THE PRACTICES OF FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT IN VIETNAMESE HIGHER

EDUCATION: ACHIEVEMENTS, CHALLENGES AND IMPLICATIONS

Pham Thuy Dung, M.A.

Faculty of Business English, Foreign Trade University
“The giving of marks and the grading function are overemphasized, while the giving of
useful advice and the learning function are underemphasized.” (Black & William, 1998)

Abstract

This paper provides a systematic qualitative review of the literature on the

practices of formative assessment (FA) in Vietnamese higher education. As an integrative
narrative review, the method applied in this review entails systematic searching,
reviewing, and writing this review of the literature to bring together key themes and
findings of research in this field regarding the achievements, challenges and implications
of FA practices at Vietnamese universities and colleges. Using online searching tools
such as Google Scholar, ERIC and Science Direct, the researcher has identified six
studies published during the past decade on the use of FA in various tertiary institutions
across Vietnam. One of the key findings of the review is that while FA has helped
enhance Vietnamese undergraduate students’ motivation and engagement in learning,
whether it contributes to the improvement of the students’ academic achievements needs
further empirical evidence. In addition, although Vietnamese lecturers have positive
attitudes and beliefs towards FA, the extent to which FA informs their teaching and
enables them to make timely changes to help students achieve the desired learning
outcomes remains uncertain. A number of social and cultural factors of Vietnam are
found to be the main barriers to the effective implementation of FA in higher education in
Vietnam. As such, implications have been drawn for more effective FA practices to
increase students’ gains and promote the overall quality of teaching and learning in the
Vietnamese tertiary context.

1. Introduction

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 It has been consistently reported on the significant roles of classroom assessment
in improving students’ gains and teaching and learning quality in general. As such, past
research also extensively discussed the transitions and interplay between the two main
forms of assessment namely summative assessment (SA) and FA. While the former refers
to assessment of learning aiming to measure the overall achievements of students’
performance in forms of grades of tests (Morgan, et al., 2004), the later, also known as
assessment for learning, stresses on evaluating students’ learning in form of feedback
(rather than grades) to inform teaching and learning (rather than to rank the students and
give certificates) (Black & William, 1998; Joughin, 2009). As asserted by these reputable
researchers, the ultimate aim of FA is for teachers to make timely changes to their
teaching practices based on student assessment thereby helping students reach the desired
learning outcomes. Unlike SA, which is implemented at the end of a course of learning
and serves as the base for giving certificates to students, FA is performed continuously
throughout the course with a view to informing teaching and learning timely.
Furthermore, FA requires active participation of students as an agent rather than subject
of assessment and the radical change in teachers’ mindset towards the goals of student
assessment. SA had been widely used for decades in Asian countries, particularly in
almost all Southest Asian nations (SEAMEO Innotech Research Updates, 2012)
including Vietnam before there was a movement toward a more effective form – that is
FA, concerning its impacts on students’ achievements and quality of schooling. FA was
initiated by Scriven (1967) and later was extensively used in Western countries such as
the US and UK following the rigorous review of classroom assessment practices by
Black & William (1998), yet soon enjoyed a tremendous popularity in other parts of the
world during the process of education innovation. Southeast Asian countries, for example,
has all agreed that FA is the way to go (SEAMEO Innotech Research Updates, 2012).
The rationale behind such spread lies in an obvious linkage between the use of FA and
the reported increasing level of students’ achievements and better preparation for students’
lifelong learning. This correlation has especially been found in students of higher
education level (Black et al., 2005; Black & Wiliam 1998; Boud, 2000; Boud &

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Falchikov, 2006; Cassidy, 2007; Elwood & Klenowski, 2002; Falchikov, 1995;
McDonald & Boud, 2003; Pham, 2014; Sambell and McDowell, 1997; Topping, 1998).

