Integrating Sustainability into Curriculum in Vietnamese Schools: Challenges from Teachers’ Perspectives

Sustainable development is a global goal that calls on all countries to participate in the process of ending poverty, protecting the environment, and ensuring peace and prosperity for everyone. This is also the call of the United Nations (UN) to Vietnam and UN members in general. In the Vietnamese context, sustainable development goals can be described as ensuring quality education, openness, and equity; and improve lifelong learning opportunities for everyone, at all levels of education in Vietnam. However, integrating sustainability into the curriculum has been a challenge for teachers and educators in schools. This study employed a mixed methods approach to examine teachers’ perspectives of sustainability in education and the challenges they may encounter when integrating sustainability into the existing curriculum in Vietnamese schools. Data were collected through survey and semi-structured interviews with in-service teachers at different school levels in Vietnam. The findings can contribute teachers’ voices in terms of their understandings of sustainability in education and the difficulties in practice. Thus, pedagogical implications can be suggested to boost the process of education for sustainability in Vietnam.