Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International

Education

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Internationalisation of the curriculum in

Vietnamese higher education: mediating between
‘Western’ and local imaginaries

Huong Thu Nguyen, Huong Le Thanh Phan & Ly Thi Tran

To cite this article: Huong Thu Nguyen, Huong Le Thanh Phan & Ly Thi Tran (2021):
Internationalisation of the curriculum in Vietnamese higher education: mediating between
‘Western’ and local imaginaries, Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International
Education, DOI: 10.1080/03057925.2021.1995699

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/03057925.2021.1995699

Published online: 29 Oct 2021.

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COMPARE, 2021
https://doi.org/10.1080/03057925.2021.1995699

Internationalisation of the curriculum in Vietnamese higher

education: mediating between ‘Western’ and local
imaginaries
a b b
Huong Thu Nguyen , Huong Le Thanh Phan and Ly Thi Tran
a
Institute for Teaching and Learning Innovation, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia; bSchool of
Education, Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
Over the past decades, the Vietnamese government has strategi­ Internationalisation of the
cally encouraged the import of the ‘Western’ curriculum through curriculum; higher
the so-called Advanced Programmes. It is envisioned that by learn­ education; Vietnam;
ing from the more advanced systems such as Australia, Canada, the curriculum borrowing;
academics’ engagement
US, and the UK, Vietnamese universities will be able to overhaul
their outdated curriculum and embark on a shortcut to the league
of global rankings. Drawing on 21 interviews with Vietnamese and
foreign staff and students in two Advanced Programmes imported
from the US, this article reviews these programmes’ twelve-year
implementation to explore the challenges arising and the roles of
local academics in implementing and mediating the curriculum.
The research revealed considerable challenges in imparting
‘Western’ knowledge to the local context due to ideological and
practicality differences. However, it is the process through which
academics mediated between the international content and local
students’ needs that enables practical internationalisation of the
imported curriculum.

Introduction
Globalisation and internationalisation have reconfigured higher education institu­
tions (HEIs) worldwide, creating a pressing need for reforms in the context of
shrinking public funding, international benchmarking, global competitiveness, and
the societal demands for a more globalised workforce. HEIs worldwide have pursued
reforms to cater for the institutional, local, national or international demands
(Marginson, Kaur, and Sawir 2011). As a developing country in Southeast Asia,
since the introduction of Đổi Mới (Economic and Social Reform) in 1986, Vietnam
has pursued an open-door policy and intensified its global participation in all aspects,
i.e. trade, politics, culture, communication and technology. This process has created
an urgent demand for Vietnamese HE reform to educate a population of graduates
with ‘academic, technical, thinking, and behavioural skills’ (World Bank 2012, 1) and
with capacities to effectively engage and perform in a globalised context (Tran et al.

CONTACT Huong Thu Nguyen [email protected] Institute for Teaching and Learning Innovation,
University of Queensland, Room 305 - Building 17 – Campbell Road, St Lucia, QLD4072
© 2021 British Association for International and Comparative Education
2 H.T. NGUYEN ET AL.

2014). This represents a great challenge for the country with a long history of foreign
colonialism, invasion, war, reunification and post-war national building until 1975. In
the past two decades, the Vietnamese HE sector has experienced dramatic changes
with the introduction and modification of many borrowed policies from overseas
such as deregulation, amalgamation, privatisation, and accreditation. However, until
recently Vietnamese HE quality has been still far from matching the country’s
economic development needs or being able to enter the league tables (Nhan and Le
2019).
In 2005 the government mandated HE Reform Agenda to introduce measures to
renovate the HE system for national economic development (Vietnamese Government
2005), including granting autonomy to universities and boosting the internationalisation
of HE (Nguyen, Hamid, and Moni 2016). After 15 years since its launch, however, many
of the 2005 agenda’s targets remain unachieved, among which is internationalisation of
the curriculum (IoC) through the Advanced Programmes (APs) [chu´o´ng trình tiên
tiế n], a mechanism to overhaul the country’s outdated HE curriculum. Notably,
Vietnamese HEIs underscore the complete delivery of the foreign curriculum content
through English-medium-instruction as its edge. It is proposed that by applying the best
practices from successful HEIs (mostly from Anglophone countries), Vietnamese HE will
be on a shorter pathway to reform and success (Vietnamese Government 2008). The APs
as a signature initiative of IoC in Vietnam embrace the government’s aspiration for
Vietnamese universities to catch up with international counterparts through curriculum
import and English-medium-instruction. As noted by Nguyen Thi Kim Phung, Director
General of the Department of Tertiary Education, Ministry of Education and Training
(MOET), ‘the highest objective is to make Vietnamese universities be on par with their
foreign peers’ (Marklien 2019, 1). The APs can be seen as both an indicator of inter­
nationalisation of HE in Vietnam and a vehicle to assist Vietnam in realising its goal
towards a quicker route for some universities to be internationalised and moved up in
international rankings.
There are a growing number of empirical studies on internationalisation in
Vietnamese HE as well as the AP curriculum (Duong 2009; Tran, Hoang, and Vo
2019). However, research into the implementation challenges of IoC in host countries
in transnational education and, more specifically, the borrowed ‘Western’ curriculum in
the Vietnamese local context, is still rarely captured. This gap warrants urgent investiga­
tion because, as seen by the Vietnamese government, IoC through the APs has been
a success and accordingly served as the reference for other degree programmes in
Vietnamese HE (MOET 2016). Without being identified and addressed, the challenges
and pitfalls of internationalisation through curriculum borrowing might spread to multi­
ple programmes, resulting in possible waste of budget and human resource and pro­
longed delays in quality enhancement. This article responds to this critical literature gap
by analysing the nature of the challenges facing a Vietnamese university in adopting and
mediating two US-born APs to the local Vietnamese context. Specifically, it aims to
answer two research questions:

