Videos by Thanh Phùng
Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles by Thanh Phùng
Research in Comparative and International Education, 2020
Departing from the dominant trend of favoring flexibility, flattened relations, and deterritorial... more Departing from the dominant trend of favoring flexibility, flattened relations, and deterritorialization in featuring the transnational, this autoethnographic inquiry theorizes and exemplifies how the gravity of place may give rise to the evolvement of scholarship in the context of transnational mobility. I examine my own career trajectory to demonstrate how groundedness results from the dynamics between displacement and emplacement. While recounting my experience of moving back and forth between Western universities and my home institution in Vietnam, I explore issues such as the nation building framework for transnational mobility, scholarly self-formation, and community cultivation. The study centers a mode of emplacement termed 'existential commitment'. It calls attention to the cultivation of a small, immediate scholarly community as a form of scholarship in the global periphery. The emphasis is on how the transnational can be grounded in local academic practices that address the world at multiple layers and scales.
Keywords: Grounded transnationality, place, existential commitment, returnee, scholarship
Phung, T (2020) Grounding the transnational: A Vietnamese scholar’s auto-ethnography. Research in Comparative and International Education 15(3), 217–233.
VNU Journal of Foreign Studies, 2018
This project studies how the American sitcom Fresh Off the Boat performs the model minority disco... more This project studies how the American sitcom Fresh Off the Boat performs the model minority discourse. The performance, in line with the Foucauldian tradition of discourse analysis, is understood based on the networks of events and meanings that have rendered the model minority stereotype intelligible. The study informs that the model minority stereotype entered the discourse on Asian Americans through mainstream media's rationalization of Asian Americans' economic success in 1960s, marking a significant change in social perceptions of Asian Americans. It demonstrates that the discursive status of the stereotype has been conditioned by three power networks namely the black-white paradigm, the Asian American family, and the stereotype-based humor in American sitcoms. Fresh Off the Boat, the authors argue, participates effectively in shaping contemporary model minority discourse as it employs the three power networks in an approach more realistic and humane than mere oversimplification of Asian American experience.
Trương, H. M. & Phùng, T. H. (2018). 'Fresh off the Boat' and the model minority stereotype: A Foucauldian discourse analysis. VNU Journal of Foreign Studies, 34(5), 85-102.
Sisyphus--Journal of Education, 2015
We are interested in contrasts between ‘art for art’s sake’ and instrumental justifications for a... more We are interested in contrasts between ‘art for art’s sake’ and instrumental justifications for art in education. Surprisingly, it seems that current mainstream discourses of arts education tend to inflect the term ‘art for art’s sake’ with instrumental qualities. This paper examines the scene of Discipline-Based Arts Education (DBAE) in contemporary United States and critiques the instrumental setup of ‘art for art’s sake’ endorsed by DBAE. It also suggests an alternative framework to think about ‘art for art’s sake’ in the education of art from Rancière’s political and aesthetic theory.
Phùng, T.H. & Fendler, L. (2015). A critique of knowledge-based arts education: Ars Gratia Artis through Rancière's aesthetics. Sisyphus--Journal of Education, 3(1), 172-191.
Teaching by Thanh Phùng
This course sets out to create an environment for participants to engage in examining the histori... more This course sets out to create an environment for participants to engage in examining the historical conditions in which they find themselves. Hopefully, through the exercise, they will have clues to navigate networks of meaning and sense with a view to innovating themselves and growing humane relations. The historical conditions of interest go under the name “globalization.” With globalization, time and space have been reconfigured. The course reflects upon what constitutes globalization and how globalization has been an integral part of contemporary societies. Primarily, it tackles the establishment of social hierarchies and the abstraction of life into the numerical in globalization. At the same time, it attempts to bring about opportunities to see the weight of human labor and suffering as well as the possibility of equality.
More specifically, the participants are encouraged to develop critical understanding of the following key concepts and phenomena: nation-state, civilization, progress, imperialism, colonialism, nationalism, capitalism, consumerism, communication, media, neoliberalism, market relations, knowledge economy, and the financialization of economy. The course practices will mobilize a range of intellectual and media skills, including historicizing, conceptualizing, translation, poetry, storytelling, oral presentation, audio and video podcast production. They also aim to cultivate willingness to deal with difficulty, generosity, empathy, vigilance, and appreciativeness.
