VietTESOL International Convention 2026

Since the EU’s promotion of multilingualism in the 1990s, Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) has gained global momentum, and Vietnam has been no exception. Although Decision 1400/QĐ-TTg (2008) and its 2025 extension prioritise bilingual instruction and teacher training, classroom investigations reveal that instructional quality remains limited because teachers lack CLIL-specific methodology and struggle to meet learners’ widening linguistic and cultural diversity. Culturally Responsive Pedagogy (CRP) – a pedagogy that grounds instruction in students’ cultural experiences so that academic achievement is enhanced and critical consciousness can develop – offers an inclusive, asset-based response, yet its potential for Vietnamese CLIL classrooms has not been systematically examined.
This paper presents the findings from Stage 1 of a longitudinal project aimed at strengthening CRP within Vietnamese CLIL classrooms. The first stage was designed to generate an in-depth understanding of teachers’ conceptualisations and practices of CRP, using a qualitative design. We conducted 40 semi-structured interviews and classroom observations with 10 selected participants. The data reveal that while most teachers express positive attitudes toward culturally responsive teaching, there is a significant disconnect between belief and classroom practice. Teachers tend to equate CRP with celebrating cultural festivals or using local examples, with less emphasis on deep pedagogical shifts such as drawing on students’ rich cultural experience, or adapting assessment to different cultural backgrounds. In addition, while teachers acknowledged the benefits of leveraging students’ multilingual resources and recognized translanguaging’s role in advancing social justice, many expressed guilt over using languages other than English, particularly at schools where institutional policies emphasized monolingual instruction. Moreover, while translanguaging was widely employed, its use was often driven by convenience rather than strategic planning to support learning.