(1) What are the challenges in the implementation of the AP curricula in the focal
university?
(2) How have the local academics mediated the AP curricula in their teaching?
 COMPARE 3

This paper reports the findings from in-depth interviews and focus groups with 21 staff
(Vietnamese and foreign academics and programme directors) and students, who were
directly involved in two imported APs at a leading university in Vietnam. Drawing on
the conceptual frame of curriculum internationalisation and policy borrowing, our
study aims to inform practice in implementing not only the APs but also other foreign-
born programmes in Vietnam and in similar contexts. In this study, the term ‘Western’
is frequently used by the interviewees to refer to external influences on Vietnamese HE
from the ‘West’ in a general way. We do not assume ‘Western countries’ are homo­
geneous or ‘Western’ practices are superior. Rather, the term is used to truly reflect the
participants’ voices and elaborate on the nature of the foreign influences in specific
cases.

Policy borrowing
With technological advances and the world’s increasing interconnectedness, transna­
tional policy borrowing, the ‘conscious adoption in one context of policy observed in
another’ (Phillips and Ochs 2004, 774), has become increasingly commonplace.
According to Steiner-Khamsi (2016), motivations for one country to seek inspiration
from another can be vastly diverse, including cultural, political, and economic reasons. In
a similar vein, Portnoi (2016) states that policy borrowing and lending are not neutral
and that there always exist ‘underlying political and economic impulses’ (148). These
impulses comprise internal dissatisfaction (e.g. by parents, teachers, students), inade­
quacy of educational provision, negative external evaluation (e.g. students’ performance
in international tests), economic change/ competition, regional or local configuration
(e.g. regional or international alliances), new innovations, and political changes.
Dolowitz and Marsh (2000) and Steiner-Khamsi (2004) observe that education leaders
often resort to other systems’ successful experiences as the solution to domestic educa­
tional problems. While bodies such as the OECD encouraged the transfer of best practice
across regions, researchers, e.g. Kemmis and Heikkinen (2012) and Burdett and
O’Donnell (2016), are critical of borrowing educational models and programmes on
the ground that education systems are complex socio-political systems in their own right
with vastly different aims, both measurable (e.g. students’ performance) and more
intangible (e.g. national identity) ones. Kemmis and Heikkinen (2012) assert that trans­
planting ‘alien’ entities from one system to another system can be very disruptive as
outcomes immensely depend on a wide range of stakeholders as well as direct and
indirect influencers (Burdett and O’Donnell 2016). Steiner-Khamsi and Waldow
(2012), therefore, warn against policy borrowing, arguing that this process entails neo-
colonialism since the so-called best practices are, more often than not, transplanted into
local educational systems without taking into due consideration the political, socio-
cultural and economic differences.
In Vietnam, the educational system reflects much of foreign influences due to its long
history of colonialism, war, reunification and nation-state building (Tran et al. 2014).
However, the country has voluntarily adopted the most suitable values and practically
adapted these to its context, which reflects the flexibility, mobility, and practicality of
Vietnamese people and society (Tran et al. 2014). While borrowing ideas from more
advanced HE systems was proved to provide Vietnamese education with a ‘quick-fix’
4 H.T. NGUYEN ET AL.

during arduous times, critics also point to the consequence of such practice which was
Vietnamese education being turned into a patchwork of borrowing and weaving foreign
ideas and content.

Internationalisation of higher education and internationalisation of the

curriculum
Defined by Knight (2003) as ‘the process of integrating an international, intercultural or
global dimension into the purpose, functions or delivery of post-secondary education’
(2), internationalisation has become one of the most powerful and pervasive forces in HE
worldwide (Rumbley, Altbach, and Reisberg 2012). According to Altbach and Knight
(2007), while globalisation may be unalterable, internationalisation involves various
options. These options can range from mobility of staff and students, curriculum inter­
nationalisation, international links through open learning programmes and advanced
technology, bilateral links between governments and institutions, multinational colla­
boration to export of educational goods and services (Harman 2005). It is generally
agreed that internationalisation of HE is not a homogenous notion (Hudzik 2014) and
means differently in different contexts (Leask 2015), depending on their particular
economic, political, and socio-cultural conditions as well as stakeholders’ purpose and
discretion. However, it is also largely concurred that internationalisation of HE today is
characterised by the dominance of the more commercial focus over the traditional
cooperative one (Tran, Phan, and Marginson 2018).
For many years, internationalisation efforts have focused on student mobility, which is
regarded as one of the most idealistic aspects of HE (Souto-Otero 2019) despite the far-
from-settled brain-drain controversies. Also, there has been a growing awareness that the
majority of students who would never leave their home countries also deserve the
benefits of internationalisation. Internationalisation of the curriculum (IoC) has there­
fore gained momentum as a tool to enhancing students’ employability and engagement
with the diverse world and as a mechanism to ensure more equitable internationalisation.
The most widely cited definition of IoC is proposed by Leask (2015):
Internationalisation of the curriculum is the incorporation of international, intercultural, and/
or global dimensions into the content of the curriculum as well as the learning outcomes,
assessment tasks, teaching methods, and support services of a programme of study (9).

