Teacher training quality has long been in focus of attention, particularly when many radical changes have been made for Vietnamese higher education renovation in recent decades (GoV, 2006). Among various problems identified by policy makers and academia, weaknesses in the state management and higher education management are deemed to cause most of the systematic shortcomings of Vietnamese education. The government determined that traditional management of higher education should be replaced with quality-oriented management (MOET, 2004; MOET, 2009; World Bank, 2014). In reality, while teacher quality and teacher training in Vietnam have been commonly under investigation, there is little literature on how quality of teacher training is managed (GoV, 2016; World Bank, 2016). My research explores the practice of quality management of pre-service teacher training (PTT) at a Vietnamese university which specialises in teacher training. With the purpose of showing a real picture of the quality management at operational level, the research investigates the perceptions of key stakeholders about the PTT quality and the implementation of quality management in respect of three dimensions including quality control, quality assurance, quality enhancement. Findings indicate the incomplete implementation of quality assurance due to organisational culture and a shortage of expertise and resources, particularly at institutional level. Evidence shows that there are signs of dominance in informal activities over formal exercises in the process of managing quality of the programmes. The research is envisaged to make a contribution to the body of knowledge relating to quality management associated with teacher training in Vietnam.
Keywords: quality management; quality assurance; teacher training; higher education;