VIETNAM is a Southeast Asian country with an area of 362,000 square km:
roughly the size of Germany. It has a population of about 90 million,
comprising 54 ethnic groups.
In its long history Vietnam has had to conduct
many wars for national liberation, and this cause was completed in 1975.
In
1945 Ho Chi Minh declared Vietnam independent, although it was to take until
1954 for liberation of the northern part of the country. In 1975 we liberated
the southern part of the country and achieved national reunification.
Since
1986 we have begun a renewal, turning the country from a bureaucratic and
ubsidised economy into a socialist-oriented market economy to develop our
economy, culture and education. We have achieved important successes, opening
new prospects for national reconstruction. Education is an important part of
the country’s renewal, and educational psychology has become central to the
practice of psychology in Vietnam.
The prominence of educational psychology now perhaps reflects the
origins of psychological research in Vietnam, which was always concerned
primarily with children and with teaching. Later on, these activities were
extended to the application of psychology to other fields, such as sports,
military, security and health. Some research has been oriented toward
anthropological psychology.
Surprisingly, no research in Vietnam has addressed
the effects and legacies of the last war on the troops or on the population
generally. A trawl of recent publications in US psychological literature
reveals more than 1100 papers and chapters devoted to post-traumatic stress,
and other ‘veteran’ issues. Yet despite the trauma and suffering visited on the
local population, the psychological issues within Vietnam remain unaddressed.
In part this may be explained by the fact that psychology as a research
discipline was poorly developed at the time of the war.
Research in experimental psychology really began only in 1963. Since
then, we have seen a number of research projects of remarkable practical
significance in fields such as the assessment of the main activities of pupils
in primary schools, and the active social characteristics and professional
tendencies of pupils of secondary schools.
The Wechsler and Raven tests have
been employed for research on the development of the intelligence of Vietnamese
students, and research has been carried out on the IQ, EQ and CQ of pupils of
different age brackets. Psychologists have addressed the ability and enthusiasm
of pupils for learning the mother tongue, and the study of literature, physics
and foreign languages by pupils of primary schools.
Sex characteristics and sex
education have been assessed, and demographic education for pupils. In
personality psychology, research has been conducted on students and labourers
using the NEO Personality Inventory – Revised, and on study needs in relation
to motives for success.
Foreign influences
Prior to 1945, during the ‘French’ time in Vietnam, psychology was
taught in some secondary schools and in colleges, but using only French
textbooks compiled by Foulquie. Starting in 1953, during the period when we had
to wage a war of resistance against the French colonialists, we began teaching
psychology at some colleges using Soviet textbooks, compiled by A.A. Smirnov
and others.
Students studying psychology in Vietnam have always had access to
books and papers by a number of foreign authors. Though the Russian
psychologists L.S. Vygotsky, A.R. Luria, and A.N. Leontyev predominated, books
by Freud and Piaget were also widely introduced and influential. Since 1970 the
authors of all psychology textbooks are our colleagues in Vietnam, and we have
seen many in the fields of human resources in the service of industrialisation
and modernisation, communicative psychology, psychology in economic management
and other specialised areas, such as the military and sports.
Where is
psychology taught and researched?
In 1958 a Section of Pedagogical Psychology was set up at the Hanoi
Teacher Training University, and in 1965 it became the Faculty of Psychology
and Pedagogy, specialised for the training of bachelor degree students (four
years) of MAs (two years) and PhDs (four years).
Now we have four faculties of
psychology: at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities (an affiliate
of Hanoi National University), the Ho Chi Minh City Teacher Training
University, the Political Institute of the Vietnam People’s Army, and the
People-founded University Civilization.
In addition, there are sections of
psychology in all teacher training universities, colleges and schools
throughout the country. Psychological subjects are also taught at special
universities in such fields as politics, military, public security,
administration, law, economics, trade, culture, arts, and the media.
Psychology cannot yet be said to have achieved the status of a popular
university subject in Vietnam, though we have approximately 600 undergraduate
students in psychological departments, and approximately 100 graduates each
year. Vietnam has special government requirements for training professional
applied psychologists.
Since the establishment of the Institute of Psychology in Hanoi in 1993
(an institute for human studies under the National Center for Social Sciences
and Humanities), many major new research projects have been carried out
concerning values and their impact on the formation of human personality;
peasants’ psychology; ethnic psychology; and the psychology of young people and
children.
To the future
At present there are around 1700 hometrained bachelors, masters and
doctors of psychology. Nationwide we have 13 associate professors and seven
professors of psychology. Psychology services are available on a national and a
private basis. Psychology is a fast-developing subject in Vietnam, and we hope
that relations between British psychology and Vietnamese psychology will become
defined at the earliest opportunity, and develop successfully.
Professor Dr Sc. Pham Minh Hac is Director of the Human Research Institute, National Center for Social Sciences and Humanities, and President of the Vietnam Association of Psycho-Pedagogical Sciences. E-mail: phamminhhac@yahoo.com.
Professor Dr Do Long is Director of the Institute of Psychology,
National Center for Social Sciences and Humanities, and Vice President of the
Vietnam Association of Psycho-Pedagogical Sciences.
Article reproduced with permission from http://www.thepsychologist.org.uk
THE VIETNAM
ASSOCIATION OF PSYCHO-PEDAGOGICAL SCIENCES
The Vietnam Association of Psycho-Pedagogical Sciences was founded in
1990 and currently has a countrywide organisational system including 5000
members. Criteria for membership are the holding of a bachelor’s degree in
psychology or pedagogics, or conducting work in psychological practice (in a
hospital, or in a centre for street children, for example).There are sections
of education, sports, pre-school education, vocational education, health care,
military, security police, economy, and business management.
In the beginning the Vietnam Association of Psycho-Pedagogical Sciences
was a member of the World Psychology Science Association and developed
relations with the International Political Psychology
Association, the World Mental Health Federation, and the Russian,
French, Chinese, Australian and American psychology associations. Vietnam is a
national member organisation of the International Union of Psychological
Science (see www.iupsys.org).
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