This workshop offers novice researchers in Vietnam opportunities to get familiar with approaches ... more This workshop offers novice researchers in Vietnam opportunities to get familiar with approaches to research in cultural and political studies as well as to collaborate in conducting their projects of interest. It aims to bring about an intellectually stimulating environment that illuminates problems, generates ideas, and nurtures persistence in pursuing research adventures. Differing from courses that focus on technical procedures of social research, this course examines research approaches in their historical developments and sheds light on their underlying assumptions. It fosters critical awareness of how a researcher constructs themself and participates in (re)distributing the sensible.
Theories are not vehicles that move people into ivory towers isolated from the greenness of life ... more Theories are not vehicles that move people into ivory towers isolated from the greenness of life but discursive-material practices that make up the very worlds we inhabit. In this workshop, you will reexamine the meanings and impacts of popular social imaginations, encounter different schools of theory about politics, economy, and culture, illuminate international and global phenomena from various perspectives, question your sensibility, develop research and teaching capacities, make friends, etc.
Phùng, T. H. (2006). Writing to express love. Teacher Edition, 20, 56.
Conference Presentations by Thanh Phùng
In this globalized world, travel, the act of going from one place to another, has never been more... more In this globalized world, travel, the act of going from one place to another, has never been more popular. Historically, travel has been linked to imperialism and colonial education projects. At the same time, it has long been lauded as a cure for prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness. As a place attracts travelers, the act of travel participates in constructing the place. Informed by the non-representational turn, this arts based research inquires into how travel constitutes spaces and how the spaces can become pedagogical. It focuses on exploring the different pedagogical relations travelers may develop with the new places they visit. The inquiry consists of four short films that study four spaces unfamiliar to the researchers and one reflective essay that addresses the research problem by means of words. This multimodal work results from the collaboration between two researchers who are based in Vietnam and the U.S. The four spaces are located in three countries, Vietnam, the U.S., and Mexico.
Ngô, T., Phùng, T., & Nguyen, H. (2016, April). Travel and the pedagogical constructions of space. Presentation at the Annual Focal Meeting of the World Education Research Association (WERA). Washington D.C., USA.
As the term ‘creativity’ circulates in the US, it usually bears a psychological sense. This can b... more As the term ‘creativity’ circulates in the US, it usually bears a psychological sense. This can be seen as an example of psychologism, the discursive practice of using psychological language and explanations to make sense of experience, a pervasive social phenomenon in the US. Academic psychologists do not control the current psychological discourses of creativity through sovereign power, but they have offered the most articulate accounts of what creativity means for education. Through assorted channels, including scholarly publications, university programs, public media, etc., these articulations have been made available to speakers, forming conditions for subjectivities. To shed light on these historical conditions, this essay attempts to write a genealogy of the educational psychology of creativity. While psychology has been established as an internationally recognized science, the discipline’s operation has varied according to particular social and cultural circumstances. This paper only explores the US educational psychology of creativity, a dominant discursive constellation, supposed that the constellation has also related to forces outside the US. Based on the existing histories of modern psychology and creativity and the literature on creativity produced by US academic educational psychologists since the 1950s, this paper tells a story of how educational psychology has (re)invented ‘creativity’.
The plot goes as follows: Before ‘creativity’ became the subject of modern psychology, it was widely conceived in terms of divine inspiration or individual genius-- neither source susceptible to deliberate external intervention. Since the later part of the twentieth century, US psychology has inaugurated the disenchantment of creativity, converting it into an object of scientific study. The locus of creativity is placed on human agency rather than God or chance. Creativity has transformed into a common trait lying in everybody with various degrees, an aspect of calculable individuals and manageable social relations. In reinventing ‘creativity’, psychologists have striven to affirm its independence from ‘intelligence’, a generous move to broaden and diversify psychology and education. While it is possible to see educational psychology’s push for creativity as advocacy of egalitarianism, without doubt, the project upholds instrumentality and inequality. Recently cognitive psychologists have turned creativity from extraordinary thinking into ordinary thinking, but the notion of ‘creativity’ as ‘out-of-the-box’ thinking remains influential. The educational psychology of creativity has played a significant role in making the teaching of/for creativity a sensible idea and practice.
