Five Vietnamese schools selected to participate in the Australia–ASEAN BRIDGE School Partnerships Project in 2016
This year, Vietnam will join the Australia-ASEAN BRIDGE School Partnerships Project (BRIDGE) for the first time. This is a teacher exchange program that started in 2008, and has so far established 243 BRIDGE partnerships, involving 486 schools and over 745 teachers across Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, South Korea and Thailand.
The program has been so successful that the Australian Government is now progressively rolling out the program across all ASEAN countries, starting with Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia in 2016.
BRIDGE stands for Building Relationships through Intercultural Dialogue and Growing Engagement. It is a blended model of face-to-face professional learning and online engagement that connects teachers, students and school communities in Australia and South-East Asia to increase awareness of contemporary Australia and Asia. The program aims to establish personal relationships between schools and help teachers develop deeper intercultural understanding, extend their language proficiency, gain new pedagogical and ICT skills to create quality learning experiences and outcomes for students, and to lead whole school change.
Five primary and secondary teachers from 5 Vietnamese schools and 5 Australian schools will participate in 2016. The teachers this year are from Đoàn Thị Điểm Primary School, Phan Chu Trinh Junior Secondary School and Thang Long Junior Secondary School in Hanoi and Lê Ngọc Hân Primary School and Lê Quí Đôn Junior Secondary School in HCMC.
The teachers will take part in a 12 day professional learning program in Australia from 28 May to 8 June. They will participate in classroom observation, team teaching, staff meetings, curriculum team meetings, parental engagement, school excursions and incursions with the Australian partner school. The teachers and their schools will then host teachers from their Australian partner school for 10-days in October 2016 and join the project’s online learning community.
The selected teachers have strong English language skills, sound computer skills and an interest in furthering the use of ICT in their classroom practice. The schools are selected because they have both a strong interest and suitable ICT capabilities to further the use of ICT in the school curriculum and join the project’s online learning communities across participating schools in other countries.
Under the MOU between the Vietnamese Ministry of Education and Training and the Asia Education Foundation (AEF) within the University of Melbourne, which is delivering this program on behalf of the Australian Government, at least 13 teachers from 13 Vietnamese schools in total will be selected to join the program for the 2016-2018 period.
An official launch of the Australia-ASEAN BRIDGE School Partnerships Project (BRIDGE) in 2016 will be held in Canberra, Australia on 30 May.
For further information, please contact Ms Vu Binh Chau, Senior Communications Officer at [email protected] or mobile: 0166 561 0149.