Perspectives of Administrators and Teachers on Factors Affecting STEM Professional Development Management in Primary Schools in the Mekong Delta
Main Article Content
Abstract
This study examined administrators’ and teachers’ perceptions of the factors affecting the management of professional development for primary school teachers’ STEM teaching competencies in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam. The paper reports the quantitative phase of a mixed-methods study and employed a cross-sectional survey of 1,100 participants, including 350 school administrators and 750 primary school teachers. The 64-item instrument covered eight factor groups: teachers’ competencies, awareness, and attitudes; administrators’ management capacity and commitment; facilities and technological infrastructure; organizational culture and coordination mechanisms; education policies; support from teacher education institutions and experts; parents, communities, and local authorities; and international integration, digital transformation, Industry 4.0, and artificial intelligence. The scales demonstrated acceptable reliability, with Cronbach’s alpha coefficients ranging from 0.751 to 0.772. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and independent-samples t-tests. The findings indicated that all eight factor groups were perceived to exert a high level of influence, with overall mean scores ranging narrowly from 3.77 to 3.78. Nevertheless, administrators consistently reported substantially higher ratings than teachers: factor-level means ranged from 4.35 to 4.38 among administrators, compared with 3.49 to 3.50 among teachers. Areas of shared concern included a weak culture of professional knowledge sharing, limited inspirational leadership, insufficient safety conditions for STEM practice, restricted decentralization, inadequate post-professional-development expert support, and unstable school-community collaboration. The study recommends need-based management, stronger instructional leadership, professional learning communities, sustained follow-up support, and regional partnership networks to enhance the effectiveness of STEM teacher professional development in primary schools.
Keywords
management of professional development, Mekong Delta, primary school teachers, STEM education, teacher professional development
Article Details
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