Treating psychology, education, and creativity as discourses, I am interested in exploring the points at which they interact and hang on together. This paper engages with psychological theories of creativity that are also educational theories. I write the story with an explicit aim to highlighting how psychology, education, and creativity are configured on instrumentality and inequality as well as how the configuration normalizes people. The story generally follows a chronological order; however, it might be worth noticing that the events are not strictly arranged in a linear chronology of when they occurred, sectional plot summaries are inserted, and all the theories of creativity made present in the story are still in currency in different spatial contexts. The portrayed transformations are not objective and comprehensive representations of facts but rhetorical constructions grounded in the examined artifacts and aimed at outlining possibilities of subjectivity.
Phùng, T., Ngô, T., & Nguyen, H. (2016, April). Educational psychology and the invention of creativity. Presentation at the Annual Conference of the American Education Research Association (AERA). Washington D.C., USA.
This critical, provocative project investigates how travel photography, including both still phot... more This critical, provocative project investigates how travel photography, including both still photography and moving image, can contribute to scholarly research in comparative education. I argue that nonrepresentational modes of engagement with travel photography are comparative and educational in ways that are not possible when we see photography in representational modes. Unrepresentative logic allows travel photography to generate possibilities to compare ‘apples’ and ‘oranges’ and see the equality between things.
Phùng, T. (2016). Unrepresentative travel photography: In search of new theoretical and practical possibilities for comparison and comparative education. Presentation at 60th Annual Conference of the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES). Vancouver, BC, Canada.
PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) has generated much discussion on education ar... more PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) has generated much discussion on education around the world. Vietnam’s recent participation in PISA has brought about criticisms of the program as well as the education system in Vietnam. To contribute to the debate on PISA in Vietnam, this conceptual paper presents three ways of reading PISA, esp. Vietnam’s performance in PISA 2012. All the three approaches have been enacted in the reality of our experience, but they vary in their visibility in social media and public scholarship in Vietnam. “Ideological reasoning,” an approach that fits the range of information generated by PISA into preconceived notions and judgements of the education system in Vietnam, is perhaps the most popular. This approach disregards PISA’s distinctive features, argues for the existence of an education crisis in Vietnam, and advances capitalistic values as solution to the crisis. “Critical exposition” attempts to reveal OECD’s political agenda in creating and administering PISA. It assumes the oppressive nature of PISA in imposing a neoliberal vision of education. The third approach, “creative response,” attends to how PISA can “redistribute the sensible,” a term borrowed from the French philosopher Jacques Rancière. Calling attention to the third way of reading PISA, I argue that, in contrast to negative criticisms of PISA, in the context of contemporary education in Vietnam, PISA is an innovative program of assessment that has the potential to challenge how we have thought about education and Vietnam. PISA disturbs the existing hierarchy of education systems and introduces educational pluralism.
Phùng, T (2015, July). Three approaches to reading PISA in the context of Vietnam. Presentation at the 6th Engaging with Vietnam Conference. Hà Nội, Việt Nam.
In this inquiry, a museum-based intervention for students in an arts-integration course in a teac... more In this inquiry, a museum-based intervention for students in an arts-integration course in a teacher preparation program was examined from a discursive perspective. The students’ reflective writings and the intervention's educational designs were considered discourses, which were analyzed to render conceptions of education, teaching, and museum as an alternative educational site explicit and susceptible to critique. The analysis found a dominant model of envisioning education and complete alignment between the educational designs and the students’ reflective writings. This study sheds light on the impact of an intervention in terms of framing what education means and hence questions the scope of possible meanings for success.
Phùng, T., Blair, D., Starr, J. & Van-Horn, S. (2015, April). Pre-service teachers’ reflective discourses on museum experience: an examination of the limits of educational thought and the impact of educational designs. Presentation at the Annual Conference of the American Education Research Association (AERA). Chicago, IL, USA.