Following the trend of switching from SA to FA in tertiary context, the

Resolution on Organizing Higher Education Teaching and Learning for Regular
Students in 2006 and Resolution 43 on Higher Education Training in the Credit-based
System for Regular Students in 2007 of Vietnam Ministry of Education and Training
(MOET) have considered practicing FA central to the improvement of the educational
standard. The rewards of these initiatives include increasing students’ motivation and
engagement in learning and inspiring teachers’ changes of their mindset and teaching
practices regarding classroom assessment, which would be under a deeper analysis in the
following section of this paper. Nevertheless, Vietnam is still amongst a number of Asian
countries where teachers’ assessment is claimed to remain dominant over students’ and
SA is found to remain popular (SEAMEO Innotech Research Updates, 2012), lagging
behind other neighbouring countries such as Singapore and Philippines concerning the
effective implementation of FA in higher education. The challenges of applying FA in the
Vietnamese tertiary context would therefore be investigated more in detail in the
subsequent section of this review.

2. Methodology

This literature review followed systematic qualitative approach (Green, Johnson,

& Adams, 2006; Pan, 2008) which employs “systematic criteria to allow rigorous
analysis, critique and synthesis of related literature and is thus integrative in nature”
(Torraco, 2005, cited in Gikandi, Morrow & Davis, 2011, p.2334). The review process
experienced the three main steps of literature review namely searching, reviewing and
writing the literature review as suggested by Galvan (2006).

In the first phase of this paper, the author identified a number of possible key
words such as “Formative assessment in Vietnam”, “Formative assessment in
Vietnamese universities and colleges”, “Aassessment for learning in Vietnamese

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universities and colleges”, “Summative and Formative assessment in Vietnamese higher
education” to search for the targeted papers in electronic database such as ERIC, Science
Direct and Google Scholar. In order to be selected for a review, the studies must be
published in the past 10 years, be empirical studies and on the topic of FA practices in
Vietnamese higher education context. Eventually, 6 papers have matched the search aims
of the author and subsequently been brought into the second stage of reviewing when
their theoretical and methodological approaches and key findings are intensively
analyzed with a particular focus on the three main issues (achievements, challenges and
implications) around the practices of FA in Vietnam higher education. Investigating these
components of research papers would help guarantee the quality of literature review
(Galvan, 2006; Pan, 2008).

3. Findings and Discussion

3.1. Achievements of FA practices in Vietnamese higher education

3.1.1. Promoting students’ learning

Drawing on a constructivist paradigm and sociocultural theories of learning, the

exploratory, qualitative research investigated assessment practices of three lecturers in
one Vietnamese university by Ho (2015) has reported students’ positive response to FA
practices of the lecturers. In detail, the students found engaged more deeply in learning
and more active in constructing knowledge following their teacher’s use of FA.
Following the similar qualitative inquiry yet excluding students’ voice in the
investigation than Ho’s study, the research by Nguyen (2013) explores FA practices from
teachers and administrators’ perspectives and found that the teachers were all very
confident about the benefits of FA to students’ learning. This empirical study, however,
lacks specific students’ experiences in the use of FA and rather just relies mostly on the
assumptions and beliefs of other stake holders. Likewise, a macro-scale study on the
beliefs, values and attitudes towards student assessment of a group of lecturers and
educational managers from three teacher training universities in Vietnam by Luong

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(2015) have also reported a widely expressed view by the participants that FA helps
promote students’ learning by increasing the level of motivation and engagement in their
studies. For example, a participant in her research claimed “assessment that focused on
formative purpose was able to support student learning and motivate their active
engagement” (p.140). This belief echoed with the findings by Nguyen & Khairini (2016)
in their quasi-experimental research on the linkage between these FA and students’
academic achievements among two groups of college students of General Psychology
major in Vietnam that FA helps increase students’ attitudes, motivation and engagement
in learning.

Another significant finding of Nguyen & Khairini’s study (2016), however, goes
contrary to the mainstream findings about the positive impacts of FA on students’ gains
grounded in the literature as they reported no correlation between FA practices and
students’ academic achievements by measuring the correlation between the test results of
the control and experimental groups. They noted that the students were just interested to
engage in various FA strategies and shown more curiosity and joyfulness to these new
activities compared to SA traditional classes where they were the subject of the
assessment; yet no significant improvement in terms of academic performance was
recorded. Another recent attempt at the association between FA practices and students’
achievement was made by Duong in the same year; yet this study is not yet finished to
allow the conclusive findings to be discussed in this review. It is therefore notable that to
date, apart from increasing students’ learning motivation, the impacts of FA on other
aspects of students learning such as their achievements remain inconclusive leaving a gap
for future research to bridge.

