Service Learning Comes to Vietnam: A New Method for Learning Within and Beyond Higher Education

Higher education curricula in Vietnam, particularly in the humanities and social sciences, has been plagued by theoretical knowledge and a lack of practical skills. This limits students’ ability to apply their academic knowledge and skills to real-world work and life. Moreover, the separation of practice from theory in teaching activities has restricted students’ capabilities, especially among sociology majors, to comprehensively understand society as well as the important roles their discipline can play in contributing to social development. Service learning has been taken up in universities in Vietnam under the umbrella of learning and teaching innovation introduced through national policy reform. This chapter reviews the community-based learning and teaching approach of service learning as it has been implemented in Vietnam in general and in the discipline of sociology in particular. Based on focus group discussions at participatory workshops and in-depth interviews with sociology lecturers, this chapter highlights a number of challenges arising during the process of implementing service learning as a new method in different universities in Vietnam. The chapter concludes with recommendations for how to implement service learning across Vietnamese higher education.