This paper investigates the Vietnamese discourses that attempt to criticize Vietnam’s education s... more This paper investigates the Vietnamese discourses that attempt to criticize Vietnam’s education system based on international comparisons. More specifically, we study the articles that respond to Vietnam’s position in international rankings as they have been circulating on the internet for the last five years (2010-2014) due to the discursive practices of popular bloggers, popular e-newspapers, and ordinary social media users. These discourses are analyzed from the theoretical perspectives of Foucault and Rancière. We assume that language constructs who people are and how they relate to others. Accordingly, we attend to the argumentation of the discourses and render the limits of thought and power relations they inscribe explicit and susceptible to critique. Our analysis finds one single model of thought. The discourses all aim to construct a national educational crisis and advance capitalistic values as a solution. Inadequate educational approaches that limit practicality, freedom, and creativity are consistently attributed to the Vietnamese education system. These weaknesses are emphasized even in response to Vietnam’s impressive achievements in international educational assessments such as International Mathematical Olympiads (IMO) and the most recent OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). The insistence on the inferiority of Vietnamese education system does not passively reflect an objective, undeniable truth. While the discourses claim to help Vietnam escape inferiority, they actually produce inferiority and perpetuate inequality.
Phùng, T., Nguyen, H. (2014, November). Contemporary comparative criticisms around Vietnamese education: the perpetuation of inequality. Presentation at the 6th Engaging with Vietnam Conference. Eugene, OR, USA.
In the backdrop of an unprecedented enthusiasm for creativity in education for the 21st century, ... more In the backdrop of an unprecedented enthusiasm for creativity in education for the 21st century, this conceptual inquiry attempts to describe an ethical approach to teaching for creativity based on the educational thoughts of Hannah Arendt, Jacques Rancière and Lynn Fendler. My advancement of such a curricular perspective is meant to critique predominant conceptualizations of teaching, ethics and creativity as well as to explore alternatives for thinking about the issues.
Phùng, T. (2014, April). Exploring Arendt’s, Rancière’s, and Fendler’s educational philosophies: Imagining an ethical approach to teaching for creativity. Presentation at Annual Conference of the American Education Research Association (AERA). Philadelphia, PA, USA.
The presentation delineates a framework of critical thinking education in TESOL and its initial a... more The presentation delineates a framework of critical thinking education in TESOL and its initial application in Vietnam. The framework is developed in response to the need for a conceptual solution to address the complexity of critical thinking. It reconceptualizes critical thinking as a six-dimensional construct that is psychological, logical, linguistic, social, methodological, and educational. The educational aspect is discussed in detail with the specification of a working conception of critical thinking, an interactive instruction model, and a trio assessment scheme. Based on the framework, an across-the-curriculum critical thinking course for undergraduates has been established at University of Languages and International Studies (Vietnam National University, Hanoi) for three years with encouraging results.
Phùng, T. H. & Nguyen, H. T. (2010, February). Framing critical thinking education in TESOL. Presentation at the 6th CamTESOL Conference on English Language Teaching. Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
The workshop introduces a new conceptualization of critical thinking that addresses the construct... more The workshop introduces a new conceptualization of critical thinking that addresses the construct squarely in its four aspects: psychological, logical, social and educational. It then focuses on describing an across-the-curriculum critical thinking course for undergraduate students established at English Department, University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi. As an attempt to make English language education rise beyond communicative competence building to personal and social development, the course views students’ development of critical thinking as a means for their achievement of language competences as well as an end in its self. Course contents are organized based on the five sections: conceptual development, message analysis, bias detection, argument analysis, and problem solving. Students develop their critical thinking through doing independent and cooperative tasks. These tasks not only place them into specific and practical real-life situations that call for critical thinking but also aim at sharpening their awareness of large social phenomena of the modern world such as the far-reaching effects of technology, the culturalization of goods and services through image-making, and the human struggle for diversity and equity. During the workshop, participants are introduced to examples of innovative EFL activities in Vietnam and invited to rethink critical thinking and English language education. They will also participate in exercises to experience the different facets of critical thinking and exchange ideas on approaches to teaching critical thinking.