As Leask (2011a) remarks, a comprehensive approach to IoC has been the systematic
development of graduate attributes which include a broad range of skills, knowledge, and
attitudes needed for the exercise of citizenship in the globalised world. The number of
outcomes addressed depends on the maturity and complexity of the curriculum model as
well as the values it embraces (Jones and Killick 2007).

Internationalisation of HE and IoC in VN: meaning and strategies

Although the term internationalisation of HE is not available in Vietnamese political
discourse until recently (see Vietnamese Government 2019), internationalisation in
Vietnamese HE is manifested through outbound student mobility and external influences
on its system and philosophy (Tran et al. 2014). In both the 2005 HE Reform Agenda and
 COMPARE 5

National Strategy for Education Development 2011–2020, internationalisation was per­

ceived as ‘international integration’, mainly referring to international cooperation and
investment in education and the teaching of foreign languages (Vietnamese Government
2005, 2012). Internationalisation of Vietnamese HE post-2005 is considered as a goal in
itself rather than a process to help transform the Vietnamese HE system to match with
the world standard. It is observed that internationalisation activities throughout the
system have been ad hoc, inconsistent, and fragmented (Tran et al. 2014).
As a significant internationalisation strategy, IoC is done mainly through transna­
tional partnership whereby key universities proactively broaden their international net­
works and promote English-medium-instruction programmes. These programmes
mimic those of foreign (mostly Anglophone) HEIs in many aspects, including knowledge
content, course structure, and course delivery (Nguyen, Walkinshaw, and Pham 2017).
Importantly, they are promoted as the internationalisation-at-home programmes in
which students, without mobility, can enjoy the opportunities to study in an interna­
tional environment with imported programmes from well-recognised HE systems at
a much lower cost (Nhan and Le 2019).
Among the foreign education programmes, APs, introduced in 2006, is a signature
internationalisation initiative of the MOET. The 37 APs coordinated by key institutions
use curricula largely imported from the world top 200 universities with minor adaption.
The APs have been facilitated and driven by four key principles: transnational curriculum
partnerships, importation of foreign curriculum, employment of English-medium-
instruction and at-home internationalisation. This curriculum borrowing policy is seen
as a quick and easy way to ensure Vietnam can obtain already-proven quality curricula
(Phan, Tran, and Blackmore 2019) and lift the international ranking of selected top-tier
universities in Vietnam (Vietnamese Government 2008). The introduction of the APs as
a strategic mechanism of internationalising HE and reforming the curriculum in the
Vietnamese context has achieved certain successes. Such IoC initiative is reported to
provide students with access to study materials and contents from foreign top-tier
universities, and to some extent assist them with the development of generic skills,
employability and English proficiency (Tran and Nguyen 2018). Research evidence
suggests improvement in the employability of students enrolled in the APs, especially
with respect to human capital, cultural understandings, career adaptability, and profes­
sional identity (Tran, Hoang, and Vo 2019). However, this IoC strategy has been
criticised as having fragmented and narrow impacts on curriculum reform and graduate
capacity, and creating disparity and inequity since the programme has been ‘implemen­
ted among a small proportion of students in selected disciplines, in certain major
universities only’ (Tran, Phan, and Marginson 2018, 56). Despite its benefits, the ‘quick
fix’ principle driving the design and implementation of the APs may simultaneously
cause an erosion of the distinctive values of Vietnamese universities and culture and
a clash between the principles underpinning the foreign curriculum and the local context,
as also evident in other policy borrowing programmes (Tran et al. 2020). Apart from the
commonly reported implementation problems, mostly related to staff and student
capabilities and resources, fees, participation and access (Tran et al. 2020), the North –
South transferability, or the implementation realities of the ‘Western’ knowledge at
Vietnamese HEIs, has remained a critical area that needs further investigation.
6 H.T. NGUYEN ET AL.