3.1.2. Promoting teachers’ teaching

One of the benefits of FA to teachers’ teaching is that it helps build positive

attitudes and confidence in teachers towards their teaching. For example, Nguyen (2013)
has found that the teachers subject in her study all felt positive about applying FA in their

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teaching context as they reported “having more says in what was assessed, and having
access to students’ answers gave them a better picture of how their students’ learning was
progressing” (p.5). They also felt that they were better informed about areas in which
their students needed more help, and they believed they could learn from students’ FA
how to improve their teaching practices. Nguyen’s study also indicated that FA allowed
the teachers at the research site to involve in ongoing assessment instead of only one –
final assessment at the end of the students’ learning, thus giving teachers opportunities to
reflect frequently on the strengths and weaknesses of their teaching. As a result, they
could modify their teaching both for a current semester and for a subsequent semester. In
a similar vein, the study by Luong (2015) also reported on the lecturers’ open-minded
view toward involving students in teaching, learning and assessment as they persisted
they would learn from the students to improve their teaching, considering this as a
criterion for being an effective lecturer. These studies, however, fail to account for the
exact extent to which FA ‘inform teaching’ as claimed by the participants. This brings to
a gap concerning how FA informs teacher’s teaching in the literature and opens an
avenue for future research to explore.

3.2. Challenges of FA practices in Vietnamese higher education

3.2.1. The examination-oriented teaching and learning culture

There has been a wealth of literature indicating that local contextual factors
particularly the exam-based teaching and learning culture in Asian classrooms such as
that of Vietnam universities and colleges present enormous obstacles to the
implementation of FA. “Indeed, teaching, learning and assessment activities are strongly
influenced by examination-oriented culture which runs counter to formative assessment
principles” (Nguyen, 2016, p.161). In a report investigating various aspects including
assessment of undergraduate education in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, and
Physics at some selected Universities in Vietnam presented to the Vietnam Education
Foundation by the Site Visit Teams of the National Academies of the United States led

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by Stephen et al. (2006), higher education in Vietnam was observed to excessively rely
on final exams as the primary source of assessment and lacks FA which is vital to the
improvement of the system. This is because teachers in Asia including Vietnam while are
very determined to apply FA, are under constraints of ensuring “students’ high
achievement in summative assessment” (Black, 2015; Carless, 2012; Yin & Buck, 2015,
cited in Nguyen, 2016). The reasons for such a thirst for high grades in Vietnam higher
education encompass the beliefs that this would offer the students more opportunities to
get well-paid jobs, and enhance teachers and university ranking and reputation (Can,
2011, cited in Ho, 2015).

3.2.2. The Confucian-based cultural beliefs of roles of teachers and students regarding
student assessment

A further challenge to the implementation of FA in the Vietnamese tertiary context

is the long standing Confucian-based teaching and learning culture dated back to the
early dependent period on China from 111BC to 938AD. In this type of culture, teachers
are seen as the mastery of knowledge and have sole power to assess student’s learning
(Ho, 2015). In this light, students are expected to be subject to the assessment and far
more being an agent of the assessment process. Research also shows that it is of great
difficulty to realize some elements of FA such as self and peer assessment in this
traditional assessment culture (Pham & Renshaw, 2015; Tepsuriwong & Bunsom, 2013;
Yan & Cheng, 2015, cited in Nguyen, 2016) such as that of Vietnam.

3.2.3. Teachers’ lack of assessment knowledge and skills

Another factor that might impede the effective practices of FA in Vietnam

universities and colleges is the insufficient knowledge and skills regarding the evaluation
of teaching and learning of teachers (Stephen et al., 2006). The lecturers in Luong
(2015)’s study, while acknowledging the roles of professional development activities on
the new regulations of using FA provided by the MOET in enhancing their confidence
about applying FA in their teaching context, still expressed the wish to be more equipped

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and trained in terms of FA knowledge and skills. This is partly because as they claimed,
the majority of these activities put more emphasis on teaching and learning in general
than on student assessment practices. They also desperately returned to summative
student assessment due to the lack of FA competence.