Phùng, T. H. (2009, June). The establishment of an across-the-curriculum critical thinking course for undergraduate students. Presentation at the International Conference MELTA 18th. Johor Bahru, Malaysia.
Journal Articles & Book Chapters by Thanh Phùng
University World News, 2020
https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20200828113510793
The COVID-19 pandemic conti... more https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20200828113510793
The COVID-19 pandemic continues to hit education very hard. As a new semester approaches, in many places the threat of the virus still looms large; classes have been switched to online or hybrid modes and travel restrictions or even bans have been imposed.
Traditional destinations for international education, particularly Western countries, are losing their international students. Many universities in those countries are struggling with enrolments and are at risk of closing down programmes and courses as a result.
Within just a few months, internationalisation of higher education and student mobility have been severely impacted. This situation has opened up opportunities and forced us to reflect and rethink global higher education and the internationalisation of higher education.
Vietnam, a middle-income developing country with a population of 97 million people, provides us with specific instances of how we can reimagine student mobility and the internationalised higher education landscape.
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Videos by Thanh Phùng
Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles by Thanh Phùng
Keywords: Grounded transnationality, place, existential commitment, returnee, scholarship
Phung, T (2020) Grounding the transnational: A Vietnamese scholar’s auto-ethnography. Research in Comparative and International Education 15(3), 217–233.
Trương, H. M. & Phùng, T. H. (2018). 'Fresh off the Boat' and the model minority stereotype: A Foucauldian discourse analysis. VNU Journal of Foreign Studies, 34(5), 85-102.
Phùng, T.H. & Fendler, L. (2015). A critique of knowledge-based arts education: Ars Gratia Artis through Rancière's aesthetics. Sisyphus--Journal of Education, 3(1), 172-191.
Teaching by Thanh Phùng
More specifically, the participants are encouraged to develop critical understanding of the following key concepts and phenomena: nation-state, civilization, progress, imperialism, colonialism, nationalism, capitalism, consumerism, communication, media, neoliberalism, market relations, knowledge economy, and the financialization of economy. The course practices will mobilize a range of intellectual and media skills, including historicizing, conceptualizing, translation, poetry, storytelling, oral presentation, audio and video podcast production. They also aim to cultivate willingness to deal with difficulty, generosity, empathy, vigilance, and appreciativeness.
Conference Presentations by Thanh Phùng
Ngô, T., Phùng, T., & Nguyen, H. (2016, April). Travel and the pedagogical constructions of space. Presentation at the Annual Focal Meeting of the World Education Research Association (WERA). Washington D.C., USA.
The plot goes as follows: Before ‘creativity’ became the subject of modern psychology, it was widely conceived in terms of divine inspiration or individual genius-- neither source susceptible to deliberate external intervention. Since the later part of the twentieth century, US psychology has inaugurated the disenchantment of creativity, converting it into an object of scientific study. The locus of creativity is placed on human agency rather than God or chance. Creativity has transformed into a common trait lying in everybody with various degrees, an aspect of calculable individuals and manageable social relations. In reinventing ‘creativity’, psychologists have striven to affirm its independence from ‘intelligence’, a generous move to broaden and diversify psychology and education. While it is possible to see educational psychology’s push for creativity as advocacy of egalitarianism, without doubt, the project upholds instrumentality and inequality. Recently cognitive psychologists have turned creativity from extraordinary thinking into ordinary thinking, but the notion of ‘creativity’ as ‘out-of-the-box’ thinking remains influential. The educational psychology of creativity has played a significant role in making the teaching of/for creativity a sensible idea and practice.
Treating psychology, education, and creativity as discourses, I am interested in exploring the points at which they interact and hang on together. This paper engages with psychological theories of creativity that are also educational theories. I write the story with an explicit aim to highlighting how psychology, education, and creativity are configured on instrumentality and inequality as well as how the configuration normalizes people. The story generally follows a chronological order; however, it might be worth noticing that the events are not strictly arranged in a linear chronology of when they occurred, sectional plot summaries are inserted, and all the theories of creativity made present in the story are still in currency in different spatial contexts. The portrayed transformations are not objective and comprehensive representations of facts but rhetorical constructions grounded in the examined artifacts and aimed at outlining possibilities of subjectivity.
