What were the Action Research project goals?
The MTBBE Action Research project aimed to find answers to two key educational challenges: 1) how to cope with the large number of ethnic languages; and 2) how to provide education for all children in Viet Nam so they learn and develop to their full potential.
The first objective was to implement a valid and feasible design of bilingual education in ethnic minority languages and Vietnamese in pre-school and primary schools. The second objective was to contribute to the development of policies and practices that will promote the use and development of ethnic minority languages and thus improve access and equity in education and other social services.
Which agencies or organizations supported the project?
The Ministry of Education and Training( MOET), with support from UNICEF in Viet Nam, was responsible for implementing the MTBBE Action Research project.
The Project Steering Committee was co-chaired by the Vice Minister of Education and Training, who is in charge of Primary Education, and the UNICEF Deputy Representative. Other members of the Project Steering Committee came from related government departments such as the Early Childhood Education Department( ECED), Primary Education Department( PED) and Ethnic Minority Education Department( EME) and from institutions such as the Viet Nam Institute of Education and Science( VIES) and the Reseach Center for Ethnic Minority Education( RCEME). 12
An Advisory Group was composed of representatives from the government plus senior staff from UNICEF, UNESCO and World Bank.
MTB MLE RESOURCE KIT Including the Excluded: Promoting Multilingual Education
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UN leaders in Viet Nam, in particular the UNICEF Representative and the UN Resident Coordinator, plus donor communities such as the World Bank, European Union and Norwegian government, played critical roles in promoting South-South cooperation to support MTBBE at high-level advocacy events in Viet Nam and elsewhere.
At provincial and local levels, Provincial Department of Education and Training Research Management Teams and District Boards of Education and Training Action Research Management Boards, as representatives for the MOET, were responsible for implementation. These departments ensured that education managers, school principals and teacher associations in each province and district were involved in implementing the project in their areas of responsibility.
During the implementation phase, the Viet Nam Linguistic Institute provided technical support and SIL International provided support for training master teachers, MTBBE project planning, the Classroom Language Mapping project, 13 and MTBBE awareness-raising for education managers and legal officers.
12 See: http:// unicefvietnam. blogspot. com / 2015 / 09 / exchanging-best-practices-of-child. html; http:// www. unicef. org / vietnam / media _ 23380. html
13 See http:// www. unicef. org / vietnam / Lao _ Cai _ mapping _ profile _ set. pdf