Integrating local educational content into experiential activities for students of ethnic boarding schools in Vietnam

Integrating local educational content into experiential activities for students at ethnic minority boarding schools has practical value in fostering students' love for their homeland and local traditions. However, Vietnamese teachers face several challenges and limitations in integrating local educational content into experiential activities for students to meet the requirements of the 2018 General Education Program in Vietnam. Therefore, the purpose of the research was to assess the level of integration and propose an effective model to enhance this process. The study utilized the evaluation scale for integrating local educational content into experiential activities for students to collect quantitative data from 946 participants (376 administrators and teachers, and 570 students) from 22 ethnic minority boarding schools in the Mekong Delta region of Vietnam. The results from the assessment of both administrators and teachers as well as students’ self-assessment reveal strong integration of objectives (M = 3.10, SD = 0.77) and principles (M = 3.21, SD = 0.82), moderate performance in topics (M = 2.70, SD = 0.76) and forms (M = 2.92, SD = 0.82), but significant challenges in methods (M = 2.13, SD = 0.73) and influencing factors (M = 2.40, SD = 0.80), reveal strong integration of objectives and principles, moderate performance in topics and forms, but significant challenges in methods and influencing factors, requiring improvements for effective local content integration. These findings indicate the necessity of applying a model that integrates local educational content into experiential activities for students at ethnic minority boarding schools. The study proposed a 5-step model for integrating local educational content into experiential activities for students in ethnic minority boarding schools in Vietnam. The model's flexibility and scalability enable its application to regions with similar educational and cultural environments, thereby expanding the national significance of incorporating local content into experiential learning.