Teaching competence of lecturers is a specialised form of competence, acting as a decisive factor in the teaching quality of the lecturer and the outcome of education and training. Hence, military schools should attach much importance to this issue.

Teaching competence of a lecturer is a combination of factors, such as knowledge, skills, methods, style, and aptitude, which form internal capabilities to meet the teaching requirements of the lecturer. Over the years, military schools have placed emphasis on improving their lecturers’ teaching competence. Via the professional development and self-development process, teaching competence of most of the lecturers has been unceasingly bettered to meet the increasingly high requirements of education and training. However, in addition to the recorded results, teaching competence of a section of lecturers, particularly young lecturers has been still limited; their knowledge, teaching skills, and methodology have yet to meet their task requirements. One of the main reasons for that issue is the asynchronous, ineffective implementation of measures for lecturers’ improved teaching competence in some academies, schools, offices, and faculties. Against that backdrop, there should be researches into solutions to improving lecturers’ teaching competence as a matter of urgency nowadays.

Cadets of the Naval Academy during a training session (photo: qdnd.vn)

Reality has proved that correct evaluation of lecturers’ teaching competence provides an important foundation for identifying content, forms, and methods of improvement. Only when regular, correct, objective assessments are conducted could improvements in lecturers’ teaching competence become really effective and sustainable. Therefore, party committees and commands of offices and faculties should give advice to academies and schools on designing, completing, and issuing an accurate, proper framework for assessing lecturers’ teaching competence. In the building of the teaching competence evaluation framework, it is necessary to take the particularities of military pedagogic environment and specialised operations tailored to each academy and school’s training goal and requirements into consideration and adhere to lecturers’ teaching steps and phases (teaching preparation, lecture delivery, examination and assessment, political - ideological orientation and inspiration for cadets). In the process, it is vital to renew and flexibly apply forms and methods of inspecting faculties’ teaching activities, and especially collect feedback about lecturers from their cadets in each subject and course and from their colleagues within departments and faculties. At the same time, it is possible to employ a reference-based assessment approach via study results of cadets as well as via data and inspection and management of teaching work from training and testing offices (number of teaching hours, number of inspections of teaching, class management, observance of teaching hall regulations, lecturers’ class arrival and departure routines). It is essential to promote the role of departments, methodology councils, and leaders of faculties in approving teaching plans, lesson plans, lectures, and course outlines to standardise the teaching competence assessment framework. Consideration should be given to heightening proactivity and creativity in lecturers’ teaching competence self-assessment and encouraging lecturers to gradually improve their skills and methods to meet their teaching requirements.

Teaching competence of a lecturer is the “performance competence” which is accumulated, formed, and developed in reality. Therefore, well organising professional development and training activities for lecturers is the most effective method for their improved teaching competence. Participation in different activities will be the quickest and most effective path for lecturers to accumulate their experience and better their competence comprehensively, including their teaching competence. In this regard, the first and key step is lecture preparations with specific activities, such as collecting and reading materials, designing (both paper and electronic) lectures, and practising delivering lectures. In those activities, there should be a pool of mentors within departments and faculties; lecture approval operations should be well conducted (a lecturer will deliver their lecture before their colleagues). After a lecturer finishes their lecture, there should be discussions and evaluations in terms of content, methodology, and teaching skills as the basis for the lecturer to draw lessons, promote strengths, and step by step settle weaknesses. Great value should be attached to holding all-level good lecturer contests, viewing them as an important “channel” for training and developing lecturers; every time lecturers deliver lectures (within a contest), they will gain more experience and become more mature in terms of pedagogic skill and expertise. Those contests will provide an opportunity for lecturers to demonstrate their teaching competence and to be assessed and recognised in terms of competence, thereby giving a great incentive to lecturers. Moreover, deploying lecturers to join exercises or hold positions in grass-roots units will enable them to broaden their knowledge, accumulate their experience, and grasp the characteristics of operations at grass-roots level. This approach will also help lecturers enhance their capabilities in managing classes, making analyses, giving explanations, and offering orientations relevant to the responsibilities and tasks assigned to cadets after graduation.

One of the factors that form and directly affect the teaching competence and quality of military lecturers is their pedagogic norms. Those pedagogic norms will foster the formation of viewpoints, attitudes, moral qualities, lifestyle, and conduct among lecturers. Thus, it is essential to well manage relationships within the pedagogic environment, i.e. the relationships between lecturers and cadets, between leaders of departments and faculties, between offices and faculties, between colleagues, and between superiors and subordinates. Academies and schools together with their offices and faculties should build a healthy military cultural environment as prerequisites for producing positive effects on lecturers’ teaching process. Besides, emphasis should be placed on creating an open, democratic atmosphere for lecturers to promote their proactivity and creativity in introducing and applying initiatives and innovations to teaching activities. In the teaching process, there should be exchange and mutual support between faculties, departments, and lecturers so as to achieve unity within the pedagogic environment. At the same time, it is necessary to organise exchange programs, forums, and scientific workshops in a joyful, united, friendly, humane atmosphere to enable lecturers to express their opinions about teaching activities and encourage their enthusiasm, resolve, strong sense of responsibility, and creativity in their work. That process requires each lecturer to improve their own military courtesy, pedagogic style and method, morality, and lifestyle as “role models” for their cadets and colleagues.

The improved teaching competence process among lecturers is greatly affected by many factors, i.e. all-level party committees and commands’ leadership and direction, facilities, and pedagogic environment. Those factors play an important role. However, activeness, self-awareness, proactivity, and creativity among lecturers act as the decisive factor. Thus, each lecturer should be fully aware of the position, role, and importance of the improved teaching competence to their own task performance and schools’ training and education operations. Lecturers should build positive motivations and attitudes in their teaching and scientific research process. In teaching realities, lecturers should promote pedagogic self-improvement, cultivate a strong memory, improve their physical resilience, and develop a persuasive voice together with fluent, logical, scientific articulation. They should keep acquiring knowledge and improve their teaching skills and experience via different forms and methods at any time, in any place, under any teaching condition to enhance their own competence.

Currently, digital transformation in education and training necessitates military schools actively mobilising resources to modernise their facilities, equipment, and technology as the basis for improving their lecturers’ teaching competence. To that end, schools should grasp new advances in science and technology and get a head start on modern technologies in accordance with the goals and content of application in all the tasks of education and training, scientific research, management, and command. Emphasis should be placed on developing synchronised information technology and basic facilities for lecturers’ teaching and scientific research. Priority should be given to designing new electronic lectures, textbooks, and materials under uniform criteria in all subjects and courses, encoding and digitalising all common data, particularly textbooks, materials, and reference books. There is a fact that information technology applications for teaching and learning in military specialities are not available in the market. Hence, academies and schools should attach significance to receiving and transferring pieces of software designed for lecturers, evaluating the efficiency of those applications, undertaking researches on upgradation for the sake of their lecturers’ improved teaching competence in response to the requirements of digital transformation in the current period.

Each solution mentioned above has its own scientific basis, role, and position; however, they are closely linked with and impacted on one another towards effective, sustainable improvements in lecturers’ teaching competence. Thus, the implementation of those solutions should be synchronised, with improvements in lecturers’ teaching competence being a yardstick for evaluations and adjustments relevant to each school’s education and training tasks.

Sr. Col. PHAM NGUYEN NGOC ANH, PhD

Director of Political Department of Engineering Officer College