Challenges Defining a Life Purpose in an Exam-driven Culture: A Case of Vietnam

DOI

10.2991/assehr.k.210226.028How to use a DOI?

Keywords

life purpose, purposeful education, exam culture

Abstract

As British writer and philosopher Thomas Carlyle once said, “The person without a purpose is like a ship without a rudder,” many celebrated names in history have long emphasized the importance of having a life purpose. However, results from recent studies have revealed that many young people face the challenge of exploring their life’s purpose, which can be consistent with their exam-driven culture. Intrigued by these findings, I carried out this current research to investigate Vietnam’s situation, where the lack of a purpose compass and an exam culture have been criticized by the mainstream media but not widely discussed in academia. Using a mixed-method approach with an online survey and semi-structured interviews, the study was carried out with 135 Vietnamese students, who are either senior high schoolers or first-year students in Northern Vietnam. Findings confirmed that these students are left with little time to explore their purpose, and there is a negative correlation between the exam culture and this lack of purpose.

Copyright

© 2021, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Hoa Pham
PY  - 2021
DA  - 2021/03/01
TI  - Challenges Defining a Life Purpose in an Exam-driven Culture: A Case of Vietnam
BT  - Proceedings of the 17th International Conference of the Asia Association of Computer-Assisted Language Learning (AsiaCALL 2021)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 228
EP  - 233
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.210226.028
DO  - 10.2991/assehr.k.210226.028
ID  - Pham2021
ER  -