**Academic Contributions to the UNESCO 2019 Forum on Education for Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship**

Editors

**Quan-Hoang Vuong Le Anh Vinh Tran Trung**

MDPI • Basel • Beijing • Wuhan • Barcelona • Belgrade • Manchester • Tokyo • Cluj • Tianjin

*Editors* Quan-Hoang Vuong Phenikaa University Vietnam

Tran Trung Committee for Ethnic Minority Affairs Vietnam

*Editorial Office* MDPI St. Alban-Anlage 66 4052 Basel, Switzerland Le Anh Vinh Ministry of Education and Training Vietnam

This is a reprint of articles from the Special Issue published online in the open access journal *Sustainability* (ISSN 2071-1050) (available at: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability/ special issues/UNESCO 2019).

For citation purposes, cite each article independently as indicated on the article page online and as indicated below:

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© 2021 by the authors. Articles in this book are Open Access and distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, which allows users to download, copy and build upon published articles, as long as the author and publisher are properly credited, which ensures maximum dissemination and a wider impact of our publications.

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### **Contents**



### **About the Editors**

**Quan-Hoang Vuong** (Ph.D.) has been the Founding Director of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Social Research at Phenikaa University in Hanoi, Vietnam since 2017, and has served as Senior Researcher at the Centre Emile Bernheim de Recherche Interdisciplinaire en Gestion (CEBRIG), Universite Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium since 2003. He has (co)authored over 150 journal articles, ´ book chapters, and books, including ones in the world's leading journals such as Nature, Nature Human Behaviour, Scientific Data, International Journal of Intercultural Relations, Studies in Higher Education, and Palgrave Communications, to name just a few. He is also the Lead Editor of the book The Vietnamese Social Sciences at a Fork in the Road, published by De Gruyter, Sciendo imprint in 2019.

**Le Anh Vinh** (Ph.D.) is Vice Director General of the Vietnam Institute of Educational Sciences (VNIES) and the Director of the National Center for Sustainable Development of General Education Quality. Vinh pursued his PhD in mathematics at Harvard University in 2010. Before joining VNIES, he held several positions at the University of Education, Vietnam National University, including Dean of the Faculty of Teacher Education, Director of the Center for Educational Research and Applications, and the Principal of the High School of Educational Sciences. Dr. Le has published more than 60 papers in international journals (both in mathematics and education) and is leading a research group at the Vietnam Institute of Educational Sciences in developing the Vietnam Educational Strategy Framework 2021–2030.

**Tran Trung** (Ph.D.) works at the Vietnam Academy for Ethnic Minorities. He is a member of the Vietnam chapter of the European Association of Science Editors (EASE), a leader of the Vietnamese Science Editors (VSE) Team, and a chairman of the Editor's Board of the Journal of Ethnic Minorities Research (ISSN: 0866-773X). Dr. Tran is also the Co-Editor of the book The Vietnamese Social Sciences at a Fork in the Road.

### **Preface to "Academic Contributions to the UNESCO 2019 Forum on Education for Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship"**

International initiatives on orientating education toward sustainable development can be traced back to a proposal by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 1995. According to this framework, UNESCO suggested reorienting environmental education and reshaping the educational process so as to build a more sustainable relationship between humans and the environment. Twenty-five years have passed, and much of this pursuit is still ongoing, with many unanswered challenges. In recognition of the importance of education and sustainable development, this book brings into focus some valuable insights from the perspective of a developing country, Vietnam. It is a collected volume of academic contributions to the UNESCO 2019 Forum on Education for Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship, organized on July 2–3, 2019, by UNESCO in conjunction with the Ministry of Education Training (MOET) of Vietnam.

The articles included in this book may differ in their substance but altogether provide deep reflections on concrete measures to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG4 on quality education. These studies have looked at international students, overseas Vietnamese students, domestic Vietnamese students, academics, and even young children in terms of subjects. The research scope covers the high school to higher education levels, shedding a new light on a diverse set of mental health problems, student loyalty, administrative management, academic publishing, reading habits and school performance, acculturation, and legal rights. Additionally, there is also a timely take on the early impacts of the new coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic on learning behaviors in terms of school closures. Given the uncertainty caused by COVID-19 worldwide, academics and policy makers may glean meaningful insights from how the temporary shutdowns of educational institutions in Vietnam have disrupted learning.

The book presents new findings as much as it inspires readers to think more creatively about the concepts of "sustainable development" and "sustainability." For instance, Lai, Pham, Nguyen, Nguyen, and Le suggest applying this concept to international students' movement between their home countries and their host countries. If such movement were sustainable, the host countries and universities could benefit significantly from a stable income source, ranking, and future human resources. In a different line of research that also focuses on international students, Nguyen, Serik, Vuong, and Ho point out how poor mental health problems could adversely hurt the sustainability of internationalization in higher education. The concept of sustainability can indeed be applied in other contexts, such as studentreading and learning habits and adaptation to socio-cultural settings, as Tran et al. and Su, He, and Hoang have explored, respectively. These approaches highlight that reshaping the whole educational process to meet the sustainability end goal requires an open mindset.

Besides addressing issues faced by students at different levels, the book also has a set of articles analyzing the management of higher education, the culture of international publishing, and the compatibility of the UN SDGs with the legal rights for education of ethnic minorities. In particular, Pham, Nghiem, Nguyen, Mai, and Tran reveal the impacts of rapid economic growth and the heightening pressures to produce quality human resources from mid-level academic managers in Vietnam. Meanwhile, Tran, Trinh, Le, Hoang, and Pham use a structured communication technique—the Delphi method—to identify the key determinants of success in international academic publishing. And lastly, Do, Hoang, Le, and Tran investigate the conditions and barriers to the education of ethnic minorities in Vietnam.

The world is facing numerous challenges, from hyper-connected digital life to the new post-pandemic economic reality. Sustainable education needs to address these challenges. We hope that all of the papers in this volume have provided practical insights as well as opened up room for further dialogues on education and sustainability for developing countries with limited resources.

**Quan-Hoang Vuong, Le Anh Vinh, Tran Trung**

*Editors*

*Article*

### **Toward Sustainable Learning during School Suspension: Socioeconomic, Occupational Aspirations, and Learning Behavior of Vietnamese Students during COVID-19**

**Trung Tran 1, Anh-Duc Hoang 2,\*, Yen-Chi Nguyen 2, Linh-Chi Nguyen 2, Ngoc-Thuy Ta 2, Quang-Hong Pham 3, Chung-Xuan Pham 4, Quynh-Anh Le 2, Viet-Hung Dinh <sup>5</sup> and Tien-Trung Nguyen <sup>6</sup>**


Received: 6 April 2020; Accepted: 19 May 2020; Published: 20 May 2020

**Abstract:** The overspread of the novel coronavirus—SARS-CoV-2—over the globe has caused significant damage to manufacturing and service businesses, regardless of whether they are commercial, public, or not-for-profit sectors. While both the short-term and long-term impacts of most companies can be approximately measured or estimated, it is challenging to address the enduring effects of COVID-19 on teaching and learning activities. The target of this research is to investigate students' manners of studying at home during the school suspension time as a result of COVID-19. Through analyzing original survey data from 420 K6–12 students in Hanoi, Vietnam, this work demonstrates the different learning habits of students with different socioeconomic statuses and occupational aspirations during the disease's outbreak. In particular, we featured the differences in students' learning behaviors between private schools and public schools, as well as between students who plan to follow STEM-related careers and those who intend to engage in social science-related careers. The empirical evidence of this study can be used for the consideration of the local government to increase the sustainability of coming policies and regulations to boost students' self-efficacy, as it will affect 1.4 million students in Hanoi, as well as the larger population of nearly 10 million Vietnamese students. These results can also be the foundation for future investigations on how to elevate students' learning habits toward Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4)—Quality Education—especially in fanciful situations in which the regular school operation has been disrupted, counting with limited observation and support from teachers and parents.

**Keywords:** sustainable education; learning habit; school closure; socioeconomic; occupational aspiration; COVID-19; SDG4; Vietnam; secondary school

#### **1. Introduction**

Developing digital competency for the younger generation is always a primary concern of most governments toward Quality Education (Sustainable Development Goal 4) [1]. Educational digital transformation is not a technological renovation, but also a transition between generations. In particular, millennial teachers are taking over baby-boomer teachers, and the new generation of students are "born digital." Especially in countries that consider technology absorption as a vital sustainable development strategy, educating digital citizens is an essential pillar of the national education strategy [2]. Therefore, standing on the perspective of SDG4, educators should emphasize digital self-efficacy rather than the regular concept of self-efficacy. At a micro-level, teachers' teaching habits and learners' learning habits play essential roles in the transformation processes of any educational institution [3]. Romero-Rodríguez et al. [4] underlined the necessity of learners' self-efficacy and self-regulation toward sustainable academic achievement, especially in e-learning contexts. Concerning students' self-efficacy as a grand puzzle for their sustainable learning trajectory, several studies have been taken to examine Vietnamese students' learning habits. Le et al. [2] measured the ICT competencies of Vietnamese students regarding cognitive and non-cognitive skills among various social strata and figured out that even in big cities like Hanoi or Danang, students' level of e-device usage is not high. Moreover, Vuong et al. [5] provided a mosaic of Vietnamese students' reading habits and triggered further studies on examining students' self-efficacy amidst different social and cultural facets. Overall, the importance of self-regulated skills, such as ICT, non-cognitive, and reading habits, need more attention from the government, school managers, teachers, and parents, especially in the urgent circumstances, such as the passive digital transformation due to COVID-19.

The success of students relies a lot on their prior knowledge, teacher and teaching quality, the possibility of accessing possibilities, socioeconomic status (SES), and their effort [6]. Students' learning habits are caused by and contribute to the students' intrinsic motivation [7]. However, students do not maintain the same learning habits during the summer, winter, and spring breaks as they do during school. Warner et al. [8] pointed out the significant changes in student learning and sleeping habits during holidays, in which the solid learning hours of school and homework are not maintained regularly. Notably, students' learning habits are partially distracted by the usage of social networks and entertainment activities at home [9] or suspended by traveling [10]. Notwithstanding, these kinds of degradation effects on learning habits are seasonal and predictable [8]. There is a limited number of studies regarding students' studying at home behavior during sudden school termination, in which the students are required to stay at home and have to adjust their living and learning habits [11,12]. Due to the pandemic, students also have to face potential mental issues, such as depression, fearfulness, worry, and stigmatization [7,8], which might also affect their learning habits. The longer that COVID-19 lasts, the higher quantity and level of issues and risks the educational system worldwide have to face.

