A sociocultural investigation into the introduction of formative assessment practices at a Vietnamese university

Abstract

The integration of formative assessment in teaching and learning practices aims to improve both teachers’ teaching and students’ learning. To promote these outcomes, formative assessment was introduced into the Vietnamese higher education system in 2007. The uptake of formative assessment practices has been slow however. Several factors have contributed to this. They include the lack of professional training or practical guidelines to support lecturers’ understandings and practices; the influence of the university culture; and more widely, the impacts of Vietnam’s Confucian heritage which prioritises a regime of testing, or summative learning. These practical and sociocultural barriers to implementing formative assessment processes are strongly reinforced by university policies and the expectations the university places on staff members. Limited research has been carried out on formative assessment practices in Vietnamese tertiary education. The qualitative research reported here contributes to this gap by investigating the assessment practices of four lecturers at a private university in Vietnam. Using a constructivist paradigm and collaborative action research this thesis first explores the lecturers’ current assessment practices. Data from classroom observations, semi-structured interviews with lecturers, group discussions with students, and university documents were thematically analysed to identify institutional and sociocultural factors that influence the lecturers’ assessment approaches. Based on this analysis, the thesis reports on the development and implementation of a formative assessment intervention to help inform and shift lecturers’ attitudes and help them transition from relying on summative assessment practices to using a formative assessment approach. The findings suggest that the lack of training provided to lecturers can limit their understandings of the multiple benefits of applying formative assessment strategies. These include enhancing teaching, learning and assessment processes for lecturers and learners; and outcomes for the university. The findings further suggest that Vietnam’s Confucian heritage, which positions lecturers as authorities of knowledge and promotes passive learning, is a further barrier to the successful adoption of formative assessment practices within Vietnamese higher education. This finding indicates that any programs to promote new assessment practices in Vietnamese higher education settings need to acknowledge and address the influence of sociocultural factors to optimise their effective implementation. This research details this process at one private university in Vietnam and thereby contributes to the wider research on formative assessment at tertiary level within the Vietnamese and similar sociocultural contexts.

Date of Award	2022
Original language	English