Purpose: To investigate perspectives of multiple stakeholders involved in development and delivery of Vietnam's first speech-language pathology degrees and derive recommendations for future degrees in Vietnam and other Majority World countries.
Methods: An exploratory-descriptive qualitative research design using focus groups and individual semi-structured interviews in the preferred language (English or Vietnamese) was used, with 70 participants from five stakeholder groups: project managers, students, academic educators, placement supervisors and interpreters. Transcriptions were analysed using thematic network analysis.
Results: Analysis identified five organising themes: (1) People enjoyed working with/learning from others; (2) Benefits from/to stakeholders; (3) The pandemic impacted program delivery and learning; (4) Practical challenges; (5) Preparation with flexibility required for success and sustainability. From the five organising themes, one synthesising global theme was developed, conveying that satisfying international collaborations require preparation, support, high quality interpreting, and management of challenges.
Conclusions: Recommendations highlight the need for preparation, collaboration, support to manage challenges, flexibility, recognition for placement supervisors and high-quality interpreting. The recommendations are of relevance to other organisations engaged in development of professional degrees in Majority World countries. Future research would benefit from a critical investigation of the diverse perspectives of stakeholders involved in the development and implementation of international curricula.
Keywords: Speech-language pathology; Vietnam; collaborative international partnerships; communication and swallowing rehabilitation; development; education; majority world; speech and language therapy.
Many Majority World countries are seeking to develop university degrees to build a workforce of speech-language pathologists to provide services to people with communication and swallowing disabilitiesCollaborative relationships, flexibility, and delineation of roles and commitments are vital to partnership successConceptualisation of rehabilitation services in cross-cultural contexts must privilege the knowledge, experiences and preferences of local partnersLocal capacity building will support training programs and rehabilitation services that are sustainable and culturally relevant.