Phùng, T., Ngô, T., & Nguyen, H. (2016, April). Educational psychology and the invention of creativity. Presentation at the Annual Conference of the American Education Research Association (AERA). Washington D.C., USA.
Phùng, T. (2016). Unrepresentative travel photography: In search of new theoretical and practical possibilities for comparison and comparative education. Presentation at 60th Annual Conference of the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES). Vancouver, BC, Canada.
Phùng, T (2015, July). Three approaches to reading PISA in the context of Vietnam. Presentation at the 6th Engaging with Vietnam Conference. Hà Nội, Việt Nam.
Phùng, T., Blair, D., Starr, J. & Van-Horn, S. (2015, April). Pre-service teachers’ reflective discourses on museum experience: an examination of the limits of educational thought and the impact of educational designs. Presentation at the Annual Conference of the American Education Research Association (AERA). Chicago, IL, USA.
Phùng, T., Nguyen, H. (2014, November). Contemporary comparative criticisms around Vietnamese education: the perpetuation of inequality. Presentation at the 6th Engaging with Vietnam Conference. Eugene, OR, USA.
Phùng, T. (2014, April). Exploring Arendt’s, Rancière’s, and Fendler’s educational philosophies: Imagining an ethical approach to teaching for creativity. Presentation at Annual Conference of the American Education Research Association (AERA). Philadelphia, PA, USA.
Phùng, T. H. & Nguyen, H. T. (2010, February). Framing critical thinking education in TESOL. Presentation at the 6th CamTESOL Conference on English Language Teaching. Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
Phùng, T. H. (2009, June). The establishment of an across-the-curriculum critical thinking course for undergraduate students. Presentation at the International Conference MELTA 18th. Johor Bahru, Malaysia.
Journal Articles & Book Chapters by Thanh Phùng
The COVID-19 pandemic continues to hit education very hard. As a new semester approaches, in many places the threat of the virus still looms large; classes have been switched to online or hybrid modes and travel restrictions or even bans have been imposed.
Traditional destinations for international education, particularly Western countries, are losing their international students. Many universities in those countries are struggling with enrolments and are at risk of closing down programmes and courses as a result.
Within just a few months, internationalisation of higher education and student mobility have been severely impacted. This situation has opened up opportunities and forced us to reflect and rethink global higher education and the internationalisation of higher education.
Vietnam, a middle-income developing country with a population of 97 million people, provides us with specific instances of how we can reimagine student mobility and the internationalised higher education landscape.
Keywords: Grounded transnationality, place, existential commitment, returnee, scholarship
Phung, T (2020) Grounding the transnational: A Vietnamese scholar’s auto-ethnography. Research in Comparative and International Education 15(3), 217–233.
Trương, H. M. & Phùng, T. H. (2018). 'Fresh off the Boat' and the model minority stereotype: A Foucauldian discourse analysis. VNU Journal of Foreign Studies, 34(5), 85-102.
Phùng, T.H. & Fendler, L. (2015). A critique of knowledge-based arts education: Ars Gratia Artis through Rancière's aesthetics. Sisyphus--Journal of Education, 3(1), 172-191.
More specifically, the participants are encouraged to develop critical understanding of the following key concepts and phenomena: nation-state, civilization, progress, imperialism, colonialism, nationalism, capitalism, consumerism, communication, media, neoliberalism, market relations, knowledge economy, and the financialization of economy. The course practices will mobilize a range of intellectual and media skills, including historicizing, conceptualizing, translation, poetry, storytelling, oral presentation, audio and video podcast production. They also aim to cultivate willingness to deal with difficulty, generosity, empathy, vigilance, and appreciativeness.
Ngô, T., Phùng, T., & Nguyen, H. (2016, April). Travel and the pedagogical constructions of space. Presentation at the Annual Focal Meeting of the World Education Research Association (WERA). Washington D.C., USA.