During early January, 2020, the spreading of COVID-19 from Wuhan, China, alerted governments and societies worldwide [13]. Within a month, China locked down ten cities and closed all schools over the country [14], while neighboring countries had various perspectives and approaches toward the issue. Globally, nearly 300 million students were affected by school closure [15]. Countries such as Japan, Iran, Italy, and North Korea applied nationwide school shutdowns, while Vietnam, South Korea, Singapore, Thailand, France, Germany, and the United States adopted a localized school closure policy [16]. Regardless of the size of the pandemic and the debates on school closure policy, pedagogical transformation became a popular topic in most countries [17]. In a short time, various kinds of initiatives to support students and teachers have been released. For instance, top-tier universities, such as Harvard University [18] and Cambridge University [19], delivered guidelines and handbooks to support distance learning. Furthermore, various NGOs (Non-Government Organizations) and NPOs (Non-Profit Organization) provided support and instructions to enhance mental health [20–22]. Ed-tech companies and publishing houses also introduced entirely free or occasionally free accounts and materials from their portfolios and databases [23,24].

This study acknowledges the encouragement of conducting novel research to minimize and prevent the potential effects of SARS-CoV-2, the cause of COVID-19 [23]. Vietnam has managed the infection rate of SARS-CoV-2 despite its limited resources and crowded population [25]. During early February, the country witnessed a controversial topic of closing schools nationwide or not after one extension week of the lunar new year due to COVID-19. Instead of closing schools until 9 February, all schools in over 63 provinces extended the suspension to 16 February, while detailed regulation about online teaching and learning had not yet been released [26]. On 14 February, the Ministry of Health suggested that local departments of education should consider the possibilities of stopping school suspension based on each province's particular situation [27]. After that, on 9 March, several provinces announced one or two additional weeks of school suspension [28]. In Vietnam, the concept of learning is often referred to as learning at school. Regarding this chaotic situation, either the school and teacher or the student and parent were confused about what they should do to ensure students' health and learning quality at the same time. Constructing proper self-learning habits also means consolidating the foundation of life-long learning and individual personality development [29]. The concern of educational quality and students' mental health is not limited to these closure weeks but also extends to this academic year, as well as its effects on the following years [30]. Thus, this research enriches the prior studies on students' learning behaviors during the sudden suspension of school, with empirical evidence from a developing country: Vietnam [31]. Furthermore, the findings of this paper contribute to minimizing the long-term side effects of COVID-19, fostering sustainable education within and beyond school, as well as enhancing capabilities when reacting to similar chaotic situations in the future.

#### **2. Theoretical Background**

#### *2.1. Students' Learning Habits*

The notion of study habits has been attracting attention from educational researchers for its influence on academic performance for a long time. It is usually discussed with study skills and study attitude, as Crede and Kuncel [32] put all three concepts together into the SHSA (Study habits, skills, and attitudes) construct, or regarded as comprising study skills and attitude in its theory [33]. The definition of study habits in literature can be summarized as consisting of two main features: (i) carefully planned study behaviors, such as note-taking, reviewing learning material, reading, consulting teachers, and arranging a suitable learning space, and (ii) the engagement in study sessions using the mentioned study behaviors [34,35].

Most studies on this topic are devoted to exploring its influence on academic achievement. Most research suggests that learning habits have a positive interrelationship with learning performance [36,37], while some found no relationship [32,38,39]. Nonis and Hudson [40] argue that the nature of this relationship is complicated, and what is considered a good habit is different depending on the situation. The impacts of study habits on test anxiety are matters of concern, with a predominant result of a negative relationship between these two concepts [41]. Although its consequences are discussed quite a lot, few studies focus on factors that influence study habits, and gender difference is the most found factor [35,38].

Time spent studying is a critical component of study habits [34,40]. While time spent studying at school is controlled according to the school's schedule, studying at home is much more unsystematic and is affected by a lot of different factors. The findings on time spent studying at home can be found mostly on the topic of doing homework. However, the concept of doing homework does not cover the time that students spend studying with something other than what the teachers have given out. Wagner et al. [42] pointed out that learning at home includes many types of activities to elevate the overall academic performance, in which homework is just one type of learning, and is limited to the assigned tasks from teachers only. Especially when schools everywhere have to close due to the attack of COVID-19, students have to stay at home, adjust their study habits, and deal with technological challenges at the same time, so studying at home is not all about doing homework anymore. Lacking understanding of this phenomenon will lead to failures in educational policy and practices, which will cause enormous and long-lasting costs to society [43]. Nonetheless, studies exploring the concept of "working at home for school" are rare despite its importance, and there is no study that investigates the time spent studying during disruptive times, as mentioned before. The relationship between students' time spent on homework or studying at home and learning results are still being debated. While some scholars found a positive relationship indicating the more time students invest, the better the achievement [44], some found no correlation and argue that time spent on studying only matters when the quality of the study time is taken into consideration [45]. Factors that influence the time spent studying at home are gender differences [42,44], motivation [46], academic interest, school anxiety, and parental pressure [47]. The time spent studying at home is an even more critical matter in Vietnam, as Larson and Verma [48] found a gap in the time spent on schoolwork outside school between East Asian and U.S students, especially in adolescents, in which East Asian adolescents spend substantially more time on academic activity than U.S adolescents.

#### *2.2. Socioeconomic Status and Learning Habits*

Le et al. [31] stated the correlation between SES and students' reading habits and their influence on academic achievement. SES is incorporated by characterizing variables, such as student ages [49], parental education, parental occupational prestige, family income [50,51], and home resources [52,53]. Ensminger et al. [54] concluded that three indicators of SES—education, occupation, and income—are positively correlated.

Besides contributing to the overall SES, each of these components represents a substantially separated aspect of SES based on different empirical studies [55,56]. Blanden and Gregg [57] stated that family income and children's education were relevant and strengthened through time, and they also found that "income does have a causal impact on educational outcomes." In addition, parental education was one of the most critical SES elements, as it impacts students from childhood to adolescence and even further [58,59]. In individualistic societies, such as the USA and UK, parental education correlates with parent's income and [60–62] stated that the insights of particular social strata's prestige and culture could be reflected through parental occupation. Therefore, Hauser [51] considered parental occupation more important than parental education and income, regarding the weight of these variables toward the overall SES. Furthermore, home resources, such as books, computers, a study room, the availability of Internet [63,64], accessibility of extra educational services [65,66], and a positive home learning environment [67] are essential antecedents to students' success.

SES had significant indirect effects on the learning habits of children through parental involvement [68]. In general education [69] as well as special education [70], parental involvement strongly affects student learning activities and outcomes. McNeal [71] mentioned that parental involvement has more notable effects on behavioral issues than children's cognitive outcomes. The higher participation of parents in school activities was observed from families with higher SES [72]. Furthermore, they could provide their children with more exceptional support through discussions and involvements [71] or proper supporting resources and learning conditions [73]. According to a longitudinal research of 10 years by Carter [74], parental support enhances the academic performance of both primary, lower, and upper secondary students. Researchers noticed the compelling impact of family involvement over students' learning results [75]. Besides academic achievement, parental involvement also impacts other aspects, such as social and emotional factors. As a consequence, they create a wide range of issues and support at the same time [76]. For instance, on the one hand, a parent's over-expectation could lead to their control over the student's learning activities and outcomes [77,78]. On the other hand, their step-by-step help also encourages children to accomplish school assignments and improve students' attendance [79,80].

Last but not least, parental involvement also affects children's cognitive competences and learning motivation [81–83]. The more that parents valued their children's learning process and achievement, the stronger motivation and competence their children perceived [84]. Researchers proved that

because of their social prestige, parents might influence the child's behavior and attitude toward homework [85,86]. Researchers also found that even at home or in school, parental involvement was affiliated positively with the student's motivation [87]. In particular, the higher levels of education the parents have, the more stimulating the home environment they provide for their children to promote their cognitive development [88].

#### *2.3. Occupation Aspirations*

Occupational aspiration presents students' orientation and yearning toward their target career [89]. Adolescent vocational orientations are affected by many contributory factors, one of which comes from gender roles instead of gender. Dweck and Elliot [89] examined the relationship between occupational orientation and gender throughout two kinds of goal orientations (mastery and performance-approach). They found no association between gender and these kinds of orientation. Nevertheless, there are some studies measuring goal orientations, but the results were around gender-related issues. Anderman and Young [90] realized that boys preferred performance-approach goals more than girls, and girls favored more mastery goals than boys. Consistent with these researchers, Middleton and Midgley [91] fostered gender inclusiveness in each goal orientation by putting it in academic settings, and found that mastery-oriented girls displayed a more efficacious tendency in learning, such as high self-regulation learning and a higher engagement in studying than performance-oriented boys. Although these findings sounded reasonable, Hutchins [92] continued to support Dweck and Elliot [89], stating that the significant relationships between both femininity, masculinity, and performance-approach still exist. Furthermore, both Makarova et al. [93] and Vuong et al. [94] adopted this standpoint. They stated that STEM-related school subjects were believed to follow a male domain due to their preference for STEM-related jobs. Thus, regarding both learning and working purposes, classifying the appropriate behaviors and characteristics of subject or career for each gender is considered apparent, especially for students from collectivist cultures, who are more influenced by their parents.

Another additional factor in children's career aspirations is parents' involvement. Bejanyan et al. [95] stated that parents from collectivist backgrounds rarely forgot to put their passions into their children. That explains adolescents' loss of interest in learning because of parents' pressure to follow their wishes. Nevertheless, many are still satisfied with their parents' arrangement [96]. Garcia et al. [97] found the moderating effect of adolescent–parent relationships over learning outcomes and self-efficacy. Specifically, the higher the self-efficacy, the better the learning outcomes. Moreover, Sawitri and Creed [98] presumed that being compatible with parents' orientation might never be a dead-end road when their parents smooth their career aspirations by the frequent encouragement and unceasing concern. Simultaneously, when both adolescents and parents maintain sustainable compatibility, a crisis of confidence of these adolescents decreases during career-related tasks. However, all of these results have supported some good points from the congruence without validating its direct impact on learning habits at home.

#### **3. Research Approach**

#### *3.1. Research Questions*

The aspiration of this study was not to construct a new framework to measure students' learning habits, as well as learning effectiveness, which needs longitudinal observations. Regarding the urgent changes in the educational delivery method, this paper aimed to examine the differences in students' studying habits during school suspension time as a result of COVID-19 and its mediating factors. The following research problems were addressed:


3. How does the student's perception about self-learning and other factors influence students' learning habits during sudden school closure time?

#### *3.2. Sampling Method*

As Vietnam's political and cultural center, Hanoi has 1556 schools with more than 1.4 million Pre-K to 12 students, which is 17.5 percent of the city's total population [99]. During the sudden school suspension, it was impossible to provide proper observation and support to this considerable number of students. Thus, this study chose Hanoi as the site to examine the readiness and effectiveness of a typical major city of Vietnam, in which most students from all areas have proper access to the Internet.

