Investigating the integration of everyday phenomena and practical work in physics teaching in Vietnamese high schools

Making science relevant in students’ learning is an important aspect of science education. This involves the ability to draw in examples from daily contexts to begin with the learning or to apply concepts learnt into familiar everyday phenomena that students observe and experience around them. Another important aspect of science education is the integration of practical work in students’ learning. Both these aspects of learning actively engage students in their own construction of understanding and are particularly relevant in physics education where many of the concepts are abstract and are generally found to be difficult. This paper investigates the extent to which physics teachers in Vietnam integrate practical work and context-based approaches into their teaching, and explores the how, what, and why they do it. The findings indicate that the Vietnamese teachers value the benefits of both practical work and contextual approaches to teaching and learning physics, but the environment that they are in does not provide sufficient opportunities to implement these methods of teaching.