Teacher agency in culturally responsive teaching: learning to teach ethnic minority students in the Central Highlands of Vietnam

ABSTRACT

Culturally Responsive Teaching (CRT) is a schooling practice catering to students of diverse backgrounds rather than the majority group in mainstream society. Thus, it has been acknowledged as a contribution to lessening educational disparities. In Vietnam, despite the ethnic diversity of students in the school system, teachers tend to be educated to teach in response to mainstream education established by the majority group. Based on the framework of teacher agency in combination with CRT, the current study aimed to explore how teachers learned to teach ethnic minority students appropriately. Data were collected from in-depth interviews with teachers in combination with supplementary sources, including interviews with educational leaders, documents, field notes, and lesson plans. The findings demonstrated that the teachers had neither prior experience nor initial teacher education for teaching ethnically diverse students. However, by autonomously engaging in ethnic minority communities, the teachers explored indigenous cultures and local life as well as raised their awareness of language barriers that impacted on students’ schooling. Based on their perceptions and field experiences, the teachers constructed pedagogical practices inclusive of ethnic minority students’ characteristics and learning cultures. The study discusses implications for teacher preparation for CRT in Vietnam and other similar contexts.

KEYWORDS:

• Culturally responsive teaching
• diverse students
• ethnic minority
• teacher agency

Acknowledgements

We would like to express our gratitude to Professor Cheng Yuh-Show, National Taiwan Normal University for her comments on this manuscript. We would also like to thank the editor and anonymous reviewers for their critical reviews that greatly improved the manuscript. Special thanks go to all the participants in the study.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1. An ethnic minority student at Fulbright University in Vietnam expressed his concern about how children of his ethnicity have been taught (https://fulbright.edu.vn/from-mu-cang-chai-to-fulbright/).

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by “Australian for Skills” under grant number [AAGF-R2-00214].