Exploring pedagogies for professional learning across international contexts conference

On Wednesday 8th November delegates were welcomed to Nguyen Tat Thanh University, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, for the 2017 “Exploring pedagogies for professional learning across international contexts” conference.

Contained upon this page are selections from the vast array of presenters and attendees across the conference, including the Right Honorable Ed Vaziey, MP, Trade Envoy to Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, who opened the conference.

A number of presentations on professional development, professional learning and vocational pedagogies were delivered across the day with an extended summary of many of these talks presented in the Conference Proceedings accessed here.

VietUKHE conference proceedings v2.

 

Welcome

This site brings together the work of two collaborative projects, both part-funded by the British Council, carried out over a two year period between Birmingham City University (BCU, UK), Nguyen Tat Thanh University (NTTU, Vn), VNU University of Education, Hanoi (VNU, Vn) and HCMC University of Pedagogy (HCMCUP, Vn).

The first project  between BCU and NTTU centred around ‘Improving employability outcomes through student-centred approaches to learning.’ (NTTUBCUemployability, 2016)

This project brought together academics and students from Birmingham City University in the United Kingdom and Nguyen Tat Thanh University in Vietnam who worked to: –

  • Build innovative models of student-centred vocational pedagogy that will enable students (undergraduate and post-graduate/professional) to gain the skills, values and attitudes they need to be successful in the workplace;
  • Develop approaches to student peer and self-assessment and review that promote the acquisition of graduate attributes for employability;
  • Support positive outcomes for students by enabling staff to develop their own skills as mentors and coaches and train and support workplace mentors to provide effective support to students in placement or practice settings;
  • Embed approaches to curriculum design and planning that ensure that learning outcomes help to structure student learning effectively;
  • Facilitate knowledge exchange and production of new knowledge about student and graduate employability through collaborative research activities and productive links with employers and the world of work;
  • Create a new professional learning community for staff and students with an international focus;
  • Secure opportunities for staff and student exchanges – both real and virtual.

The project was concerned with improving the employability outcomes of undergraduate and postgraduate students following professionally orientated programmes of study in higher education contexts in Vietnam and the UK. The project brought together university leaders, researchers, teachers, students and professional services and support staff from two modern, vocationally focused higher educational institutions to develop new, innovative approaches to curriculum design, pedagogy, workplace learning, mentoring and coaching and assessment. The priority of the project was to focus on student-centred approaches to learning that ensure that students become independent, autonomous learners who have the motivation, skills and aptitudes to secure graduate level employment on graduation and to build meaningful, fulfilling careers that contribute to both their own economic, social and personal well-being and the broader prosperity of the two countries in which the partner institutions are located.

The second (ongoing) project  between BCU, NTTU, VNU and HCMCUP (VietUKHE, 2017)centres around extending the scope of the NTTUBCUemployability framework  in light of new learning and priorities emerging from new collaborations, in order to maximise the impact of the original project outcomes by re-contextualising the framework in new higher education contexts.

The contents of this website include resources and outcomes from the first project along with details of workshops held in the UK and Vietnam across the four participating Universities.