This is one of many examples of feedback from participants who took the “Up- skilling to UK standards in vocational teaching” course delivered this August with participation of 30 teachers from 20 Vocational Colleges in Vietnam.
UK trainers from Westminster Kingsway College have shared and introduced many effective teaching techniques including identifying needs and capacities of learners, preparing a teaching portfolio and evaluating and adjusting learners’ attitude. In addition, UK experts also took class observation to share feedback among learners.
Le Thi Thanh Tam, a teacher from Hue Vocational College of Industrial said “It’s an honour for me to have this great opportunity to attend the Up-skilling course in August. I found that the course is very effective and informative for everyone including me. The systematic teaching portfolio helps teachers have an overview of the whole course, know where they are and how to fit in each step. The trainers also embedded many teaching skills to show how they deal with single situations in class to make the lesson more interesting. Especially, what I definitely bring back to my class is how to engage more students in my class by organizing more games and activities. In my opinion, the training course is very helpful and met my expectation”
Ha Ngoc Tan from Vinh Phuc Vocational College of Agricultural Mechanics also expressed that what he learned from the course would be applied in his class to encourage and inspire students to learn.
The training course in one of activities in the International Skills Partnership project in developing Quality Assurance system in Vietnam supported by the British Council, which runs in more than 30 countries aiming at providing people with opportunities to broaden their horizons and build their future through international education.