We contacted several public and private schools to collect the data, but they were unable to manage the data collection and were unable to provide students' phone numbers. To secure the timely response to the issue, we spread the questionnaires through a network of lower secondary and upper secondary teachers and parents in various educational forums on Facebook. The snowball sampling approach was adopted from 7 February, 2020 to 28 February, 2020: the first two weeks of school closure due to COVID-19 in Vietnam. Parents and teachers were asked to validate their students' ability and willingness to participate in the survey before forwarding the survey to students. Students were required to read and confirm the consent form before moving to the detailed questions. The data collection protocol was observed and approved by the Institutional Review Board of EdLab Asia Educational Research and Development Center, approval No 200214. We tested the results of 50 early respondents by factor loadings before continuing the survey spread, in which a total of 460 responses were received. We excluded participants who had invalid answers (such as their year of birth was after 2009, which meant they were primary students; or learning hours were more than 20 h per day, which seemed to be the learning hours per week, but we had no evidence to convert it into learning hours per day). As a result, we analyzed a dataset of 420 valid observations.

#### *3.3. Research Design*

This research article aimed to have an overview of the learning habits of students during school suspension because of the COVID-19 pandemic and find relationships among SES, career orientation, and students' learning habits. In the questionnaire, students were asked questions related to three major categories: (i) students' demographics [50,51,54]; (ii) students' habits of study at home during COVID-19 [34,35]; and (iii) students' self-report on their academic competencies, necessities [71], and effectiveness during the pandemic. In addition, an additional question was added to examine how teachers elevated their lessons beyond regular academic content. Students were asked whether they learned extended knowledge of public health, sustainable environmental development, and sustainable social development during these distance classes or not.

The full dataset of 460 observations was cleaned and resulted in a dataset of 420 valid observations for data analysis. The new dataset was saved in the xlsx format for formal analysis in R and published in Mendeley's data repository for further interpretation [100]. The primary methods used were descriptive statistics, ANOVA analysis, and ordinary least squares (OLS) regression, which are explained in the next part.

The influences of SES and career orientation over learning habits were examined by linear regression—specifically, when we used the learning hours during COVID-19 (hr\_covid) as the dependent variable. The regression model (1) included gender, grade levels, and the number of siblings as independent variables. The regression model (2) examined the moderating effect of family income and school type, and model (3) highlighted the differences of students with different occupational aspirations, based on university entrance exam subject groups.

$$\text{Hr\\_covid} \sim \beta 0 + \beta 1 \text{ \*gender} + \beta 2 \text{ \*grade} + \beta 3 \text{ \*sb} + \text{u} \tag{1}$$

$$\text{Fr\\_covid} \sim \beta 0 + \beta 1 \text{ \*irecome} + \beta 2 \text{ \*schedol\\_type} + \text{u} \tag{2}$$

$$\text{Fr\\_covid} \sim \beta 0 + \beta 1 \text{ \*exam} + \text{u} \tag{3}$$

#### **4. Results**

The students' learning hours during COVID-19 based on demographics are presented in Table 1. On average, the surveyed students spent around 2.8 h (SD = 1.60) studying at home on a typical day, and about 3.7 h (SD = 2.64) studying on days of school closure due to the COVID-19 pandemic. These numbers were at a middle level when compared with the average time spent on homework per day in other Asian countries, such as Japan (2.2 h for junior high and 2.5 h for high school students), Korea (3 h for high schoolers), Taiwan (3.7 h for 11th graders), and India (4–5 h for high school students) [48]. However, in the future, there will likely be a higher number of learning hours, since the collected data was only from the first two weeks of school closure. After that, the Vietnam Ministry of Education and Training published Official dispatch 793/BGDĐT-GDTrH about enhancing teaching on the Internet and television during the time of preventing and fighting against COVID-19 [101]. As a result, compulsory study time for students, as well as their self-learning hours, increased.

Table 1 illustrates the demographic of respondents associated with learning hours during COVID-19 using a descriptive analysis. As can be seen, more than half of the surveyed students used less than 4 h to study. Regarding school type, 75% of international school students used less than 4 h for learning, 25% of them used more than 7 h to study, while the numbers in private school were 47.9% and 10.6%, respectively. Regarding self-evaluation about learning competency and English competency, it was clear that students who evaluated as "below average" or "average" would spend less time to study (more than 60% of them studied for less than 4 h) than those who thought they were "good" and "excellent."




**Table 1.** *Cont.*

Regarding the ANOVA analysis, the test of homogeneity (Appendix A) classified that six variables (gender; grade level; school type; mother's job; university entrance exam's subject group; and monthly income) had significance levels bigger than 0.05. Thus, these variables were eligible for an ANOVA analysis (Appendix B). On the other hand, the other three (father's job; self-evaluation on learning capability; self-evaluation on English capability) were adopted for the Robust Test of Equality of Means (Appendix C). The results reported that there were only four factors associated with the differences in students' learning habits: university entrance exam's subject group; self-evaluation on learning capability; and self-evaluation on English capability.

Figure 1 reported that students who maintained their learning because of their intrinsic motivation to ensure regular academic progress and to sustain their learning habit (they answered "agree" or "strongly agree" for the question) tended to learn for more extended hours (1.68 and 1.86 h on average). Meanwhile, students who studied because they were influenced by other people (extrinsic motivation) tended to learn for fewer hours. Those who were not affected by other people spent more time studying (on average from 1.77 to 1.83 h).

Figure 2 illustrates the factors that affected students' learning effectiveness based on their self-evaluation associated with their learning hours. According to the students' view, the effectiveness of self-learning, when achieved because of adequate support from family, a comfortable learning environment, sufficient learning resources, or communication with friends, would lead to fewer learning hours (on average from 1.88 to 1.98 h). Those were considered extrinsic factors, in contrast to three intrinsic factors: learning motivation, ability to set daily learning objectives, and concentration skill, which were associated with more learning hours (on average from 2.02 to 2.09 h).

**Figure 1.** Students' perception of the necessity of self-learning associated with learning hours during COVID-19.

**Figure 2.** Factors that support students' effective learning associated with learning hours during COVID-19.

To supplement the results of the ANOVA analysis, Table 2 reports significant differences in students' learning habits regarding their school types, grade levels, and occupational aspiration. In particular, students from private schools spent more time learning during COVID-19 than students from public schools. Older students tended to spend fewer hours learning online or learning with instruction.


**Table 2.** Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression of socioeconomic status and career orientation on learning hours.

\* Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level; \*\* correlation is significant at the 0.01 level; \*\*\* correlation is significant at the 0.001 level; (iii) school type is private school; (iii) income belongs to group from 860 to under 1290 USD; university entrance exam's subject groups: A1 (mathematics, physics, English), D (literature, foreign language, mathematics), Other (university entrance exam's subject group other than A, A1, B, C, D).

Figure 3 visualizes the additional know-how on several sustainable topics, which students were taught in the distance-learning lesson during COVID-19. The topics were related to knowledge about preventive health care, SARS-Cov-2, environmental sustainable development, societal sustainable development, and E-learning tools. It is clear that students learned a lot about preventive health care and SARS-CoV-2, with more than 70% of students responding "agree" and "strongly agree." The number for sustainable development knowledge was around 50%. Moreover, students did not seem to learn much about e-learning tools. Since these were the first weeks of the school closure, both schools and students had not found or become familiar with many online tools to facilitate their learning.

#### **5. Discussion**

Sustainable education is not a status quo, but an incremental process, in which the learner's self-efficacy always plays a crucial role [5]. As novel evidence about Vietnamese K6–12 students' learning at home habits during school closure due to COVID-19, the findings of this study can help to tackle the potential issues of such sudden situations in the future. Notably, this research found

significant differences in students' learning routines from different school types, grades, and career orientations. Furthermore, there were notable differences in learning habits among students with varying learning capabilities, motivation, and self-regulation.

Regarding the first research question, the regression results stated that students in private schools spent more hours (4.0 h compared to 3.4 h on average) on learning during the pandemic than students in public schools. This result was consistent with that of Ali et al. [68], who concluded that the studying at home hours of students from private schools was higher than that of public school students. Moreover, students who studied in private schools received support from parents more than their peers in public schools [68]. In our study, students in private schools spent more hours on both online learning, offline learning, and learning with instruction than those of students in public schools. This result can be combined with other findings, such as students' study concentration or inclination to study for the exam, to produce conclusions about students' learning habits in private schools and public schools.

Secondly, older students tended to spend fewer hours learning online (on average, 2.5 h compared to 2.9 h of the younger group) or learning with instruction (on average 1.1 h compared to 1.5 h of the younger group). This result was contrary to what was found in the research of Ke and Kwak [49], in which older students spent more time on online learning activities. In our sample, it is understandable that older students did not need as much instruction as younger students. Thus, the learning hours with instruction decreased as age increased. Regarding online learning, Oyemi et al. [9] claimed that students' learning habits are partially distracted by the usage of social networks and entertainment activities at home. Specifically, senior students consume more hours of entertainment on the Internet than students at lower grade levels [60,61]. As a result, it is apprehensible that students in higher grade levels would allocate less time for online learning, given their distractions, even though they might spend more time using the Internet.

A valuable insight is that we found no difference in learning habits between genders, which contrasted with previous empirical studies that found that female students spend more time studying at home than their male friends [40,41]. Students' learning habits are influenced the most by their parents and teachers. However, family income only had partial influence over students' learning habits, and the only meaningful result recorded belonged to the over-average income group (between 860–1920 USD per month). Students from these families spent less time learning offline during sudden school closure than the other groups. An explanation for this is that high-income families would have plenty of home resources, more internet access, a premium subscription to online courses, and more online learning and less offline learning. Some studies suggested similar results, in which home resources, such as abundant learning materials, a convenient learning space, and accessibility of additional opportunities and services, can affect students' academic performance [64,98]. Thus, the moderating effect from parents over students' learning habits might be caused by sociocultural factors rather than socioeconomic factors. Finally, students' siblings had no significant influence on students' learning habits.

Regarding research question two, there were differences in students' learning habits during the sudden school closure among different occupational aspirations, mainly in group A1 (math, physics, chemistry) and group D (literature, foreign language, math). Students who planned to take exams with group A1 tended to study more hours on average (1.2 h) and preferred to study with less instruction from other people. Students who planned to take exams with group D also tended to spend more hours of self-learning but did not prefer online learning, with an average of 2 h less than other groups. Self-efficacy is people's judgment about, and the ability to, control their competencies across various circumstances [102,103]. In academic settings, Bassi et al. [104] found that students who reported higher self-efficacy spent more time solving home assignments. In contrast, students with lower levels of self-efficacy tended to avoid schoolwork and replaced it with leisure activities. In this study, we did not measure students' self-efficacy, yet there were two questions related to one efficacy factor—namely, students' belief in their learning ability regarding a particular subject [103]. We found that students

who reported having high self-learning competency would spend more time (about 30 min more) studying during school closure than those who reported lower self-learning competency.