3.2.4. Increasing teachers’ workload

Given the generally low income of teachers in Vietnamese higher education

institutions who often have to open another business outside their school work for
improving their living, Vietnamese teachers may find it hard to take more extra
assessment work as required by FA (Nguyen, 2013). Unlike SA which merely asks
teachers to give students, typically, one single test at the end of the learning course, FA
demands them to get involved into various more tasks such as designing authentic
assessment tasks (Morgan, et al., 2004) and providing timely and detail feedback on their
students’ work (Nguyen, 2013). This problem has also been noted by Nguyen & Khairini
(2016) in their study which found that “implementing 14 techniques within one course
seemed to be a heavy workload for the teacher preparing the lesson plans and
completing the whole syllabus on time.” (p.181) Consequently, the teachers found
they were unable to manage to find adequate time for assessing their students’
performance and subsequently making timely changes to their teaching as required by FA.
This is to say this barrier would not probably be removed unless Vietnamese teachers’
salary is increased, which is fairly far from possible in the current context of a developing
economy as that of Vietnam. Furthermore, the typical large class size in Vietnam
universities and colleges also added to the increase of teachers’ workload if implementing
FA. As such, the lecturers in Luong (2015)’s research, those who are proactive in
implementing FA, found the demands on their time to provide timely feedback to
individual students overwhelming. Low salary which fails to motivate teachers to invest
their time and even their own spare time and effort in applying FA for the sake of
students’ learning was also a problem faced by this group of lecturers. Therefore, SA

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such as examination-based assessments involving multiple-choice and short-answer
questions become convenient, time and energy saving (Luong, 2015).

3.2.5. Other institutional management factors

The lecturers and educational managers in Luong (2015)’s study argued that
although they were willing to comply with the MOET’s Decisions on Innovating teaching,
learning and assessment, they found that the MOET regulations were inadequately
supported with relevant guidelines, implementation principles and exemplars. They
were, therefore, “ambiguous and entirely open to interpretations in terms of their
operationalization” (p.144). That may account for the case this group of lecturers faced
when they felt they received little support from their educational managers to change
from SA into FA. In addition, her study also stressed on the over-powerful roles of the
MOET in determining the forms of assessment to be used leaving little autonomy for
higher education institutions to make the decision on their own. This, as she further
argued, meant Vietnamese universities and colleges were reluctant to make changes and
rather, must comply with the regulations and decisions issued by the MOET.
Subsequently, this would somewhat restrict the flexibility in student assessment practices
of the teachers.

4. Implications of FA practices in Vietnamese higher education

4. 1. Contextualizing FA

Past research has called for a more appropriate application, i.e., flexible
application considering the social cultural factors, of FA in Asian countries such as
Vietnam. This is to argue that one should not go too ambitious about achieving a quick
and radical change in the assessment practices in Vietnam, and rather, should be more
practical by finding ways to combine both SA and FA and making SA become FA in the
socio-cultural context of Vietnam. In this light, Luong (2015) suggested finding ways to
overcome the Confucian assessment system long grounded in the education system of
Vietnam where high grades are seen as the norm so that FA could be introduced and
9
practiced effectively. She also called for a change in the mindset of both teachers and
students away from the hierarchy culture and into more equal relationships, especially
regarding student assessment where they could both work together on assessment tasks to
achieve the desired outcome. For example, Ho (2015) study proposed that assessment for
learning needed to be contextualized towards a more applicable and assessable in higher
education in Asian cultural contexts such as Vietnam. Pham and Gillies (2010) also found
that peer assessment technique for the Vietnamese students was “a combination of intra-
group confirmation and intergroup confrontation” (Pham & Gillies, 2010, p. 81), which
means a level of adaptation needs taking place to change the traditional form of
individual peer assessment prescribed in FA into a more contextualized form of group
peer assessment for Vietnamese college students, who favor collectivism and face saving.
One also should note that adapting FA to the long standing assessment tradition of SA in
Vietnam is not an easy task due to the significant differences of the current SA system in
Vietnam and the desirable FA. For example, Nguyen & Khairini (2016)’s study found a
number of incompatibilities between the current SA and the expected FA in Vietnam
including the forms and aims of SA (mostly using multiple choice test items at the end of
the course trying to check the students’ ability to recall the learnt knowledge and
subsequently ‘award’ them with a grade supposedly reflecting their learning gains) which
fail to accommodate that of FA. Future research exploring the adaptation of FA in
Vietnam would be of greater and more practical help in the higher education context of
Vietnam.