The plot goes as follows: Before ‘creativity’ became the subject of modern psychology, it was widely conceived in terms of divine inspiration or individual genius-- neither source susceptible to deliberate external intervention. Since the later part of the twentieth century, US psychology has inaugurated the disenchantment of creativity, converting it into an object of scientific study. The locus of creativity is placed on human agency rather than God or chance. Creativity has transformed into a common trait lying in everybody with various degrees, an aspect of calculable individuals and manageable social relations. In reinventing ‘creativity’, psychologists have striven to affirm its independence from ‘intelligence’, a generous move to broaden and diversify psychology and education. While it is possible to see educational psychology’s push for creativity as advocacy of egalitarianism, without doubt, the project upholds instrumentality and inequality. Recently cognitive psychologists have turned creativity from extraordinary thinking into ordinary thinking, but the notion of ‘creativity’ as ‘out-of-the-box’ thinking remains influential. The educational psychology of creativity has played a significant role in making the teaching of/for creativity a sensible idea and practice.
Treating psychology, education, and creativity as discourses, I am interested in exploring the points at which they interact and hang on together. This paper engages with psychological theories of creativity that are also educational theories. I write the story with an explicit aim to highlighting how psychology, education, and creativity are configured on instrumentality and inequality as well as how the configuration normalizes people. The story generally follows a chronological order; however, it might be worth noticing that the events are not strictly arranged in a linear chronology of when they occurred, sectional plot summaries are inserted, and all the theories of creativity made present in the story are still in currency in different spatial contexts. The portrayed transformations are not objective and comprehensive representations of facts but rhetorical constructions grounded in the examined artifacts and aimed at outlining possibilities of subjectivity.
Phùng, T., Ngô, T., & Nguyen, H. (2016, April). Educational psychology and the invention of creativity. Presentation at the Annual Conference of the American Education Research Association (AERA). Washington D.C., USA.
Phùng, T. (2016). Unrepresentative travel photography: In search of new theoretical and practical possibilities for comparison and comparative education. Presentation at 60th Annual Conference of the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES). Vancouver, BC, Canada.
Phùng, T (2015, July). Three approaches to reading PISA in the context of Vietnam. Presentation at the 6th Engaging with Vietnam Conference. Hà Nội, Việt Nam.
Phùng, T., Blair, D., Starr, J. & Van-Horn, S. (2015, April). Pre-service teachers’ reflective discourses on museum experience: an examination of the limits of educational thought and the impact of educational designs. Presentation at the Annual Conference of the American Education Research Association (AERA). Chicago, IL, USA.
Phùng, T., Nguyen, H. (2014, November). Contemporary comparative criticisms around Vietnamese education: the perpetuation of inequality. Presentation at the 6th Engaging with Vietnam Conference. Eugene, OR, USA.
Phùng, T. (2014, April). Exploring Arendt’s, Rancière’s, and Fendler’s educational philosophies: Imagining an ethical approach to teaching for creativity. Presentation at Annual Conference of the American Education Research Association (AERA). Philadelphia, PA, USA.
Phùng, T. H. & Nguyen, H. T. (2010, February). Framing critical thinking education in TESOL. Presentation at the 6th CamTESOL Conference on English Language Teaching. Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
Phùng, T. H. (2009, June). The establishment of an across-the-curriculum critical thinking course for undergraduate students. Presentation at the International Conference MELTA 18th. Johor Bahru, Malaysia.
The COVID-19 pandemic continues to hit education very hard. As a new semester approaches, in many places the threat of the virus still looms large; classes have been switched to online or hybrid modes and travel restrictions or even bans have been imposed.
Traditional destinations for international education, particularly Western countries, are losing their international students. Many universities in those countries are struggling with enrolments and are at risk of closing down programmes and courses as a result.
Within just a few months, internationalisation of higher education and student mobility have been severely impacted. This situation has opened up opportunities and forced us to reflect and rethink global higher education and the internationalisation of higher education.
Vietnam, a middle-income developing country with a population of 97 million people, provides us with specific instances of how we can reimagine student mobility and the internationalised higher education landscape.