Regarding the final research question, we found several differences in students' learning habits based on their motivation to learn and their self-regulation. Respecting learners' intrinsic motivation, students who thought that self-learning was necessary because it maintained their learning habits spent about 40 min more studying during school closure. Meanwhile, extrinsic motivation, such as influences from parents, teachers, siblings, or friends, did not have notable effects on students' learning hours. Among these influencers, students who learned because of their siblings' affection spent about 20 min less to study. These findings were partly consistent with what was found by Bergin [46]: that intrinsic motivation is the reason children do homework, not extrinsic motivation. According to Schunk [105], self-regulated learning is the discipline that can be triggered by students' perceptions and behaviors toward learning objectives. In our research, students who explained their self-learning effectiveness by being self-motivated and setting proper learning outcomes for each day often studied 20 to 30 min more.

Besides, students with various learning resources spent more time studying than those with more scattered resources. Some studies suggested similar results, where the availability and diversity of learning material, equipment, and extended educational opportunities could affect students' academic performance [64,98].

Last but not least, the empirical evidence stated that Vietnamese teachers took advantage of the closure by integrating additional know-how into the online lesson properly. The data indicated that 80.5% and 79.1% of students accessed additional knowledge about SARS-CoV-2 and overall preventive healthcare, respectively. About 60.2% and 54.5% of the students reported that their lessons were elevated beyond the regular subject contents by the integration with sustainable environmental development and sustainable social development. This is a positive signal regarding the country's movement from content-based teaching into competency-based teaching.

#### **6. Conclusions**

Sustainable education development requires the involvement of various stakeholders toward the structure of the educational system, educational policies, and practices [106]. As an emerging country, Vietnam is dealing with multiple well-known and unknown struggles to pursue sustainable education [59]. Thus, the discoveries of this work have several implications in both the short-term and long-term. First, the study responded to the suggestion of Vuong et al. [5] to examine students' self-efficacy among different social strata. In particular, we investigated the influence of socioeconomic factors over Vietnamese students' learning habits during the fanciful situation of COVID-19. In detail, there were significant differences in students' learning habits among students from different types of schools and grade levels. Regarding the family income, the only difference belonged to students in families with above-average income (from 860 to under 1290 USD). Therefore, future policies and practices on distance learning should pay much attention to the characteristics of various school types and grade levels. Second, the learning habits of students with different levels of self-competencies, English, and career aspirations were clarified. Further investigations should focus on this area to figure out the mechanism behind this phenomena to optimize the learning habits of students with different capabilities. Moreover, students' perception of the necessity of self-learning during the pandemic revealed differences in their learning habits. Also, the supportiveness of factors that accelerated student learning and the teachers' efforts toward a sustainable education development goal was illustrated. Regarding all of these self-efficacy-related learning habits during the digital transformation process, policymakers, educational managers, and education practitioners need to reconsider the importance of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goal 4: Quality Education.

Furthermore, several limitations can be tackled by future investigations. First, the survey was conducted within the first two weeks of the school closure period, in which the support from the school and social awareness about online learning was not as high as in the coming weeks. Thus, an additional investigation after the end of COVID-19 is necessary. Secondly, the survey was designed for the unique target of this study, which is timely; thus, the validity of the questionnaires was tested within the first 50 respondents only. Further survey constructs and validation should be considered in the future to examine students' online learning habits. Thirdly, the socio-demographics of this study's population fit with major cities only. When concerning other provinces and cities, in which access to the Internet is limited and the role of private schools is not significant, different perspectives and scales of socioeconomic measurement should be applied. Furthermore, the sample size was not big enough; thus, some subsets of variables were not balanced: for example, there were many respondents from high school but not from middle school, or too many students chose subject group D (literature, foreign language, mathematics) compared to other groups.

**Author Contributions:** T.T.: Conceptualization, Methodology A.-D.H.: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Writing—Review & Editing Y.-C.N.: Investigation, Data Curation, Writing—Original Draft L.-C.N.: Investigation, Writing—Original Draft N.-T.T.: Investigation, Writing—Original Draft Q.-H.P.: Writing—Review & Editing C.-X.P.: Writing—Review & Editing Q.-A.L.: Investigation, Writing—Original Draft V.-H.D.: Data Curation T.-T.N.: Writing—Review & Editing. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research was funded by National Foundation for Science and Technology Development, Vietnam-NAFOSTED (09/2015/TT-BKHCN).

**Acknowledgments:** The COVID-19 is causing unimaginable impacts on the educational system worldwide. Regarding the situation of Vietnam, a country always considers education as the top national priority. Vietnamese parents are always amenable to spend their savings or even willing to sell their houses to secure their children's learning. Even during the Vietnam war, the educational system has never been suspended as much as this time. Thus, we want to take advantage of this research as an encouragement for all Vietnamese educators, students, and parents, especially the teachers who have not had a salary for the last three/four months, and the school owners who are facing the risk of bankruptcy. We would like to say thanks to all students who participated in this study, as well as teachers and parents, who supported to ensure the ethical considerations and spread over the questionnaires. We also would like to acknowledge all doctors, medical staff, government officers, and volunteers who are fighting with COVID-19. Last but not least, we would like to express our gratitude to the editorial board and all reviewers who dedicated themselves to making the results of this work appear novel.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.


**Appendix A Test of Homogeneity of Variances**


#### **Appendix B ANOVA Results**

\* Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level; \*\* correlation is significant at the 0.01 level; \*\*\* correlation is significant at the 0.001 level.

#### **Appendix C Robust Tests of Equality of Means**


\* Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level; \*\* correlation is significant at the 0.01 level; \*\*\* correlation is significant at the 0.001 level.

#### **References**


© 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

### **A Human Rights-Based Approach in Implementing Sustainable Development Goal 4 (Quality Education) for Ethnic Minorities in Vietnam**

#### **Doanh-Ngan-Mac Do 1, Linh-Khanh Hoang 2, Cuong-Minh Le 3,\* and Trung Tran 4,\***


Received: 22 March 2020; Accepted: 18 May 2020; Published: 20 May 2020

**Abstract:** Seventeen sustainable development goals (SDG) by the United Nations in its 2030 Agenda have been nationalized and implemented in Vietnam. One of the country's priorities is making educational provision accessible to all of its residents, especially for marginalized groups, while enforcing their human rights. In this context, this article examines the implementation of SDG4 (quality education) in combination with the practice of human rights for ethnic minorities in Vietnam. With access to jurisprudence, this research provides a detailed assessment of the compatibility between SDG targets and the legal rights to education of ethnic minorities. Additionally, this research employs an exploratory method to investigate the four major conditions for the implementation of quality education for ethnic minorities, namely legal–political, economic, socio-cultural factors, and participation pride. We also investigate three main barriers that hinder SDG4 implementation and human rights practices, namely child labor, language, and gender inequality. The contribution of this study is necessary for establishing more informed strategies and policies towards sustainable development in education for multi-ethnic countries.

**Keywords:** educational rights; ethnic minorities; quality education; sustainable development goals; multi-cultural education

#### **1. Introduction**

Vietnam is a multi-ethnic nation with 54 ethnic groups, of which the Kinh is considered the majority [1]. The remaining 53 ethnic communities, comprising about 14.6% of the national population (13.39 million people), are considered ethnic minorities. Ethnic minorities in Vietnam often reside in harsh weather and geographical conditions and have difficult socio-economic conditions, which affects, to a certain extent, the opportunities and the implementation of human rights for them. To improve human rights practices in the country, Vietnam's Central Party Committee issued Directive No. 12-CT/TW dated 12 July 1992 to highlight the national recognition of basic human rights for Vietnamese ethnic minority groups.

Vietnam has taken the 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) established by the United Nations for global sustainable development in the 2030 Agenda as a benchmark for the long-term development of the country. These global SDGs have been adapted into 115 Vietnam SDGs (VSDGs) to suit the nation's conditions and contexts and are included in Vietnam's National Action Plan for the implementation of the 2020 Agenda [2]. The areas of priority in Vietnam for sustainable development are education, vulnerable groups, and social equality, to ensure that no one is left behind. Some of

the remarkable achievements so far can be seen in the reduction in inequality and the improvements made in supporting access to justice [2]. These initial successes in developing education and social justice make the country confident in the continuing prioritization of SDG4 (quality education) as a firm basis for economic, social, and cultural development [2]. In particular, as a multi-ethnic country, Vietnam is determined to develop the education of all ethnic groups without discrimination in its efforts to achieve the SDGs comprehensively.

Implementing quality education in SDG4 in ethnic minority areas in Vietnam under a human rights-based approach is a rather newly explored content. Therefore, this research is conducted by employing the jurisprudence method to explore the compatibility of SDG targets with elements of human rights in education for ethnic minorities. An exploratory aspect is added with a questionnaire to 300 respondents from Tan Trao University, Tuyen Quang Province, to investigate the legal–political, economic, socio-cultural and participation pride conditions in the implementation of human rights to ensure quality education among ethnic minority groups. With this method, barriers to implementation, including child labor, gender inequality, language and others, are also examined. Finally, further implications for both academic research and managerial practices are drawn to contribute to the improvement of SDG4 for Vietnamese ethnic minorities.

#### **2. Literature Review**

#### *2.1. An Overview of Goals and Targets for Global Sustainable Development*

In the context of growing globalization, the United Nations (UN) set up 17 global goals for sustainable development by 2030 in its 2030 Agenda. The goals address comprehensive conditions required for sustainable development, including education, poverty, climate change, equality, economic growth and so forth (Table 1).


**Table 1.** Sustainable Development Goals in 2030 Agenda [3].

As shown in Table 1, SDG4 is defined as concerning quality education by "ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and promoting lifelong learning opportunity for all" [4]. Seven targets are entailed to specify SDG4, including:


The focus of all SDG4 targets is quality education for all school levels, from primary to tertiary education and for all age groups from children to adults, irrespective of their ethnic background. Among those, Target 4.7 is considered the most crucial one in terms of its involvement in other SDGs. The target is also important to facilitate the measurement of the remaining targets, such as gender equality in Target 4.5 and necessary knowledge and skills in Targets 4.1, 4.2, 4.3 and 4.6. In a related note, Target 4.5 refers to indigenous people as one of the vulnerable groups that need to have gender inequality in education removed.

Multi-ethnic countries in the world, especially the Association of Southeast Asian Nations ASEAN, have followed distinctive approaches to implement their own SDGs. In Southeast Asia, the inevitable discrepancy in the level of economic development among ethnic minorities also leads to completely different concerns for their sustainable development. On top of that, SDG4 receives further in-depth analyses that are concretized in three middle-income countries, Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam [5]. A rights-based approach is mentioned as the building block for accomplishing equity, recognizing and eliminating barriers, and encouraging and supporting diversity [6].

