Equitable, Quality Education for Ethnic Minority Students? A Case of “Positive Deviance” in Vietnam

Abstract

Vietnam has achieved near-universal access to compulsory schooling over the past two decades. However, inequalities between ethnic majority and minority students are stark at post-compulsory levels, where progression is selective based on academic criteria and ability to pay. In this article, we adopt a mixed-methods approach to examine quality and equity for ethnic minority students in upper secondary education. Across five provinces, we find that ethnic minority students attend "less effective" upper secondary schools than ethnic majority students. However, an in-depth case study of an ethnic minority boarding school in Lao Cai province provides an example of positive deviance. Guided by a targeted affirmative action policy, the provincial government invests a relatively high level of resources to provide fee-free, high-quality schooling for gifted ethnic minority students. We consider the extent to which such policies can redress socioeconomic inequalities in Vietnam, and wider lessons for creating more equitable education systems.

The power of positive deviance behaviours: From panic-gogy to effective pedagogy in online teaching

“…Zaidi et al (2012) used the PDA to identify high-performing medical school students' successful behaviours and disseminate them to ordinary students to improve their overall clinical performance. Iyer et al (2021) revealed that while most schools in Vietnam that enrolled low-income ethnic minority students made less progress compared with schools in wealthier provinces, one school was more effective than others. The positive deviance, in this case, was the school's free boarding policy for ethnic minority students, which liberated them from chores at home and the long commute to the school and encouraged them to place a high value on their learning.…”

“…The positive deviance approach (PDA) can be used to identify their successful behavioural patterns within the context of ERT. The purpose of using the PDA is to discover demonstrable behaviours that community members can use in difficult situations (Positive Deviance Initiative, 2010).This approach is found to be useful for identifying successful behaviours of medical school students (Zaidi et al, 2012) and students in rural schools in Vietnam (Iyer et al, 2021). By using the PDA, we hope to suggest actions and policies that faculty members and higher education institutions can take to solve unexpected problems in the future.…”