The study
This article focuses on the enactment of two APs after a twelve-year period (2008–2020)
in a Vietnamese public university, pseudonymously called VIU. This article is derived
from a larger research project that used a qualitative case study design (Yin 2018) to
explore the implementation of English-medium-instruction policy in foreign education
programmes, including APs at the focal university. While it is commonly asserted that
‘there is no correct number of cases to include in a case study design’ (De Vaus 2001,
240), we acknowledge the study’s limitation in terms of generalisability across univer­
sities and beyond the public university sector. However, decisions of methodology were
made with careful consideration of the project’s practicality, and it was believed that this
limitation can also be a strength regarding the ability to provide an in-depth picture of
the case. Based on the literature review of policy borrowing, IoC and the APs in Vietnam,
we analyse the challenges arising from the implementation of two foreign curricula in the
Vietnamese local context through two APs. The article aims to highlight how the foreign-
born curricula were facilitated, mediated or inhibited in the Vietnamese context.
VIU is one of the most prestigious HEIs in Vietnam with nearly 20,000 students and
850 staff as of 2021, providing business-related programmes. All of its programmes gear
towards international markets, with all having the ‘international’ label in the pro­
grammes’ names. VIU is proud to be one of the most internationalised institutes in
Vietnam. Its mission is to provide high quality workforce in economic-related areas and
foreign languages to serve the country’s modernisation. Its vision is to become a fully
autonomous, research-led HEI among the top universities in Asia by 2030. VIU currently
has strategic relationships with 185 universities in 30 countries worldwide and has
enrolled around 1,000 foreign students to study in either short exchange programmes
or credited programmes ranging from one semester to one year in its campuses.
The 2005 HE Reform Agenda has presented VIU a new context for its development
and internationalisation. Firstly, in terms of governance, the partial autonomy granted in
2006 presented the institute (1) a pressure to cope with the associated government
funding decrease and (2) opportunities to make its own decisions in substantial operation
aspects such as recruitment, enrolment and programme development. This crucial step
led to the second development at VIU which was the mandate of English-medium-
instruction, paving the way for VIU to participate in the AP project (Vietnamese
Government 2008). This study looked at the implementation of the AP in
International Economics and Business and the AP in International Business
Administration introduced in 2008 and 2010 respectively in partnership with two US
universities, to examine the challenges in the delivery of the US curricula in a Vietnamese
local context. In particular, the study investigated how the academics and students
navigated in the process of importing and applying the foreign curricula.
After the ethical document had been approved, the first author contacted potential
programme directors and academics from two APs in VIU for interviews. In selecting the
participants, primary priority was given to opportunities to learn (Stake 2000) since the
nature of this study is explorative and interpretive. As such, considerations of partici­
pants’ availability and enthusiasm to offer rich information were significant. The first
author was a former lecturer at VIU and was known by the local academics but not by the
foreign academics in the study. The two programme directors introduced the first author
 COMPARE 7

to the foreign academics teaching in their respective APs at the time of data collection.
None of the student participants was known by the first author. They were introduced to
the first author by the staff participants. Year-three students from the two APs were
recruited for this study since they were expected to be more mature and familiar to their
study programme than Year-one and Year-two students and more available than Year-
four students who were occupied with internships and graduation thesis.
In total, 13 semi-structured interviews were conducted with VIU’s two APs’ directors,
five Vietnamese and six foreign academics. Each semi-structured interview lasted from
40 to 60 minutes and explored the participants’ understanding of the AP’s objectives and
their experiences with teaching in this programme. Two Year-3-student focus groups,
each with four participants (both males and females), were conducted for 60 to 90 min­
utes where students shared their study experience in the APs.
The interviews were conducted by the first author in Vietnamese (with VIU partici­
pants) and English (with foreign academics). The interviewees’ names are kept anon­
ymous to protect their identity. The interviews were transcribed and collated with the
document data using NVivo 10 to identify emergent themes surrounding the challenges
in implementing AP curricula and the roles of the local academics. We first did the
preliminary coding of the interview transcripts and highlighted the phrases, sentences
and paragraphs that align with the challenges in implementing and mediating the
foreign-born AP through the theoretical lens of IoC and policy borrowing, as discussed
earlier. We used deductive coding (Patton 2015) in which data were coded according to
concepts/themes derived from the research questions, conceptual frame and existing
literature. We compared each code with all the other codes, which represents a process of
constant comparison of data (Thomas 2013, 276) and then classified them to create
themes related to the major challenges and the roles of the local academics. The key
points were identified and developed through a thorough process of engagement with the
interview excerpts in light with constant comparison of data (Thomas 2013). The themes
were then analysed, drawing on the IoC and policy borrowing conceptual frames
summarised in the preceding sections.
The interview data were purposefully drawn to analyse participants’ perspectives on
the challenges facing them in implementing the APs. To complement the interview data,
official documents published by the government, the MOET and by the focal university
were also analysed. These include (1) government policies on Vietnamese HE, (2) MOET
and Department of State’s Educational Task Force report, (3) MOET’s report on 10-year
implementation of APs from 2006–2016, (4) VIU’s AP curricula and website. These
documents complement participants’ perspectives on the implementation of the APs and
provide the contextual information regarding IoC and AP implementation at the focal
university and in Vietnam in general.

Challenges in delivering AP curriculum

According to the Education Task Force between Vietnam and US, the AP ‘involves
transplanting a foreign degree programme into the Vietnamese university, including
curriculum, course design, teaching materials, and teaching methodologies’
(Department of State, & MOET 2009, 16, emphasis added). The intact delivery of the
foreign curriculum in the local context is underscored on the ground that these ‘world-
8 H.T. NGUYEN ET AL.

class’ curricula provide cutting-edge knowledge with updated materials, and effective
pedagogy and assessment (Vietnamese Government 2008). To maintain the original
state of the imported curriculum, ‘the foreign university partner sends faculty to its
Vietnamese university partner to teach courses and train faculty, and accepts
Vietnamese professors for training in the United States’ (Department of State, &
MOET 2009, 16).
APs are four-year undergraduate programmes whereby students are required to
accumulate 137–142 credits in foundation and disciplinary courses and complete
a thesis and internship modules to fulfil graduation requirements. Foundation courses
comprise Vietnamese political courses and US general knowledge courses, which will
later be presented in detail. Disciplinary courses are discipline-specific curriculum con­
tents required for the undergraduate degree, featuring all syllabus, materials, and assess­
ment from the US curriculum. In delivering the US curriculum as is, a number of key
challenges have emerged and will be analysed in the subsequent sections.