#### *2.2. Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4) for Ethnic Minorities*

To approach measures for vulnerable groups, the UN adopts "substantive equality" [7–11]. By targeting substantive equality, the UN resolves long-existing conflicts in equality law, while still focusing on human rights for underrepresented groups. In this way, concretized and appropriate measures can be established to develop the capacities of these vulnerable groups and promote opportunities for them to approach and enjoy their human rights.

Research on SDG4 for ethnic minorities can be divided into two periods. Before 2015, the focus of most research was placed on implementing Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) [12,13]. Nonetheless, this shifted to proposing to develop SDGs after the MDGs were found to be at fault. Refs. [14,15] signify fundamental points in SDG4 in the general context of ethnic communities. SDG4 targets educational purposes, underscoring the need to protect the principles of human rights for ethnic minorities who are still suffering from hardships [14].

After 2015, studies have mostly aimed at figuring out the most feasible ways to promote SDG4. Ref. [16] emphasizes the need to provide education for less advantaged children from all walks of life.

The children most likely to stay out of school are children from the poorest households; ethnic and linguistic minorities; working children; those in nomadic or sparsely populated areas; orphans and children affected by HIV and AIDS; slum dwellers; children with disabilities; and children living in complex emergencies. (p.9)

Ref. [16] adds that technology alone is not enough for educational transformation. In contrast, Ref. [17] recommends "augmented reality binomial-mobile" devices and the use of lip integration technology as a breakthrough teaching methodology.

#### *2.3. Human Rights of Ethnic Minorities Reflected in SDG4*

Since SDGs were published and enforced, the compatibility of SDG4 with human rights has been of wide interest as it deals with the most inspiring and contentious concern, the human right to education. The targets of SDG4 have been framed using two methods, the Human Rights-Based Approach and People-Centered Advocacy. The former is defined as "both a normative and conceptual framework, based on international human rights standards and ensuring the protection and promotion of human rights for all" [18]. The core of the human rights-based approach is to ensure no discrimination in tackling the causes of poverty, particularly injustice and inequality. The latter is an approach to human rights that emphasizes the elimination of subjective factors when conducting studies in academia and government [18]. This approach requires the transformation in people's awareness that people are not passive beneficiaries or seekers of charity from the government. Instead, it is the government's political and moral responsibility to guarantee all human rights to all citizens. Therefore, people have a right to demand that the state ensure impartial social change and distributive justice [18].

As previously mentioned, Targets 4.5 and 4.7 contain the most relevant content for human rights and indigenous groups. A system of five global and thematic indicators for each is sketched out by [19] to gain a closer look at the relations (Table 2).



The global indicator (GI) is drawn based on the implementation of the 1974 UNESCO Recommendation concerning Education for International Understanding, Co-operation and Peace Education relating to Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. It measures the extent to which countries offer Global Citizenship Education (GCED), including gender equality and human rights education, and Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in their education systems. For this purpose, four aspects of education systems are examined, including educational policies, curricula, teacher training and student assessment [20]. GI 4.7.1 takes another responsibility for developing and maintaining the thematic indicators (TI) that serve as the follow-up and review tools of SDG4. GCED and ESD are considered the two indispensable factors for achieving SDG4 as they guarantee quality education and other targets involved in SDG4. Globally, an increasing number of countries are applying GI as a reflection of their human rights and fundamental freedom principles in in-service teacher education. In recognition of this growing trend, the Inter-Agency and Expert Group on SDG Indicators has recently upgraded their tier classification for GI 4.7.1 from tier III to tier II. In other words, GI 4.7.1 is "conceptually clear, has an intentionally established methodology and standards are available, but data are not regularly produced by countries". At the same time, Target 4.5 receives far wider recognition, as its GI is positioned at tier I and II [20].

In Vietnam, human rights for ethnic minorities have received much consideration in a variety of research fields, especially in education [21,22]. Ongoing practical efforts have also been made to build a national policy and legal system for underrepresented groups in accordance with international laws, especially in preserving minority languages and culture in education rights [9,10]. Moreover, the Central Party and the Government of Vietnam demonstrate the basic need to incorporate the human rights of ethnic minorities in the Constitution of Vietnam as an indispensable move in maintaining a peaceful, prosperous and happy life for all ethnic communities. Among the essential issues to tackle, education, considered in close relation with human rights, will contribute to a comprehensive analysis of the SDGs from a legal perspective [23].

#### *2.4. Quality Education in the Multicultural Context of Education*

#### 2.4.1. Quality Education

Quality education, the focus of SDG4, is the core of Education for Sustainable Development. Ref. [24] categorize quality education in the top priority group for achieving sustainability. In agreement, Ref. [25] emphasizes the utmost importance of quality education to the holistic and sustainable development of schooling. Quality education is recognized by four main features, namely the availability of educational infrastructure, accessibility by all with no discrimination, acceptability of methods and adaptability to learners and society [24]. In quality education, not only knowledge, but also skills and attitudes, are prioritized to build up the four pillars of learning. These four major pillars include learning to know, to be, to do, and to live together [26]. Once these objectives are achieved, learners will not only have their learning performance strengthened but have enough capacity to tackle the problems of sustainable development in the future. The contribution of quality education to human and social development will, therefore, be uncountable. For ethnic minority students, the access and maintenance of quality education will significantly facilitate the development of the existing misalignment of educational outcomes. However, one of the major obstacles to achieving quality education is social and economic inequality. In addition, those left behind are the most underrepresented, including ethnic minorities [16].

To achieve the objectives of quality education, a number of studies have agreed upon the four indispensable factors to be involved, namely a well-developed curriculum, in-service teacher training, a safe and effective learning environment, and transformative and cooperative approaches to teaching and learning. For ethnic minorities, [27] highlights the inclusion of indigenous, current, environmental, social and economic issues in mainstreaming quality education. Equality for all without any discrimination is a must and should be the first goal that is realized.

#### 2.4.2. Multicultural Education

Multicultural education has been defined by several researchers in different ways [28]. Each definition carries its own distinguished content and explanation, which is why there is no agreed definition in this regard. In the context of the education of ethnic minorities in this research, multicultural education is defined in accordance with [29].

Multicultural education is an idea, an educational reform movement, and a process. As an idea, multicultural education seeks to create equal educational opportunities for all students, including those from different racial, ethnic, and social-class groups. Multicultural education tries to create equal educational opportunities for all students by changing the total school environment so that it will reflect the diverse cultures and groups within a society and within the nation's classrooms.

Ref. [30] also puts forward five dimensions of multicultural education. They are content integration, the knowledge construction process, prejudice reduction, an equity pedagogy, and empowering school culture and social structures.

Content integration is the extent to which teachers use examples and content from a variety of cultures and groups to demonstrate their lessons. Prejudice reduction describes lessons and activities used by teachers to help students to develop positive attitudes toward different racial, ethnic, and cultural groups. An equity pedagogy exists when teachers modify their teaching in ways that will facilitate the equal academic achievement of students without discrimination. An empowering school culture and social structure are created when the culture and organization of the school are transformed in ways that enable students from diverse racial, ethnic, and gender groups to experience equality and equal status [29–31].

In this research, multicultural education occurs when, in most primary and secondary classes for ethnic minorities, teachers are mostly Kinh and students are of another ethnic group. On the other hand, in tertiary education, ethnic diversity is greater when students from a variety of ethnic groups share the same class. This context makes it difficult to achieve quality education, as it requires adjustments in general policies and specific pedagogical methods.

#### **3. Methods**

#### *3.1. Research Methods*

This study employed the jurisprudence method to explore the relationship between legal theories and practices found in Decision No.622/QD-TTg for the implementation of SDG4 [32]. Once enough documents were synthesized, the perspectives of human rights and the targets of the SDG4 among ethnic minorities were analyzed to gain an insight into the compatibility between them.

An exploratory approach was also utilized, the first step of which involved reviewing the existing literature to compare and contrast the findings, which were used as bases for examining the conditions and barriers in the implementation of SDG4. A survey was also conducted using questionnaires for 160 students together with 140 officials and lecturers at Tan Trao University in Tuyen Quang Province. This questionnaire was newly developed based on the survey tool by [8], previously administered to 960 respondents from eight ethnic groups, namely Cao Lan, Dao, Hoa, Mong, Muong, Nung, San Diu and Tay in Tuyen Quang, Cao Bang and Dien Bien Provinces.

#### *3.2. Research Instrument*

By reviewing the relevant literature, analyzing related laws and using expert opinions in focus group discussions, four main aspects of equal right to schooling synthesized by [7] were utilized in a search for compatibility with seven targets of SDG4 specific to vulnerable groups. Research by in Tuyen Quang Province on 960 subjects was then investigated in full to obtain data for an analysis of the economic, social, cultural, political and legal conditions for SDG4 realization (Table 3).

Finally, a questionnaire was developed based on the one previously designed by [8]. The questionnaire served to seek the opinions of 300 students, lecturers and officials on the conditions and barriers for guaranteeing equality and human rights in education among ethnic communities on the way to achieving SDG4. Equality and human rights in education involve accessibility, availability, acceptability and adaptability to all educational aspects mentioned in targets of SDG4. The respondents responded to forty statements, which were scored on a five-point Likert scale. A score of one represented either the least agreement or the worst condition, whereas a score of five represented either the most agreement or the best condition. Ten additional open questions were included to seek explanations

and recommendations. Fifty questions were distributed and targeted to different groups of subjects, as detailed in Table 4.


**Table 3.** Variables for research.

#### **Table 4.** Questionnaire structure.


#### *3.3. Sampling Methods*

Tuyen Quang is a province located in the Northern mountainous area of Vietnam. It has 27 ethnic groups, accounting for 52% of the population of the whole province [8]. Tan Trao University, previously an education college established in 1959, is the only tertiary educational institution in Tuyen Quang, with seven faculties (mostly in liberal arts), eight departments, four centers, one high school, and one clinic. The total annual enrollments are around 13,000. Tuyen Quang is the province whose poverty rate remains high in comparison to other provinces in Vietnam. This entails many difficulties in increasing the number of students pursuing tertiary education as well as improving the education quality of educational institutions within the province. Tan Trao University, despite having the highest-quality staff in Tuyen Quang, still comes across difficulties in consistently maintaining the quality of education for students.

The sample study received responses from a total of 300 respondents of different ethnic backgrounds (Kinh, Dao, Tay, Mong, Muong, Nung) from Tan Trao University. The respondents were divided into three groups based on their roles, namely students, lecturers and officers (Table 5).


