Making Agriculture Curricula Competence-Oriented While Inserting Issues on Gender and Climate Change at Vietnamese Universities

Many academic curricula suffer from a teacher­ centred focus on knowledge transfer and do not consider the societal needs for competences. This paper reflects on the transformation from theory­ centred towards competency-oriented curricula at three Vietnamese Agriculture Universities with support of a Netherlands-funded project. Experts guided the implementation, from analysis of labour market to evaluation of new courses. Based on students' evaluation and lecturers' experiences, both types of respondents reported that after having been exposed to a series of trainings and hands-on experience in and outside classrooms, they gained new sets of knowledge and skills. However, some issues emerged in the process. Among these are the lack of competence among lecturers to design curricula based on outcomes, particularly addressing competence of students' knowledge, skills and attitudes; lack of staff to develop and implement a competence-based curricula; non- aggregation of closely related courses in modules that avoid repetitions and provide time for training of skills and attitudes. There is a/so a need to train students for competency in performing more complex teaming outcomes, such as critical thinking. For this change to happen, lecturers need continuous training in didactics for active teaching, and universities need to provide means for participative learning.