Teaching methods for civic and moral education in Vietnam: Implications for pre-service teacher education and competence-based pedagogy

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Civic and Moral Education (CME) is important in developing students’ moral judgement, civic responsibility, legal awareness, critical thinking, and the ability to participate in society responsibly. In Vietnam, CME is mainly embodied in the school subject of Giáo dục công dân, which is located at the intersection of moral education, citizenship education, legal education, values education and social responsibility. The competence-based General Education Curriculum of Vietnam has brought new pedagogical expectations to this subject. Instead of mainly focusing on the transmission of moral principles and legal knowledge, CME is increasingly expected to engage students in reasoning, dialogue, reflection, problem-solving and the application of civic-moral knowledge to everyday situations. This narrative literature review synthesises Vietnamese and international scholarship on pedagogical approaches relevant to CME, with particular focus on their implications for pre-service teacher education. Five main pedagogical directions are discussed: discussion-based and critical thinking-oriented learning; case-based and problem-based learning; experiential and service learning; reflective pedagogy and professional ethics education; digital pedagogy for civic participation. The literature reviewed indicates that these approaches may provide students with valuable opportunities to analyse civic-moral dilemmas, take different perspectives, link knowledge with lived experience, and take responsible action in both physical and digital communities. However, their realisation is highly dependent on the pedagogical design, dialogic facilitation, ethical judgement, reflective practice and assessment competence of teachers. In Vietnam, there is a persistent gap between competence-based curriculum expectations and teacher preparation to implement participatory and practice-oriented pedagogy. Hence, this review suggests an integrated framework for pre-service CME teacher education that links civic-moral content knowledge, pedagogical design, dialogic facilitation, experiential practice, ethical reflection, digital responsibility, and competence-based assessment. The review concludes that it is important to strengthen teacher preparation to translate curriculum reform into meaningful civic-moral learning while being sensitive to Vietnam’s cultural, institutional, and educational context.