Challenge 1: ideological clash between Vietnamese and ‘Western’ political

ideologies
Curriculum is not ideology-free. As Tedesco, Opertti, and Amadio (2014) put it, the
curriculum is a reflection of ‘political and societal agreement about the what, why, and
how of education for the desired society of the future’ (528). Indeed, Vietnam’s
contemporary HE landscape, and particularly its HE curriculum, is linked to its vision
of society or social imaginary. The Đổi Mới (Economic and Social Reform) initiated in
1986 moved the country from a centrally planned subsidised socialist economy to
a socialist-oriented multiple-sectored market economy. As the name suggests, the new
economic regime has the dual orientation of capitalism and socialism. Therefore, while
Vietnamese HEIs are adopting the US model of education through APs, they are
required to integrate a 10-credit political module to the imported curricula, including
(1) Marxism-Leninism, comprising of Marx’s economic doctrine, capitalism, socialism,
communism and Lenin’s leadership in Soviet Russia and the Soviet Communist Party;
(2) Ho Chi Minh Thoughts on nationalism, liberation, socialism, Communist Party of
Vietnam, democracy; and (3) the history and approaches of the Communist Party of
Vietnam (MOET 2008).
To explain the inclusion of the political module, the local academics cited the
MOET’s requirement (2008). However, one local academic critically pointed to the
challenge in navigating the curriculum and pedagogy due to the ideological and
methodological clash:
There is not a consistence in the curriculum when students learn Marxism-Leninism and
Micro-Macro Economics in the first year. Marxism is political economics, Leninism is
a kind of political science, Micro-Economics use supply and demand to explain for the
market economy . . .

. . . while students learn Critical Thinking from the US curriculum, viewing things from
different angles, Ho Chi Minh Thoughts educate them that socialism is the only way of
development for Vietnam. Marxism is taught in other universities in the world as one
explanation of how the economy operates while this course in Vietnam treats it as the only
truthful philosophy.
 COMPARE 9

The mixed curriculum created a ‘chaos’ in ideologies and a confusion in epistemology,

resulting in students’ disregard for the Vietnamese political courses. (Vietnamese Academic 1)

This academic criticised the political indoctrination (Vallely and Wilkinson 2008) when only
Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh Thoughts are included in the political module and the
inclusion of conflicting theories without providing students with sufficient rationales (see also
Phung 2017). In addition, according to the Marxism-Leninism course materials used in the
APs (and in Vietnamese political discourse more broadly), capitalism has a negative con­
notation as the surplus value is essentially produced by capital’s exploitation of labour power
and thus ‘the capitalist production method will ultimately be replaced by the socialist model
as the necessary and objective development of human beings’ (Nguyen, Nguyen, and Le 2009,
53). An academic who taught the political module in APs commented:

. . . these words have been modified from Marx’s and Lenin’s writings for political propa­
ganda in Vietnam . . . and I don’t agree with its use for political purposes in universities.
(Vietnamese Academic 2)

The inclusion of political education in HE curriculum highlights the dual orientation

mentioned earlier in Vietnamese political economy. Such dualism at the macro level was
translated into the co-existence of both ideologies in the curriculum of APs, or English-
medium programmes more generally. However, the political indoctrination, with its
propaganda role remarked by Academic 2 above, could create challenges for local aca­
demics and students and be counter-effective and potentially impact the coherence of the
AP curricula. This is because students are aware of the socialism’s downfall and the
weaknesses of the Vietnamese Communist party (Phung 2017) and, as they moved further
into the disciplinary courses, students would learn about the operation of the market
economy, liberalism, and capitalism from ‘Western’ standpoints.
While such dualism in the AP curriculum contents might arguably cause an ideolo­
gical clash, it is equally arguable that such a clash is necessary and beneficial in certain
ways. Tran et al. (2020) found that clashes and resistance do emerge from the interactions
of foreign educational practices with the Communist ideology and Confucian heritage
during Vietnamese HE reform towards more transnational collaboration. The authors,
however, highlight the role of Communist and Confucian values and principles as a filter
for the acceptance of foreign influences in Vietnamese universities and for the localisa­
tion of borrowed foreign practices. In the similar vein, despite challenges experienced by
academics and students, the co-existence of both socialist and capitalist ideologies in the
curriculum of APs at VIU might potentially assist students to develop multiple frames of
reference that enable critical interpretation and analysis of social, political issues.
A student shared her opinion on the value of these courses:

When I participated in a conference in Australian National University and had an oppor­

tunity to socialise with students from 80 countries in the world, I realised that learning the
foundation courses in the AP . . . the political module and other social science courses . . .
were essential because they provided the vital knowledge on history, politics, psychology,
sociology that one needs to be knowledgeable about their nation and other nations . . . If
I need to make a recommendation, I’d think that the teaching approach should be improved
to be more open and flexible to change students’ mindset that learning the political courses
are just boring, unrelatable [to the core disciplinary curriculum] and compulsory.
(International Business Management student)
10 H.T. NGUYEN ET AL.

In other words, access to multiple learning sources and ideologies would lay the founda­
tion for students’ development of an ethnorelative mindset as opposed to the single-
minded lens possibly seen if students are merely exposed to either a ‘communist’ or
‘capitalist’ reference frame. Such an access can help students mediate between foreign
influences and communist ideologies. In order for this to happen, however, it is crucial
that ideological and disciplinary subjects be developed and delivered in a coherent and
effective manner rather than standing as unrelated building blocks of content that hardly
make sense to students, as revealed from the interview data.