**Table 5.** Sampling.

#### *3.4. Data Analysis*

Responses from the survey were coded and entered in SPSS Version 20 and checked for reliability using the Cronbach's alpha (α) reliability estimate (α = Nρ/[1 + ρ(N − 1)]). A high reliability coefficient was achieved, with Cronbach's α estimates ranging from 0.710 to 0.903 (≥0.6) (Table 6). The corrected item-total correlation estimates ranged between 0.5 and 0.7 (>0.3), also showing good correlations between the variables.

**Table 6.** Reliability estimates.


Following this, an Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) was conducted to determine the correlation between sub-targets and to determine their corresponding legal elements. The Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin (KMO) test (=0.786) and Barlett's test (=0.000) (Table 7) showed good correlations between the observed variables.

**Table 7.** Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin (KMO) and Barlett's Test.


The loading factors (≥0.509) as seen from the Rotated Component Matrix (Table 8) also showed good correlations between the variables.


**Table 8.** Rotated Component Matrix.

#### **4. Findings**

#### *4.1. Compatibility between SDG4 and the Human Rights of Ethnic Minorities*

In a review of literature and experts' findings, the study attains that there is a close relationship between quality education and the rights-based approach in achieving sustainable development (Table 9). The [32] points out that equal life-long learning and quality education can only be guaranteed when rights to education, equality and employment are enforced for all, without discrimination.



A review of seven outcome sub-targets for SDG4 in The United Nations Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 [36] and four elements constituting educational rights in Vietnam illustrates high compatibility. Each sub-target is compatible with a certain aspect of educational rights. Specifically, availability is compatible with SDG4.1 and SDG4.6, accessibility with SDG4.1, SDG4.3, SDG4.5 and SDG4.7, acceptability with SDG4.2 and SDG4.7 and adaptability to SDG4.4 and SDG4.5 (Table 10).


**Table 10.** Compatibility between SDG4 and elements of educational rights for ethnic minorities in Vietnam.

*4.2. Promotion Conditions and Barriers to Implementing Sustainable Development Goal 4 in Vietnam under the Approach of Human Rights in Ethnic Minority Areas*

#### 4.2.1. Political–Legal Conditions

The survey used the set of political–legal conditions initiated by [8], which involves legislation (L), policy (P) and strategy system (SS), convention participation (CP) and governmental authority assignment (GAA) (Table 11). When asked to articulate the extent to which they agreed that the State has provided adequate political–legal conditions to improve education for ethnic minorities, 140 lecturers and faculty officers showed a high level of agreement. The mean values for the five elements ranged from 2.46 to 4.49, confirming that all the conditions were perceived by the respondents to be important or very important to the implementation of SDG4 among ethnic groups. The two most essential elements required, i.e., legislation and governmental authority, are spread out across the seven sub-targets, as shown in Table 11.

**Table 11.** Political–legal conditions for each sub-target.


#### 4.2.2. Economic Conditions for Education

Three hundred respondents were asked about the extent to which their college and classrooms serve their work and study. The mean value range was 2.3–4.52, indicating that economic conditions generally underwent satisfactory to good preparation. Responses also reveal noticeable improvements in economic subsidization by the Vietnamese government for ethnic minorities in their access to tertiary education. Specifically, 100% of ethnic minority students received a monthly stipend, which was adequate to cover their college-life expenses. Moreover, ethnic students were provided with free accommodation in the dormitory system of the college. Their transportation to school was also assisted with a bus system, taking them from their dormitory to the college campus and vice versa. More importantly, all ethnic students enjoyed free-of-charge education in all departments of Tan Trao University. Such economic support was widely recognized among ethnic minorities and was considered to be efficient in relieving the economic burden of many ethnic families, and thus highly encouraging to ethnic minority youngsters, giving them access to quality tertiary education.

#### 4.2.3. Socio-Cultural Conditions and Participation Motivation of Ethnic Minorities

One of the questions to 160 students and 70 teachers was "to what extent are you aware of the education environment that you are in having more than one ethnic?" The responses revealed a mean ranging from 2.1 to 3.5, showing a satisfactory to high level of awareness of multicultural education. When asked about the extent to which such an environment helped them become more aware of who they were in the classroom, the respondents showed a satisfactory level of self-awareness of their identity when the mean ranged between 2.3 and 2.5. The student respondents showed very high agreement in their pride in attending school, with means ranging from 3.07 to 4.59.

#### 4.2.4. Barriers to Implementing Sustainable Development Goal 4 in Vietnam

A total of 300 respondents to the survey questions were asked to rate the extent to which they agreed that ethnic minorities in Vietnam were facing barriers in their access to the educational system. Three major obstacles, including language, gender inequality and child labor, were examined in relation to other obstacles, as seen in the question "to what extent do you agree that children in ethnic families have to work to earn meals or money?" The data collected reveal a high level of agreement among the 300 respondents. The mean values for the four obstacles ranged from 3.78 to 4.09, confirming that all the obstacles were faced by the respondents. The hindrance found to be the biggest to overcome was child labor, whereas the most improvement was found to be in terms of gender inequality (Table 12).

**Table 12.** Barriers for SDG4 implementation.


4.2.5. Assistance That Each Target, Condition and Barrier Removal Provides to the Access of Ethnic Minorities to Human Rights in Education

The mean differences between targets, conditions and barrier removal variables reveal the differences between their expected assistance and the reality in relation to the implementation of SDG4, while guaranteeing access to and enjoyment of education for all ethnic minorities "without anyone left behind" (Figure 1). The most remarkable differences belong to SDG4.7, C3 and C2.

**Figure 1.** Assistance in theory and in reality in the implementation of SDG4 for ethnic minority groups.

Regarding the compatibility of SDG targets with the lowest mean differences of all contents, it was disclosed that the highest compatibility was achieved in the high expectation for the aid given to ethnic minorities, as well as providing the best assistance for SDG4 implementation among ethnic minorities when brought into practice. On the other hand, the highest mean difference between the seven targets belonged to SDG4.7. This means SDG4.7 was perceived as the most important factor in carrying out SDG4.

Of all the conditions surveyed for SDG4 implementation, C1 and C4 received the lowest mean difference—that is, the legal–political condition and participation motivation were the two preparations that were in closest relation to their theoretical expectation. Participation motivation among ethnic minorities was high in both theory and reality. Ethnic minority people took great pride in being involved in the national development route. Nevertheless, the mean differences between C2 and C3 were the largest out of all fifteen elements. This means that, despite the importance that the economy and socio-cultural factors held in the implementation, the real conditions did not meet the expectations.

Concerning barrier removal, the most marked difference occurred for child labor, followed by language. This means that solutions to removing the barriers of child labor and language differences to make access to quality education available to all ethnic minorities were not as efficient as expected (Figure 1).

#### **5. Discussion**

The study finds that all the targets of SDG4 in combination can meet the requirements of human rights to education for ethnic minorities. In particular, the implementation of the two most-related ones, Targets 4.5 and 4.7, can guarantee all four As, namely availability, accessibility, acceptability, and adaptability. This finding confirms the righteousness of the Vietnamese government in localizing SDG4 to better manage the education progress, particularly for ethnic minority communities [7,10,37–39]. More importantly, the detailed compatibility helps the government to enact more effective laws and policies that prioritize Targets 4.5 and 4.7 in the context of a multi-ethnic country. The finding also resonates with [9,40] in that the authority's governance plays a fundamental role in enforcing and applying the laws, policies and strategies to achieve SDG4 among ethnic minorities. This outcome also reveals the faith ethnic minority people have in their government in the effort to achieve sustainable development with their powerful legal and managerial tools [41]. Particularly, in an educational regard, the finding agrees with [8] about the importance of mainstreaming national education policies that involve gender equality and human rights. The legal framework in the process of both boosting its effectiveness and ensuring the basic human rights of ethnic minorities during law enforcement, especially for disadvantaged groups [9,40,42]. The national strategies that the Vietnamese government has set up are believed to far surpass the standards set by the global SDG4 version and to meet all aspects required for the rights of ethnic minorities in Vietnam, while adapting global goals to local needs [43]. The political system also makes a proper appeal to the authorizing bodies to take charge of the implementation, including mainly the Ministry of Education and Training and Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs, in coordination with other related ministries and departments. This has received high agreement from most people surveyed. However, dilemmas in terms of placing ethnic minority issues at the forefront in the national education system were identified as limitations in a constitutional capacity [44].

The economic conditions surveyed reveal both improvements and difficulties in supporting access to quality education for ethnic minority people. The finding first discloses the satisfactory to good preparation of infrastructure for the education of ethnic minorities at a tertiary level. Previous studies (for example [7,8]) recognize that the main infrastructure, including schools, classrooms and sanitary systems, are in the progress of fulfilling the standard for all levels of education for ethnic minorities. Notably, 100% of communes in Tuyen Quang have schools for pre-, primary and lower secondary education levels. Semi-boarding, boarding, vocational and preparatory schools are increasing in number. However, economic difficulties remain an obvious hindrance to the access to quality education

of ethnic minorities. Moreover, despite enjoying a low cost or free-of-charge education, the access to education of ethnic minorities is far lower than that of the Kinh at all levels (Figure 2).

**Figure 2.** Access to education in Vietnam in 2014 [45].

Previous statistics confirm the financial hardship of ethnic minority communities by claiming that, by accounting for 15% of the population of the whole country, ethnic minorities take up 47% of the poor and 68% of the extremely poor. Some of the reasons for the sluggishness in improving this situation are the harsh geography and natural terrains, which are mostly mountainous. The deprived cultural background of ethnic minority groups, such as due to outdated rituals or opposing customs, is another cause of the slow and hindered economic development in ethnic communities [1,41,46–48].

Socio-cultural conditions that provide multicultural education for ethnic minority people also raise much debate. In the context of multi-ethnic classrooms, it is found that a multi-cultural environment both helps and hinders inclusive education. According to [28], an awareness of the positives and negatives can bring both eagerness and worry in the studied context. On the one hand, teachers are under more pressure to adjust their lessons to suit all ethnic minorities involved in the classroom. This poses challenges to delivering lessons and reduces much motivation of teachers in the face of economic difficulties [49]. Similarly, students may have trouble integrating themselves into the environment [50]. On the other hand, the opportunities for promoting self-identification [51] and equity in the educational system [52] were also found in the respondents' answers. The negatives mentioned affect quality education to a certain extent and thus, the result, in reality, needs more investigation and improvements. As found by [8], social–cultural drawbacks such as a low level of education can entail low-paid employment (65%) and unskilled workers (36%) in ethnic minority communities nationwide. However, the negatives cannot stop ethnic minorities from showing their pride in attending classes. This echoes [8]'s conclusion on the aspiration of many ethnic minorities to attend school. Such a finding can, in return, inspire the Vietnamese government to fulfill the educational rights of ethnic minorities for their comprehensive and sustainable development.

