Student Engagement with National Identity

In this chapter, we address the didactical principles in the EFL textbooks in relation to national identity. We look at how the textbooks prompt students to engage with learning material that expresses ideas and values about Vietnam’s national identity. Relying on the ICAP framework, proposed by Chi & Wylie, four categories of student engagement are distinguished: Interactive, Constructive, Active, and Passive. Our analyses document the significant rise in the tasks that demand ‘higher’ levels of student engagement. Tasks promoting passive and active forms of engagement dominate in the 1980s and 1990s, but in the more recent textbook series different emphases emerge and students are increasingly prompted to construct and co-construct their own learning output. Our analyses also show that the textbook developers continue to include normative messages about the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, its distinctive values, and its position in the globalizing world. While the textbooks thus change in the direction of encouraging students to understand themselves as active and responsible students/citizens, their hidden curriculum continues to be important. Under the surface of didactical strategies, the EFL textbooks continue to promote messages of national unity, national identity and national cohesion within Vietnam.