Challenge 2: accommodating the US curriculum

The US foundation courses, i.e. Philosophy and Critical Thinking, American history,
Intercultural Studies, and World Civilisation, presented another challenge of the AP
curriculum. As VIU academics faced challenges in the delivery of this curriculum
component due to their formal education specialising in business-related fields, aca­
demics from other institutions were invited to teach these courses, which gave rise to the
following challenge:
We need to ask our personal contacts to recommend us the academics from Social Sciences
and Humanities University. (AP International Business Management Programme director)

The difficulty is that invited academics might have a master’s or doctoral degree of the
subject-matter . . . but their English proficiency is not sufficient for teaching . . . For some
courses I had to change the academics three times because the students did not understand
their English. (AP International Business and Economics Programme director)

While the importing the ‘Western’ curricula to be used in Vietnamese HEIs was considered
beneficial by the government, the differences between the two HE systems were not easy to
reconcile. The US HE system includes courses of peripheral importance, such as American
history, World Civilisation – following the pyramid model of undergraduate education.
However, Vietnamese HE has traditionally followed the Russian mono-disciplinary style,
focusing only on core courses of a particular discipline. Such mismatch, exacerbated by the
low English proficiency of the invited academics, demotivated the students as they were
unable to see these courses’ relevance to Vietnamese academic culture and their immediate
professional needs. Although this has been acknowledged as one of the APs’ drawbacks
(MOET 2016), the issue was found to remain unaddressed despite the institution’s
autonomy in programme development according to the 2005 HE Reform Agenda.

Challenge 3: learning from American perspectives and inviting American

academics
The third challenge is related to students’ curriculum-specific learning and the practicality
of inviting American academics to teach the core courses in AP during the first three years,
using MOET’s AP project funding. Two US professors explained this arrangement:
The one that I know that we’ve been told over and over again is . . . to help Westernise the
curriculum at [VIU]. An underscore objective is to have the students here have more
native English thinking . . . (Foreign Academic 1)
 COMPARE 11

My understanding is we teach our class [here] as much [similarly] as we would teach in [US
institution], which will be primarily from a Western perspective, and that the students will
benefit first-hand by having exposure to a course, much as they would have been taught at
[US institution]. So they see Western teaching styles, methods that might be different, from
a cultural perspective that might be different. (Foreign Academic 2)

These US professors have captured the essence of IoC practice in VIU which is very much
‘Westernisation’ of the curriculum. As a result, students found some content ‘too
American’, such as the Business and Its Legal Environment course where all the scenarios
were about American society and legal framework. In fact, much of the knowledge that
students gained from APs ‘clearly reflect the American curricula’ (Duong 2009, 81).
While this could bring some international exposure to AP students and academics, once
these courses were imparted in the class, a content gap became inevitably visible, as
illustrated by an US professor:

Do you have any difficulties in providing the local examples for the students?
That’s true also. . . . multiple of times. Then of course . . . I would take a lot of time to learn
everything but since it’s one time [teaching] I don’t spend time much understanding of
Vietnamese market. (Foreign Academic 3)

Probably the hardest thing for me is to come up with some examples because I’m coming
from the States, and this is the first time I’ve been in Vietnam. (Foreign Academic 4)

Embarking on their transnational visit with the purpose of ‘Westernising’ the local
curriculum by teaching their course as it originally is, these US professors did not
prepare to teach the students outside of the US, hence their underestimation about
the application of the knowledge in the Vietnamese context. As short-term sojour­
ners, the professors did not endeavour to learn about Vietnamese market. Such lack
of ‘local colour’ (Smith 2014, 217) can be a marked drawback of the lectures – an
issue underscored by Nhan and Le (2019). It is, therefore, essential that APs localise
the teaching contents to meet the students’ needs and local market demands and
optimise the effectiveness of curriculum importation (Tran, Phan, and Marginson
2018).
Another challenge was the high cost of inviting American professors, resulting in their
very brief stay at VIU, i.e. normally within three to four weeks while the same course is
spanned for 15–16 weeks in the US. Students’ feedback about this arrangement was not
positive:
My ‘burning’ recommendation is to lengthen the time studying with US professors to two
months, with two or three classes per week. Now we are doing two courses in three weeks,
every day, morning and afternoon, with no time to review or to read the materials for both
courses. We need [more time] to absorb the knowledge. (International Business
Management students)

American professors also sympathised with the students:

I just know that for me the workload is really heavy and so I feel for the students even more.
I think three weeks is very challenging and then this semester has had clashing weeks . . . So
for one week, they have two intensive courses being offered . . . It’s a bad idea. (Foreign
Academic 5)
12 H.T. NGUYEN ET AL.

The students need a longer time to assimilate the new knowledge into the existing frame­
work . . . We have to abandon group work and presentations, there’s not enough time for
them do work on meaningful projects. (Foreign Academic 6)

Learning through English is already challenging for students (Nguyen, Walkinshaw,

and Pham 2017). Learning in such an intensive manner was comparable to water off
a duck’s back, and thus undermining the potential benefits of the internationally
accredited American curriculum which was most likely what the AP students have
signed up for.
While the purpose of having US academics at the local campus was to contribute to
internationalising teaching and learning, their presence sometimes posed unexpected
pressures and work disruption for the local academics. A local academic revealed:
I heard about the unfair comparisons students made between local and foreign academics
but the students should be aware that local academics are placed secondary in the curricu­
lum; for example, sometimes when a US professor can arrange to travel to the campus,
I have to suspend my course to give time to their courses, then will resume my teaching
when their courses are finished. Also, US professors have teaching assistants to help with
administration and marking while we do all on our own. (Vietnamese Academic 1)

This interview excerpt indicated that local academics experienced disadvantages as guest
academics from overseas were often given priorities in terms of timetable allocation and
assistance with teaching and administrative responsibilities. These timetable disruptions
with associated delayed workload caused by the foreign academics’ visits and more
limited access to resources to facilitate teaching and learning might in turn affect the
quality of teaching of local academics, compared to their foreign peers.

