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Vietnam’s 11th National Party Congress prioritised integration, modernisation and industrialisation as the new key orientations for Vietnam. It outlined Vietnam’s integration with the world, not only economically, but also in terms of the social, cultural, educational, scientific and technological areas that can support social and economic development and sustainability. Vocational education has been recognised as pivotal to the nation’s sustainable workforce development and transformational changes. The purpose of this paper is to analyse how foreign approaches and practices have been filtered and appropriated to bring about sustainable development and transformational changes for Vietnamese vocational education.

The paper is derived from a study that involves documentary analysis, observation and semi-structured interviews with vocational learners and staff across three different vocational education and training (VET) sites in Vietnam. The overall study includes three vocational education providers and 22 participants altogether, but this paper involves observation and semi-structured interviews with eight participants, including one leader, two teachers and five students. It focusses on a Germany-funded vocational college in the northern central area of Vietnam that came under the management of the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs, and the local province where the college located.

The findings of the study show a critical need to develop a new “Vietnamese VET pedagogy” that filters international influences and flexibly and creatively combines them with the existing local pedagogy. To meet the local and global demands and bring transnational changes for Vietnamese vocational education, new VET pedagogies need to align with both Vietnamese historical and political situations, especially the emergent demands of the open market socialist economy and to capitalise on international influences – Confucian, French, Soviet and Western. Such a balance will ensure Vietnam makes use of both international forces and local strengths for sustainable development and transformational changes rather than passive dependence on foreign practices.

The research provides valuable insights into the appropriation of foreign practices and principles in Vietnamese vocational education. However, it focusses only on three vocational education sites in central Vietnam. Further studies with larger scale of participants and across a variety of vocational education settings including public and private institutions, community centres and family workshops will offer broader findings related to this important topic.

The study suggests practical implications for institutions to deal with the challenges associated with the adaptation of international forces into the vocational education context in Vietnam. It outlines the transformational changes in pedagogical practices related to the increased requirement to move from the traditional didactic teaching to more self-directed learning, to meet the requirements of a modern vocational education system.

This study provides unique insights into the practices and challenges of filtering foreign VET practices and principles to bring about transformational changes in Vietnamese vocational education. It, therefore, responds to the paucity of literature in this area. In addition, it examines internationalisation in Vietnamese VET, an under-researched area in the field of internationalisation of education as most of the literature in this field concentrates on the higher education sector.

This research investigates the market for Western clothing in Vietnam, one of the most under‐developed countries of South East Asia. The intention is to look at factors which will assist economic development in Vietnam because economic growth generally leads to greater GDP per capita and this in turn leads to greater spending per capita on clothing. The country is making use of direct foreign investment (DFI) from the ‘Asian Tigers’ to modernise its industry. The lighter manufacturing industries, which include apparel, are expected to benefit. The population of Vietnam welcome this investment and the employment it is creating, and as the labour force changes from agrarian to urban the GDP is expected to rise. This rudimentary clothing industry is being established in Vietnam mainly to supply the markets in Asia but there are indications that there is a growth of local demand for western clothing. In this research the access to retail western clothing in Vietnam is explored from both secondary and primary data sources, and, conclusions drawn incorporating the economic prospects for the future size of the market. The results of the research show that although the country is experiencing strong growth now and there is demand for western clothing the future market will be small.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the Vietnamese laws and practices concerning the confiscation of proceeds of crime, especially in view of Vietnam’s obligations to meet the international standards on money laundering and terrorist financing, set by the Financial Action Task Force and relevant international conventions that Vietnam ratified. To limit the scope of this paper, the analysis focuses on the confiscation of proceeds of domestic crimes that do not require international legal assistance. This paper concludes with recommendations for improving the legal framework on criminal asset recovery in Vietnam.

This is a doctrinal study that considers the applicable legal framework. This study is supported by brief case studies of major cases involving the confiscation of proceeds of crime.

Vietnam has a functioning asset confiscation regime but gaps in the law, lack of financial investigation expertise and lack of focused investigative attention on asset preservation and confiscation are hampering its effectiveness. The key gaps can easily be closed with appropriate amendments to the law. These reforms should be combined with a dedicated skills development program to produce sufficient number of financial investigation experts and criminal asset management experts to support the regime. The training should extend to judicial officers to ensure an appropriate understanding of the asset confiscation law. Reforms such as these should follow on a comprehensive review of Vietnam’s law and practices relating to the confiscation and forfeiture of criminal assets. This review should extend to assets linked to the financing of terrorism and proliferation to ensure that Vietnam has a comprehensive regime to deal with criminal assets.

This paper draws on publicly available information regarding the confiscation of proceeds of crime in Vietnam. Little data is available on asset confiscation and that prevents an in-depth assessment of the regime.

This paper highlights gaps in the current asset confiscation regime and proposes reforms and approaches that will ensure a more effective asset confiscation regime for Vietnam.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the influence of culture on the sense of self-efficacy in teaching English as a Foreign Language of a group of university teachers in Vietnam. Research exploring the relationship between culture and self-efficacy is extremely rare despite the acknowledged importance of culture in the formation of self-efficacy beliefs.

This study took the form of qualitative research with diverse, data collection instruments: individual interviews, focus group discussions, observations and journaling.

Findings indicate that certain features of the Vietnamese cultural context impacted on the way the study teachers constructed their sense of self-efficacy. Specifically, under the influence of a Vietnamese sense of belonging, the study teachers tended to rely more on efficacy-building information from other people rather than from themselves. The perception of inequality in power may have heightened negative emotional arousal, thus contributing to a negative sense of self-efficacy among the teachers. The Vietnamese concept of face and the high status of teachers in the social hierarchy in part mediated teachers’ sense of self-efficacy.

The perceived burden of performing both parenting and teaching roles and responsibilities may have diminished the self-efficacy in teaching of female teachers.

The contribution and implications of the study are discussed.

This paper presents a mixed methodology to map and analyse the spatial connectivity of the everyday pathways that link the doorway of an individual's home–work locations to the local main commercial street. These pathways include public streets, semi-private lanes, alleys and stairs.

Pathways within different morphological areas in Hanoi, Vietnam, are used as examples to illustrate the development and application of the methodology. The methodology, adapted from Conzenian, typological, and space syntax methods, combined with observations and interviews, seeks to overcome several identified limitations of each of these approaches for understanding pedestrians' horizontal and vertical movement patterns within urban settings.

Analytical diagrams of pathways are developed on figure-ground maps of the neighbourhoods and three-dimensional projections of circulation spaces within buildings. Scatter plots are used to analyse the distribution of collected samples according to their business types and distances to local main streets. Field observations and interviews with homeowners revealed the critical influence of the pathways' spatial characteristics on home-based businesses' operations.

The methods developed here are potentially useful for urban morphologists and urban designers in decoding the intricacies of informal urban settings and understanding their socio-economic significance for users.