Contemplating Pedagogy amid Gender and Sexuality Diversity in Contemporary Vietnam

Giang Nguyen Hoang Le, also known as Kevin Le, is a proud feminist educator and scholar/researcher and a Southeast Asian descendant. Giang Le goes by preferred pronouns: she/her/hers as a self-claimed woman. She is living and working mindfully and respectfully on the land of the Secwepemc, within Secwepemc'ulucw, the traditional and unceded territory of the Secwepemc People, where her institution is located, Thompson Rivers University (TRU), Canada. She is affiliated with TRU School of Education, teaching graduate courses related to diversity issues in education, as Associate Professor of Educational Studies. She is the founder and convener of the Global South Collective, an initiative that supports and promotes critical studies in the Global South contexts, that is, Southeast Asia and Oceania. The outcome is the annual International Symposium on Global South Studies, leading to edited collections and special issues in top-tier journals, that is, Policy Futures in Education, European Journal of Education, and Transitions: Journal of Transient Migration.Fiona Blaikie’s bachelors degree from the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town, was followed by an MA in visual arts pedagogy, University of Victoria, and a Ph.D. in the Department of Visual and Performing Arts in Education, University of British Columbia. She has an internationally recognized record of scholarship and praxis in visual arts education and related fields: Following aesthetics and culture, she examines situated and shifting visual and cultural identity constructs encompassing social theory on the body, new materialities, worlding, affect, the post-qualitative, popular culture, science fiction, transhumanism, and posthumanism. Her edited collection published by Routledge came out in 2021 and is titled Visual and Cultural Identity Constructs of Global Youth and Young Adults: Being, Becoming, and Belonging. She has won numerous awards for her scholarship, including the 2021 USSEA/InSEA Ziegfeld International Award for leadership and global impact in visual arts education. In 2025, she was inducted as a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, Arts and Humanities division.An experienced professor, her wide-ranging skills encompass 20 years in leadership and higher education administration - five years as Dean of the Faculty of Education at Brock University, preceded by ten years in administrative roles, including Graduate Studies Chair, and Director of the Joint Ph.D. in the Educational Studies Program. Until recently, she served as Associate Director of the Posthuman Research Institute at Brock University and Co-Chair of the Arts Education Research Institute, a global scholarly think-tank. Her community work encompasses leading non-profit organizations such as Arts and Heritage Thunder Bay, where she was project lead and writer to secure Ontario Trillium Funding to create the ongoing Community Arts and Heritage Education Project in Thunder Bay, Ontario. She was President of the Canadian Society for Education through Art and a World Councillor serving the International Society for Education through Art. She served as Chief Examiner of Visual Arts for the International Baccalaureate Organization from 2015 to 2019.Ethan Trinh (they/them) is a Vietnamese, queer, immigrant scholar, and global leader dedicated to expanding equity and access across K–20 education. As Associate Director of the Atlanta Global Studies Center (Title VI) and Managing Director of the Arabic Teachers Council of the South, Dr. Trinh builds partnerships that connect communities, educators, and institutions across borders. Their research focuses on queer teachers’ emotions and well-being, with 50+ peer-reviewed publications and 10+ edited volumes. Dr. Trinh also serves as Lead Editor of a book series at Emerald Publishing. Their leadership has been recognized with the 2025 DA Global Impact Rising Star Award, the U.S. Department of State Reciprocal Exchange Award, the 2025 LGBTQ Higher Education Fellowship, and TESOL’s Leadership Mentoring Award, among others. Recently, Dr. Trinh founded Dr. Trinh's Foundation, an ATL-based non-profit organization to support marginalized communities in and beyond Atlanta. Dr. Trinh champions multilingual education, virtual exchange, rural engagement, and global collaborations grounded in justice, care, and critical love.Long Hoang Vu is a Ph.D. candidate in interdisciplinary humanities at Brock University and a 2025 recipient of the prestigious Ontario Graduate Scholarship. He serves as Managing Editor of the Canadian Journal of Political Philosophy and assists the editor-in-chief at Philosophical Inquiry in Education, one of Canada's leading journals in educational philosophy. Long has authored and co-authored six books in Vietnamese, spanning education and media culture. His editorial expertise extends beyond academia into the media industry, where he has held senior editorial positions and currently contributes as an active columnist for multiple Vietnamese media outlets, covering education, politics, and the arts. This dual background in academic scholarship and public intellectual engagement informs his rigorous yet accessible approach to editorial work, bridging scholarly discourse with broader audiences.

• Foreword (Deevia Bhana) Introduction (Giang Nguyen Hoang Le, Thompson Rivers University, Canada; Fiona Blaikie, Brock University, Canada; Ethan Trinh, Georgia State University, USA; and Long Hoang Vu, Brock University, Canada) Part I: Challenges Chapter 1: "True men have an instinct to protect their women": Adoption of patriachal values and emergence of feminist sensibilities among urban Vietnamese women (Thi Gammon, King’s College London, UK) Chapter 2: Gendered talents: Navigating giftedness and gender expectations in the Vietnamese family through autoethnography (Long Hoang Vu, Brock University, Ontario, Canada) Chapter 3: Financial literacy and inclusion for LGBTQ+ students in Vietnam: "I'm a normal person, and LGBTQ+ students are humans" (Vuong Tran, Nipissing University, Canada & Hutech University, Vietnam and Huynh Nhat Hai, Hutech University, Vietnam) Part 2: Contemplating Issues Chapter 4: “I can not become a woman in clothes and high heels”: The stages and backstage stories in the gender performativity of transgender male to female (MTF) in Ho Chi Minh city (Binh Nguyen Van, Vietnam National University-University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Ho Chi Minh) Chapter 5: Critical media literacy: Educating for inclusive representations of Vietnamese women in TV commercials (Quynh Thi Phuong Vu, Vietnam National University-University of Languages and International Studies) Part 3: Pedagogical Possibilities Chapter 6: Reclaiming bê đê: Re-creating a utopia of feminism, queerness, and peace in vietnamese EFL textbooks (Ethan Trinh, Georgia State University, USA; Trung M. Nguyen, Oregon State University, USA; and Ha Bich Dong, University of Manitoba, Canada) Chapter 7: Buddhist Education in Vietnam and LGBTIQ+ Awareness in Buddhist Families: From Traditional Teachings to Modern Perceptions (Ngô-Hồ Anh-Khôi, Nam Can Tho University, Vietnam; Hầu Lâm-Phùng, Center for Philosophy of Religions and Faiths; Trần Thị-Hạnh, VNU University of Social Sciences and Humanities) Chapter 8: Southeast Asian contexts: Creating pedagogical and aesthetic spaces for reflexive engagement in fashioning and making a self (Fiona Blaikie, Brock University, Canada) Chapter 9: Reinforcing and reimagining gender norms in Vietnamese fairy tales: Pedagogical implications for early childhood education (Mai Phuc Thinh, Chulalongkorn University, Thailand) Chapter 10: When Confucius meets Hannah Arendt: Toward a queering literary education in Vietnam (Nguyen Thi Minh, Nguyen Minh Nhat Nam and Tran Quan Thoai, University of Education, Ho Chi Minh)