Localising the imported curriculum – the role of local academics

Amidst such challenges of imparting the American curriculum, some Vietnamese aca­
demics proactively and efficiently adapted teaching content to best suit students’ previous
knowledge and to integrate crucial local knowledge into the lectures. These academics
had previously studied overseas, mostly in master’s or doctoral degree in their teaching
areas. This experience contributed to their capacity to teach in English-medium envir­
onments such as the AP. In addition, they were observed to adapt their pedagogy to
support students’ learning and engagement in discipline-specific courses.
First, some local academics tailored the course structure in anticipation of students’
existing knowledge, as in the case of the Marketing course:
The course aims at providing students with the theories and practice in Service Marketing
but I feel that it’d be really hard if the students didn’t learn about Marketing Strategy.
Therefore, instead of starting with the Service Marketing, I spent the first two lectures on
Marketing Strategy to teach them the fundamental. (Vietnamese Academic 3)

This academic found the addition of two lectures on Marketing Strategy particularly
important for his course as it ‘established a good understanding from class one and the
students could see the connection in the consequent classes.’ With rich teaching experi­
ence in the local context, the academic successfully modified the course structure to lay
the necessary knowledge foundation for the subsequent major content, i.e. Service
Marketing.
 COMPARE 13

The second area of localisation pertained to the supplementation of local knowledge,

for example in the Accounting and Finance courses. An academic explained her
approach of integrating the local content in need into the curriculum:
The textbook teaches them about American accounting. I had to add a session on
Vietnamese methods of accounting. In the future, they will work in Vietnam’s market.
(Vietnamese Academic 4)

Sensibly observing that most of the students would find employment in the Vietnamese
market, many local academics would provide technical terms in both languages and/or
incorporate local examples, cases, and events to assist the students to relate what they
learn in AP and their local context. For courses that entailed fundamental differences,
such as Finance and Financial Institutions, the local academics would spend one lecture
on the Vietnamese financial institutions and banking system. These alterations and
flexibilities were proved to be useful for the students in making sense of what they
learned in the American curriculum in relation to the Vietnamese context.
The third practice commonly used related to the pedagogy in English-medium
classroom. Many local academics used code-switching in their teaching, and some
presented the knowledge in English first, then providing additional explanation in
Vietnamese to aid students’ comprehension. Although this practice was not unan­
imously effective in all classes, depending on the academics’ English language profi­
ciency, students found this beneficial for their understanding and engagement in the
course. A student observed:
I support the way Mr X taught his course. He taught in English most of the time and his
teaching in English was good. Sometimes when he switched to Vietnamese, he really
motivated the students because his Vietnamese-medium lectures were really interesting
and we understood the lectures better. (International Business Management student)

Related to pedagogy, some local academics were flexible in assessment content, for
example:
I do not totally rely on the assessment scheme specified in the course. I will give students
more case studies when they have more foundational knowledge (Micro and Macro
Economics, Econometrics), more calculations and problem solving and one or two simple
case studies when they do not seem to be ready. (Vietnamese Academic 5)

Since the course this academic taught was moved from the third to the second year, she
proactively adjusted the assessment content, demonstrating a clear approach for specific
student cohorts.
The above excerpts highlighted the critical roles of the local academics in mediating
the American curriculum and the local context. This is an imperative role as many of the
imported contents are very much jurisdiction-specific, posing troubles in transnational
education programmes such as APs. However, as also shown in the data, the agentic
practice of appropriating the curriculum was dependent on individual academics’ experi­
ences, capabilities and motivations. These academics’ initiatives to localise the foreign
contents and practices are welcome steps and critical to effective implementation of the
APs. However, this study shows how their current efforts are mainly ad-hoc and
fragmented. It is essential that these efforts be recognised and good practices be circu­
lated. It is more critical that relevant and ongoing professional development and support
14 H.T. NGUYEN ET AL.

are provided to equip academics with the capacities to sustain and optimise the initia­
tives. In this regard, further support from the leadership is needed to support academics
in implementing the localisation of foreign contents and IoC in a more systemic,
coherent and effective manner.