The barriers hinder to a great extent the implications of human rights and thus negatively affect the quality of education for ethnic minorities. This outcome resonates with most research in the related field [8,44,45,53–56]. For gender inequality, the finding makes it clear why, globally, the gender gap index for education attainment in Vietnam in 2020 is ranked 93rd, down five positions compared to 2019 [57,58]. In Asia Pacific, the country ranked 10th in 2019, also seeing a decline compared with other countries in the region [58]. While [44,59] claims that ethnic minority women face a double challenge for representation and participation in formal and informal decision-making structures in families and communities, this investigation finds that such challenges nearly disappear. Ethnic minority women receive more respect and recognition for their abilities and roles. The line between the two genders is also highly agreed to be fading.

Child labor is considered an infringement of the human rights law and is becoming a thorny issue for the Vietnamese government to tackle [57]. Constraining the practice of child labor has many shortcomings because most families in ethnic groups have to send their children into the labor force to make their ends meet [8]. According to [60], in 30% of ethnic minority families, at least one child drops out of school to work, which is a high rate. In Vietnam, the number of students going to school at the right age remains low and the quality of education at each level in several ethnic minority communities does not yet meet the national standard [7].

At the same time, language barriers are perceived as being hard to overcome due to the conflict between the often poor command of Vietnamese among ethnic minority people and the wide availability of materials written in Vietnamese rather than in ethnic minority languages [54]. This sometimes discourages ethnic minority people from taking classes or finishing their programs. It is stated that over 90% of ethnic minority children speak their mother tongues at home. Many of them are barely exposed to the Vietnamese language before the first year of schooling [60]. Accordingly, Vietnamese ethnic minority students have trouble acquiring fluency and comprehension in their class. Simultaneously, teachers of ethnic minority classes encounter similar language conundrums in finding materials and using language in their classes. Such a quandary has led to difficulties in implementing multicultural education and achieving quality education. The protection and preservation of the values of each language are posing many challenges to the government in enforcing ethnic minorities' human rights [8,61]. The removal of other problems, such as family violence and limited vocational skills, was also perceived as significant in their assistance in the implementation of SDG4. This echoes what [8] reveals in his research, which confirms the importance of restricting family violence and upgrading vocational skills for ethnic minority people.

#### **6. Academic and Managerial Implications**

Academics and managers working on the educational issues of ethnic minorities for sustainable development should consider the results of this study to reorient their research direction, as well as to improve their management policies. For academic researchers, since the human rights-based approach for ethnic minorities is not widely studied in the Vietnamese academic community, this study can motivate future investigations into questions of how to improve human rights or which human rights should be prioritized for the education of ethnic minorities. In finding out the conditions for SDG4 implications, further research can discuss the extent of mainstreaming gender equality and human rights into educational policies, curricula, teacher education and student assessment so as to fit the general indicator of Target 4.7. The obstacles that this study examined can ignite some ideas about measuring equality in education using the parity indices, including indigenous versus non-indigenous, male versus female, rural versus urban and bottom versus top wealth groups, so as to fit the general indicator of Target 4.5.

Another noticeable issue that has emerged and which would benefit from further research is multicultural education. In the context of Vietnam, multicultural education for ethnic minorities receives little interest, despite its significance in creating a breakthrough in the education of ethnic minorities and ensuring human rights. In terms of managerial implications, firstly, the research has revealed the high compatibility of SDG targets and elements of human rights, confirming the righteousness in the nationalization of the SDGs in the Vietnamese context. This encourages more actions in making laws, policies and strategies appropriate and detailed for ethnic minority communities so that equality and no discrimination in education for every citizen of the country can be achieved. Furthermore, the Vietnamese government should adjust the legal system of Vietnam with more effective laws, strategies and policies to better suit the needs of ethnic minorities in education. For managers in the education field, this research provides some ideas in adjusting curricula, teaching and learning textbooks in order to lessen the negative attitudes and misconceptions about ethnic minorities. The inclusion of positive contents and inspiring images about ethnic minorities in educational materials should be seriously considered. More significantly, the research raises an awareness of the barriers that impede

the implications of SDG4 for ethnic minorities. Thus, policymakers should be aware that they must deal with child labor, language, gender inequality and other barriers to education.

#### **7. Concluding Remarks**

Since education is the leading factor for the development of the whole country, especially of ethnic minority groups, implementing SDG4 among ethnic minorities and enforcing human rights is an unavoidable but intimidating task for both the Vietnamese government and Vitenamese people. From this perspective, this study helps to provide a better insight into the compatibility between the targets of SDG4 and the elements of human rights for ethnic minorities. This study confirms that coordinating the implications of all the targets can satisfactorily ensure the legal rights of ethnic minorities. The Vietnamese government has also shown all-round preparations for the implementation of SDG4 in terms of the economic, legal political and socio-cultural conditions for ethnic minority communities. Moreover, provoking the motivation of ethnic minority groups and encouraging participation is vitally important due to its positive impact on sustaining the spirit of ethnic minorities. Though challenges remain, particularly due to the language barrier, child labor and gender inequality, considerable efforts to improve them have been recognized.

The limitations of this research lie in several aspects. Firstly, the jurisprudence method encountered trouble in terms of access to the legal documents, so the finding concerning compatibility is fairly limited. Secondly, for the exploratory method, the quality of data analysis was influenced by the assignment of different groups to different questions. The overlap of answers made it quite confusing to classify a few questions into the proper section for analysis. Furthermore, a limitation can be found in the number of respondents who were selected from one university in one mountainous province in the north. This constrains the generalization of the findings. Finally, due to the limited scope of the study, only four conditions and three major barriers were analyzed in general. This may restrict the overview of the hardship that the implementation of SDG4 has faced and somehow underestimate the real situation. However, these limitations can provide perspectives for further research. Particularly, further studies with a larger sample of educational institutions from pre-school, primary and upper levels all over Vietnam, or other multi-ethnic countries, might be undertaken to triangulate the research findings. Further studies might also focus on more specific conditions, such as the infrastructure in the economic area. Other barriers could also be explored in more detail.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, T.T.; methodology, D.-N.-M.D.; supervision, C.-M.L. and T.T.; writing—original draft, L.-K.H.; writing—review & editing, C.-M.L. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research was funded by the Vietnam National Foundation for Science and Technology Development (NAFOSTED) under grant number 02/NCUD/2019.

**Acknowledgments:** We sincerely thank the reviewers for their valuable comments, which helped us improve the quality of the paper.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.

#### **References**


© 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

### *Article* **How Digital Natives Learn and Thrive in the Digital Age: Evidence from an Emerging Economy**

**Trung Tran 1, Manh-Toan Ho 2,3,\*, Thanh-Hang Pham 4,5, Minh-Hoang Nguyen 2,3, Khanh-Linh P. Nguyen 2,3, Thu-Trang Vuong 6, Thanh-Huyen T. Nguyen 3,7, Thanh-Dung Nguyen 3,7, Thi-Linh Nguyen 3,7, Quy Khuc 8, Viet-Phuong La 3,4 and Quan-Hoang Vuong 2,9,\***


Received: 10 April 2020; Accepted: 4 May 2020; Published: 7 May 2020

**Abstract:** As a generation of 'digital natives,' secondary students who were born from 2002 to 2010 have various approaches to acquiring digital knowledge. Digital literacy and resilience are crucial for them to navigate the digital world as much as the real world; however, these remain under-researched subjects, especially in developing countries. In Vietnam, the education system has put considerable effort into teaching students these skills to promote quality education as part of the United Nations-defined Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4). This issue has proven especially salient amid the COVID−19 pandemic lockdowns, which had obliged most schools to switch to online forms of teaching. This study, which utilizes a dataset of 1061 Vietnamese students taken from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)'s "Digital Kids Asia Pacific (DKAP)" project, employs Bayesian statistics to explore the relationship between the students' background and their digital abilities. Results show that economic status and parents' level of education are positively correlated with digital literacy. Students from urban schools have only a slightly higher level of digital literacy than their rural counterparts, suggesting that school location may not be a defining explanatory element in the variation of digital literacy and resilience among Vietnamese students. Students' digital literacy and, especially resilience, also have associations with their gender. Moreover, as students are digitally literate, they are more likely to be digitally resilient. Following SDG4, i.e., Quality Education, it is advisable for schools, and especially parents, to seriously invest in creating a safe, educational environment to enhance digital literacy among students.

**Keywords:** socio-economic status; parental education; digital literacy; digital resilience; Vietnam; quality education; Sustainable Development Goal 4; digital age; bayesvl

#### **1. Introduction**

Digital literacy is one of the driving forces in the development of the digital age, as well as a critical pillar of general education. To promote Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG) - Quality Education, developed countries have introduced digital literacy into general education so that the majority of their citizens become an active element of the digital economy [1]. However, in less developed nations, the issue is neglected, while the context here is more complicated. There is a lack of legal regulations as well as formal education and training for youth [2]. In Asia, Internet 'addiction' has been popular among adolescents in countries, and Internet use, therefore, is frequently characterized by risky cyber behaviors [3]. As a typical example of the region, according to statistics from the University World News [4], Vietnam has about 68.17 million Internet users in 2020, an increase of 10% over 2019. An average Vietnamese person spends up to 11 hours a day on the Internet, social media, and consuming digital content; therefore, they have become more and more comfortable with the omnipresence of technology [5]. On the other hand, this might create more chances for online risks and negative influences on society. Notably, digital safety related content is almost absent from official Information Technology (IT) programs in Vietnamese schools [6]. In fact, IT subject is treated as an elective subject in the Vietnamese education program, and is not compulsory in all primary school, middle school, and high school levels. Consequently, there is a lack of focus on digital literacy in elementary education in Vietnam.

Nowadays, students seem to have different perceptions about learning digital tools than past generations. This is tied to the idea that individuals born in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries are said to be "born digital" and spend their entire lives immersed in digital culture [7,8]. In other words, they have become a 'digital native' generation. Fostering a sense of responsibility and digital resilience among young people, therefore, is a crucial component amid the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Previous findings define digital resilience as the skill that will encourage young people to look at the positive and negative experiences they have online, consider the impacts they may have, and devise ways to build digital safety [9].

The 2020 outbreak of the COVID−19 Coronavirus disease has been pushing students worldwide in general and Vietnamese students, in particular, to adapt to online learning [4], especially as most schools and educational institutions have been closed in Vietnam since the beginning of the Lunar New Year. However, spending more time online could bring both beneficial and harmful effects on young generations. Engaging in online activities, in certain circumstances, can make a young person feel upset, uncomfortable, or left out. On these occasions, they need support from adults: either their parents or experts [10]. This issue thus leads to a question of how aware the students are of their digital resilience.