4.2. Decentralizing the roles of MOET in student assessment and developing more detail
assessment guidelines and regulations

As previously mentioned, one main barrier to the effective implementation of FA

in Vietnamese higher education is the centralization of roles of the MOET in determining
the general procedure of student assessment, which still somewhat puts emphasis on the
summative evaluation of students’ performance in forms of grades. For example, the
Resolution 43 on fulltime higher education in the credit-based learning system by the

10
MOET (2007b) determines that the students’ GPA (grade point average) in a course is
calculated by their attendance (weight: 10%), mid-term test (weight: 30%) and a final test
(weight: 60%). It can easily be seen that summative assessment still weighs exceedingly
more than other types of formative evaluation, and all fulltime programs in Vietnamese
higher education system must comply with the above formula to calculate the GPA of
their students. As such, it is essential that higher education institutions in Vietnam be
assigned more independency and autonomy (not only in terms of finance as they have
now but also) regarding testing and assessment of students’ learning (Luong, 2015). As
Luong suggested, the MOET could issue legal frameworks which define the level of
autonomy in terms of student assessment universities and colleges may have and
supervise their implementation and practices of such assessment. Alternatively, it is vital
that the guidelines and regulations concerning student assessment practices and FA be
made detail and specific enough including sufficient and clear exemplars to the extent to
which teachers find it possible to apply to their teaching context.

4.3. Improving teachers’ FA knowledge and skills

In response to the challenge of lacking teachers’ assessment capability presented

in the previous section, it is recommended that teachers be offered opportunities to
become more assessment capable by pursuing advanced degrees (master’s and
doctorates) from leading research universities where they would be well-equipped with
essential knowledge and skills in implementing students assessment and FA (Stephen, et
al, 2006). Luong (2015) also proposed organizing short training courses and workshops
on student assessment practices, including new theoretical developments and current
research in the area to enhance teachers’ knowledge and skills regarding FA. The
research participants in her study further suggested that encouraging teachers to conduct
research on student assessment practices would help promote teachers’ professional
learning from which they would have opportunities to improve their assessment practices
to help students achieve the desired learning outcome. Black (2015) also highlighted the
need for teachers to increase their knowledge and skills regarding FA by participating in

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continuous professional development programs through which they would also have a
chance join in a supportive assessment community (cited in Nguyen & Khairini, 2016, p.
182).

4.4. Reducing teachers’ work load

As discussed earlier, one of the obstacles to the effective implementation of FA in

Vietnam universities and colleges is that teachers suffer work load resulting in their
unwillingness to involve in extra assessment tasks required by FA. It is therefore of help
if the work load is reduced to the extent which allows Vietnamese teachers to have
enough time to provide students with timely feedback and to reflect on their teaching
which subsequently enables them to improve their teaching (Nguyen, 2013). Nguyen also
further suggested reducing teachers’ work load by assigning students to become teaching
assistant who would help them with providing feedback. This system of teaching
assistantship may be far from familiar in Vietnam, and should also be taken into careful
consideration before being launched. In a similar vein, Stephen et al (2006) proposed a
number of simple feedback provision techniques such as “allow students to cross-grade
their assignments in class, and/or have students grade their own assignments by
comparing against the answer keys that are posted publicly on certain dates either on a
bulletin board or the Internet” (p.24) in an effort to make FA less a burden on the teachers
and promote learner autonomy and independent life-long learning – one of strategic goals
of FA.

5. Conclusion

The review of existing literature on the application of FA to Vietnamese tertiary

context has by far indicated a number of modest yet promising achievements of
Vietnamese universities and colleges in promoting teaching and learning following the
use of FA whilst presenting ample challenges higher education in Vietnam face regarding
the effective implementation of FA. Following the analysis of both the gains and
obstacles, the review has revealed significant implications for Vietnam to enhance the

12
effectiveness of undertaking student assessment at tertiary level considering the socio-
cultural teaching and learning factors as well as the characteristics of classroom
assessment of Vietnamese higher education system as a whole. The review has also
pointed to several essential gaps in the body of literature of the area of assessment in
education and especially FA in the Vietnamese higher education context for future
research to explore.

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