Framing Vietnamese scholars’ negotiation of knowledge production: a positioning perspective

ABSTRACT

For many years now, knowledge production at universities and in countries like Vietnam has been framed by centre/periphery discourses. In this paper, we suggest that interpreting academics’ research identities in relation to these discourses can assist in understanding ways in which Vietnamese academics negotiate knowledge production. For this article, data on six participants are drawn from a qualitative study in which semi-structured interviews were used to investigate the positioning of different generations of academics working in the area of social sciences, in Vietnam or in the diaspora. Findings from this data revealed that senior researchers positioned their own local knowledge and experiences as central to what they perceived to be the betterment of Vietnam. In contrast, early and mid-career academics, especially those who studied in Western countries, looked outward to apply Western research frameworks to the Vietnamese context, placing Vietnam in a more peripheral position in the global academic community.

框定越南学者对知识生产的协商：一种定位的视角

多年来，大学以及在像越南这样的国家中的知识生产一直被中心/边缘这样的话语所框定。在本文中，我们认为，解读学者们的研究身份与这些话语的关系，有助于理解越南学者协商知识生产的方式。本文中，我们从一项定性研究中采用了六位参与者的数据，使用半结构式访谈的方法探究了在越南或海外从事社会科学研究领域的不同代际学者们的定位。这些数据的研究结果显示，资深研究者将自己的本地知识和经验定位为他们观念中越南改善的核心。相比之下，处于职业早期和中期的学者，尤其是那些在西方国家学习过的学者，则向外看，将西方研究框架应用于越南情景，使越南在全球学术界处于更加边缘的位置。

KEYWORDS:

• Postcolonial
• positioning
• academic agency
• Vietnamese higher education
• Vietnamese scholars

关键词:

• 后殖民主义
• 定位
• 学术能动性
• 越南高等教育
• 越南学者

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Professor Paul Richardson and Dr Jill Brown, Monash Education, for helpful discussions during the research study.

Disclosure statement

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

Note on contributors

Cuong Huu Hoang is a research assistant at the Faculty of Education, Monash University. His research interests include internationalisation in higher education, academic identity, and academic professional development.

Marianne Turner is a senior lecturer in bilingual education and TESOL at the Faculty of Education, Monash University. Her research focuses on how to integrate language(s) into everyday teaching and learning and for what objectives.

Additional information

Funding

Cuong Huu Hoang was supported by both the Monash International Postgraduate Research Scholarship and the Monash Graduate Scholarship. He was also generously supported by Monash Postgraduate Publications Award.