Students' perceptions of the application of online learning are crucial as a new era of digital technologies is coming. A study on the delivery of a distance learning module in a University in the North of Italy shows that there are five themes of the online learners' perspectives, which are teamwork, cognitive, operating, organizing, and emotive/ethic for the positive aspects of e-learning to be improved [11]. They have a potential impact on developing collaborative activities for students in distance learning. Digital literacy, therefore, might have an important role in helping students to achieve a better outcome from online learning methods. The unexpected switch to online learning amid the COVID−19 pandemic also requires more attempts from the authorities to ensure educational quality and inclusiveness as well as to build a safe learning environment so each student can meet the SDG4 target.

Therefore, this study aims to identify and understand the relationship between digital literacy and digital resilience and the students' socio-economic status, family background, gender, and school location. It should contribute to the ongoing development of the education system in Vietnam society. Utilizing a dataset of 1061 Vietnamese students [12] chosen randomly from the North to the South of the country with an employment of the Bayesian approaches, our findings would shed light on the

positively and negatively associated factors to digital literacy and digital resilience as a necessary skill of future global citizens.

In the following sections, a literature review and details of the data analysis will be presented. Limitations and potential implications of the research will be discussed in the final section of the paper.

#### **2. Literature Review**

#### *2.1. Family Background and Students' Digital Literacy and Resilience*

One of the factors affecting students' digital literacy is their family socioeconomic status (SES). Results from previous studies show that family socioeconomic status has a moderate, positive relationship with students' digital competence [13]. Economically advantaged families with more books at home and parents with more cultural capital are identified as decisive factors to the level of children's digital literacy [14,15]. In the Vietnam case, the country has witnessed rapid economic growth, transforming from one of the world's poorest nations into a lower-middle-income country [16]. As the emerging Vietnamese middle-class has reached 13% of the population recently, the level of education has been improved for Vietnamese households in general. According to the World Bank, the coverage and learning results of Vietnamese are higher and equitably achieved in primary schools. The evidence is represented by the remarkably high scores in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) in 2012 and 2015, where the performance of Vietnamese students exceeds that of many countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) [16].

In contrast, students from lower socio-economic backgrounds are often at a disadvantage to achieve higher digital competences. According to Robinson [17]'s research, students from less wealthy families have less accessibility to modern technologies than students from a moderate-richer family background, which limits them from reaching their full potential in developing their digital skills. Thus, the socio-economic status seems to be the most significant predictor of students' digital skills [18,19]. An explanation is that only parents with higher economic status are perceived as being supportive of their kids in using digital tools and developing IT skills [19]. Children who have existing socio-economic benefits tend to gain more significant benefits from online use than those who do not [20].

The education level of parents is also extensively discussed in relation to the development of students' digital literacy. A previous study reports a significant association between students' awareness of IT literacy and their mothers' educational qualification [21]. Mothers with better educational attainment could guide and support their kids' digital tools, which lead to their better performance in IT [22]. Students who achieve better results are often significantly supported by mothers in socially advantageous families [23]. Similarly, 15-year-old students who have a father with higher education also score higher on IT tests than those who have fathers with no or lower educational attainment [24]. Similarly, secondary students' digital literacy is also stated to be significantly impacted by the father's highest qualification [25].

Later research provides strong evidence on the positive relationship between parent's education level and their children's Internet skills [26], the result is supported by [18] that children' school IT achievement increased in correspondence with their increased parental educational qualification. More evidence is provided by Diogo and colleagues that parents with a higher academic level provide their kids more support in homework even without digital tools [23]. On the other hand, research indicates that in the case of parents who occasionally use the Internet, the children tend to be more passive or fatalistic when confronted with online risks [27]. As a result, occasional Internet users feel less confident in advising their children about digital-related topics.

The contrary views in previous studies lead to a question of whether parents with higher academic levels have a sufficient level of digital literacy and are able to protect their children from online risks.

#### *2.2. Gender and Students' Digital Literacy and Resilience*

The findings of whether or not gender is a factor affecting students' digital literacy are inconsistent. While some scholars have found that there are no significant relationship between gender and IT skills [28] or no gender differences [14,29], other studies have revealed that females seem to be less confident of their abilities compared to males [26,30]. In the study [31], the total average score of males' information literacy is much higher than females in some areas, which includes recognizing the need for information, evaluating, interpreting, towards accessing the gained information legally and ethically. Other studies also report that schoolboys show better results in Internet skill application [32,33] and tasks that required advanced digital skills (such as programming, coding) than girls [34]. Moreover, results in performing tasks required sophisticated digital skills to find that females' self-assessment to be lower than those for males [35].

In contrast, an investigation on digital performance shows that females perform better with digital information tasks comparing with males [36,37]. This finding is supported by the evidence-based result of the Australian 10 grade ICT literacy assessment, which shows that schoolgirls have a significantly higher level of ICT scores than boys [38].

In terms of resilience, previous studies also indicate that females are likely to be more resilient than males [39,40]. Supporting females' higher resilience notion, a survey with Italian students on school bullying involvement presents that male students are likely to have higher levels of dispositional resilience alienation, and female students show a higher level of dispositional resilience positivity [41]. In other research, the idea that females are more likely to seek out and receive support than boys are reported only as a predictive explanation [42]. Boys, therefore, are likely to try to fix the problems faced themselves as soon as possible, more than girls [43].

On the other hand, Liu and Sun [31] research find equality in mastering information knowledge of both female and male learners.

From this body of literature, it can be seen that the relationships between gender and digital literacy, as well as digital resilience, are questionable and still mostly ambiguous. Thus, further study is needed to clarify the gender differences in students' digital literacy and digital resilience.

#### *2.3. School Location and Students' Digital Literacy and Resilience*

There are conflicting results from previous works about the difference between urban and rural groups of students in using digital tools for learning together with their digital literacy and digital resilience.

A survey of grade 10 students in Malaysia finds that urban school students have a significantly higher level of essential IT, advanced IT, and Internet applications than their rural counterparts [29]. In China, with a similar finding, the predictive reason is that the digital facilities either at home or in schools are likely better in urban schools than those in rural schools, as urban schools have access to a higher level of funding for digital facilities than rural schools [44]. One study also finds that urban students show more digital experience, while rural students have lower Internet use for learning due to their shortage of technology experience [44]. Another example: on average, young Korean students studying in elementary schools located in major cities show higher digital literacy than those in rural schools [45]. According to this study, there is a significant gap between rural students and urban students in terms of digital competence.

However, earlier investigation reports that learners in the lower grades of schools located in rural provinces have better IT literacy achievement than ones studying in major cities [46]. This is due to a more significant technology investment by governments in those disadvantaged provinces.

Hence, the issue of whether or not school location is a factor affecting the level of students' digital literacy and resilience is a controversial topic and requires more research.

Regarding the context of Vietnam in 2018, Vietnet-ICT surveys the Internet safety education in school on 420 students in 12 cities and provinces and finds that 67 percent of students begin using the Internet when they are 3–12 years old and that 75 percent have been using social networks [47]. Their results show urgency in educating children on how to use the Internet in a safe and civilized way from a very early age. However, it seems that the content taught in IT classes evolved too slowly compared to the rapid development of technology [6]. In later life stages, it is also stated that human resources in IT do not meet the requirements of the labor market [6]; therefore, the renovation of the general education program for digital literacy has become an urgent issue.

Based on the inconsistencies in the current body of literature and the alarming situation of Vietnam as well as other countries, this study aims to evaluate the students' digital literacy and resilience based on the relationship with their family background, including social, economic status (SES), parents' education, gender, and school location. Based on this, the research questions follow:

RQ1: What are the relationships between students' socio-economic status, parents' education, and their digital literacy and resilience?

RQ2: What is the relationship between students' gender and their digital literacy and resilience?

RQ3: What is the relationship between students' school location and their digital literacy and resilience?

#### **3. Materials and Methods**

#### *3.1. Materials*

The study uses a dataset from the "Digital Kids Asia Pacific (DKAP)" project, which is publicly available in [12]. The dataset investigates 1061 Vietnamese students on digital literacy and resilience. They are 10th grade students in the academic year 2018/2019, chosen randomly from five provinces, which represent different regions from the North to the South of Vietnam. Data collection and its coding are processed from September to December of the same year, including the pilot with secondary students in Hanoi in April 2018.

We first focus on the *Digital Literacy* domain, which consists of 14 question items to examine how well students could use digital tools responsibly, effectively, and critically evaluate digital information. Next, we assess the *Digital Resilience* domain, which consists of 14 question items to understand how well students could protect themselves and others from online risks and how well they could recover and learn from risky situations. All question items of the two domains above are formed in a 4-point Likert scale that ranges from 'disagree a lot' (1) to 'agree a lot' (4). Both questions and participants' responses are codified into variables and variable categories in our dataset [48].

The analysis contains the following variables in Table 1 below. Observations with no sufficient data are treated as 'NA' (not applicable) in the data analysis. However, there are several observations that are missing data on digital resilience and literacy, and digital resilience and literacy level are interval data, so we add the average score of all students to the missing areas to avoid omitting them. In general, we extract 1061 observations on the digital literacy and resilience levels of 10th-grade students in Vietnam from the dataset, of which 53.1% were girls, and 46.9% were boys. A total of 544 responses (51.3%) are collected at rural high schools, while the other 517 responses (48.7%) are collected from urban high schools. The average education level of students' mothers (4.0) is slightly higher than that of student's fathers (3.9).


**Table 1.** Variables and definition.


**Table 1.** *Cont.*

#### *3.2. Methods*

In this paper, we use the Bayesian approach to analyze the data. The main tool used here is R software with the package bayesvl, which is available in [49]. The Bayesian analysis techniques, such as the hierarchical model and MCMC, have been successfully applied in education research in Vietnam [50–52]. They allow researchers to facilitate new knowledge without traditional meta-analyses and yield more principled conclusions from each new study [53]. These techniques help to visually demonstrate the results and the distributions of the coefficient, which is suitable for this study. When the model does not show sensitivity to adjustment of the prior, its credibility is proven [54]. Therefore, applying these techniques can enhance user experience and intuitive understanding when constructing and analyzing Bayesian network models [55]. Our research takes advantage of those techniques in exploring the relationship between Digital Resilience, Digital Literacy of students, and their family SES background. There are two models (Digital Literacy, Digital Resilience) demonstrating the association between students' digital literacy, resilience, and the dependent variables based on the Bayesian analysis techniques. The demonstration of models and results is discussed in the following sections.

#### **4. Results**

#### *4.1. E*ff*ects of Socioeconomic Status, Gender, Parents' Education Level, and the Location of Schools on the Students' Digital Literacy*

The formula of the Digital Literacy model (1) is as follows:

$$\text{ldl} \sim \text{ecostt} + \text{sex} + \text{edumot} + \text{edufat} + \text{(location)}.\tag{1}$$

Examples of code that were used to command the bayesvl package to construct the Digital Literacy model are as follows:

```