Discussion and conclusion

The study reports a case study on the implementation of two APs in a Vietnamese public
university over a 12-year period. AP is the government’s project to internationalise the
HE curriculum, which, in the Vietnamese context, means delivering foreign curriculum
in its entirety in the local HEIs. According to Leask (2013), IoC is to be achieved through
the cyclical process of (i) reviewing and reflecting on the level of internationalisation of
the current curriculum, (ii) imagining other possible ways of thinking and doing beyond
the taken for granted, (iii) revising and planning for the new input, (iv) acting out the
new activities, and (v) evaluating the effectiveness of the changes – which will inform the
next review and reflect and so on. IoC by transplanting foreign curriculum to local
Vietnamese HEIs has reduced the whole cyclical process to merely policy copying (Mok
2007) or ‘Western parochials’ (Wang, Sung, and Vong 2019, 12), disconnecting the local
and the imported curriculum, as well as bypassing the local knowledge, perspectives, and
values (Duong 2009).
Vietnamese HE’s IoC remains only at the national and institutional levels in inaugu­
rating the AP project and establishing linkages with advanced HE systems. ‘Western’
curriculum has been taken for granted as the best and alignment with ‘Western’ stan­
dards has become the compass for Vietnamese HE’s IoC, reflecting the convergent model
of internationalisation (Sanders 2019). Even though evaluation has been done at the
programme and project levels (MOET 2016), how the imported curriculum has been
enacted in the local context has not been scrutinised at any depth. This study’s findings
underscored the clash between ‘Western’ and Vietnamese political ideologies and the
impracticality and insufficiency of curriculum teaching and learning from merely
‘Western’ perspectives in the local context. These feature the importing HE destinations –
in this case, Vietnamese HEIs – ‘seeking and accepting Western academic norms,
conventions, and standards’ (Huang 2007, 424), which has ‘recolonised’ Vietnamese
HE through the ‘Western’ scholarship (Ng 2012). The consequence might be the growing
inequalities not only between but also within HE systems (Leask and Bridge 2013) when
AP programmes are now considered the framework of reference for other programmes
in Vietnamese HE (MOET 2016) even though conflicting ideologies and the application
of knowledge content in the local context remain questionable, as illustrated in this study.
Indeed, there has been a trend away from the borrowing from the West as in the cases of
Singapore and Japan, taking advantages of internationalisation while protecting the
national identity, leading to more divergent models of HE (Sanders 2019). This can
serve as good references for Vietnamese HE.
This IoC process highlighted the critical roles of local academics in navigating the
implementation challenges and facilitating students’ learning. While the imported curri­
culum and English-medium-instruction presented Vietnamese academics remarkable
challenges, they also brought about opportunities for academics to revisit their pedago­
gies, be mindful of their students’ needs and be creative in supporting students’ learning.
 COMPARE 15

Local academics were in a knowledgeable position in APs with a mastery of disciplinary

knowledge informed by international research (Leask 2011b), understandings of
Vietnamese context and an awareness of Vietnamese students’ prior knowledge, diffi­
culties and needs. They were also able to infuse the imported courses with locally relevant
knowledge that is conducive to students’ employability and well serves the Vietnamese
HE reforms’ purpose of supporting the country’s modernisation. As Smith (2014) puts it,
local academics are best placed to contextualise the curriculum. Being able to appropriate
the course structure, pedagogy, and assessment content as well as integrating some ‘local
colour’ (Smith 2014, 217) to best suit the curriculum’ end users, the Vietnamese aca­
demics played the crucial role of intermediaries between the imported curriculum and
the local demands.
However, as also shown in the study, such agentic practices by some academics,
despite being very welcome steps, were their reaction to the top-down policy rather
than a structured enactment of IoC such as the cyclical process proposed by Leask (2013)
and Breit, Obijiofor, and Fitzgerald (2013). In other words, there lacked a review and
reflective process that informs new imaginaries and new ways of doing. The local
academics’ contribution as revealed in this study showed that they had the capacity
and should be given the autonomy and support to be in charge of the whole IoC process,
i.e. to review and reflect, to imagine, to revise and plan, and to evaluate the curriculum in
practice. The whole process as such calls for the ‘internationalisation of the academic Self’
(Sanderson 2008, 276) that requires ‘critical reflection and self-reflection on the basic
assumptions of one’s own culture and worldview’ (283) – a transformation that goes
beyond ‘sit[ting] in on the course to observe’ foreign lecturers as above reported. In cases
of curriculum transfer between two vastly different political, social, and economic
contexts, such as Vietnam and the US, local academics’ engagement is even more crucial
for a true enhancement of students’ learning.
The study’s findings underscore the need of comprehensive institutional investment
in change, ensuring the ‘quick-fix’ solution to education quality takes into consideration
the local academic culture and values. One implication is, therefore, to engage local
academics more effectively, providing them with additional support, acknowledgement,
and empowerment. Appropriate IoC-related professional development for staff has long
been called for in the international education literature (Beelen 2019). However, once
alignment to ‘Western’ knowledge and standards is still taken to the core of internatio­
nalisation, appropriate professional development is easily limited to a few visits to the
foreign partner institutions to observe and mimic ‘Western’ ways of doing. In order to
uproot this persistent pitfall, there requires a new social imaginary about IoC – ‘the
common understanding that countenances common practices and a widely shared sense
of legitimacy – around curriculum design and student learning’ (Breit, Obijiofor, and
Fitzgerald 2013, 120) within the institution and ultimately within the HE system. The
study therefore underscores the importance of developing a more systemic and coherent
mechanism to support academic staff’s engagement and development of agentic capa­
cities in localising the content of the imported curriculum and re-imagining IoC in the
Vietnamese context. These elements are critical to more effectively and sustainably realise
the developmental goal of the internationalised curriculum in building bridges across
local and international knowledge, perspectives and practices.
16 H.T. NGUYEN ET AL.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

ORCID
Huong Thu Nguyen http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2218-4333
Huong Le Thanh Phan http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3462-313X
Ly Thi Tran http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6543-6559

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