Too black to be <i>The Little Mermaid</i> ? Backlash against Disney’s 2023 <i>The Little Mermaid</i> – continuity of racism, white skin preference and hate content in Vietnam

When it was released globally and in Vietnam in May 2023, the live-action Disney movie The Little Mermaid was met with strong backlash online and boycotting in the Southeast Asian country. Negative reactions against the movie due to the casting of Halle Bailey, a Black actress for the titular role, a mermaid and princess of the ocean named Ariel, showed concerning signs of racism and sexism that stem from a preference for white skin and an emphasis on the importance of looks in women. This article seeks to understand such reactions through its discussion of cultural factors such as the issues of racism and white supremacy and how they intersect with a tendency to resist inclusive movements, the growing trend of hate content and sexist conception of beauty in Vietnam. The article suggests an intersectional approach and considers the concept “misogynoir” to explain the backlash against Halle Bailey’s starring in the movi

A Review of Salary Policies for Vietnamese Civil Servants from 2010 to 2019

The public- sector salary policy is an important part of the socio-economic policy system, directly related to the balances of the economy, state budget and the life of the salary earners. This paper rests on secondary data that are legal documents on salary policy, related data and literature officially published to describe and analyse the salary system for Vietnamese civil servants in governmental agencies from 2010 to 2019. Some issues are outlined for consideration. First, how civil servants are ranked and salary policies for them from 2010 to 2019 are. The salary policy includes salary formula, base pay, minimum wage, allowances, components of the pay scale, pay rise rules. Second, their four characteristics are drawn out consisting of the stable and unified legal system; career-based grade pay system; many allowances; the salary system tends to pay for performance, be market-oriented but not really achieved. Third, some comments, pros and cons of the salary system in this period are explored. Finally, it is summarized that some suggestions, recommendations to improve Vietnamese civil service salary system through minimizing its disadvantages and promoting inherent advantages. Keywords: Vietnam, salary policy, salary system, public sector, civil servants, career-based system DOI: 10.7176/PPAR/9-11-03 Publication date: November 30th 201

Online teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic: Vietnamese language teachers’ emotions, regulation strategies and institutional policy and management

Teaching is often described as one of the most emotion-laden professions. In times of the COVID-19 pandemic, the conversion to online teaching has triggered new emotional experiences of teachers that not many studies have taken into account. Studying emotion from a poststructuralist lens, this study examines the emotional experiences of 10 language teachers in a university in Vietnam and their responses to the new teaching platforms. Analysis of the in-depth semi-structured interviews shows that the pedagogically and technologically distinctive features of online teaching aroused unique challenges for and emotions of the teachers, both positive and negative. Also, the teachers reported a number of strategies to cope with the new situation which we term as in-the-moment and out-of-class emotion regulation. The study highlights the need for acknowledgment and support for teachers in terms of resources, policy and management of institutions in the “new normal situation,” while displaying teachers’ self-reliance and emotional self-regulation. The article calls for attention to teachers emotion as an integral dimension of the profession, regardless of the physical or virtual setting of the classroom

STUDY ON LEARNING AUTONOMY STRATEGIES FOR ENGLISH SPEAKING SKILLS OF HIGH-QUALITY FIRST-YEAR STUDENTS, SCHOOL OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES, CAN THO UNIVERSITY, VIETNAM

This study examined the challenges of self-studying English-speaking skills for first-year English studies majors at Can Tho University. The study aimed to answer questions such as: What self-study strategies can first-year students majoring in high-quality English at School of Foreign Languages at Can Tho University apply to develop speaking skills? The target audience was 96 English studies majors who have studied speaking and listening at Can Tho University. A questionnaire and an interview with 13 students were used to collect data for this study. In order to support the quantitative data, a questionnaire was used, while an interview was used for the qualitative data. This study aimed to find out the difficulties encountered by students, thereby proposing solutions to overcome them and improve the quality of their learning autonomy or self-studying English-speaking skills.  Article visualizations

Seed Health and Quality of Rice Seeds Produced by Farmer and Growing in Cho Moi District, An Giang Province, Vietnam

This study was conducted at Laboratory in An Giang University; the varieties examined were collected from farmer households in 2018 – they were varieties that the farmer stored for the next crop (Winter-Spring) from Autumn-Winter crop in Cho Moi district, An Giang Province, Vietnam. The research evaluated the quality of seed rice, which is provided and planted by the farmer. As a result, this study showed that almost all of the varieties of seed rice from farmer households indicated the ratio of filled-grain, the germination, and the determination of seedling healthy, which are lower than certified variation. Besides, the samples of seed rice from farmer household have more infected fungal; especially the samples with higher in a filled-grain ratio is less infected by fungi, there were 12 types of seed borne-fungi in rice varieties from the farmer (in Cho Moi district), included: Alternaria padwickii, Rhizoctonia solani, Aspergillus oryzae, Bipolaris oryzae, Cercospora janseana, Curvularia lunata, Fusarium moniliforme, Pyricularia oryzae, Sarocladium oryzae, Tilletia barclayana, Fusarium graminearum, and Ustilaginoidea viren

Countering stuckness: international doctoral students' experiences of disrupted mobility amidst COVID-19

The paper, through the lens of positioning and agency theories, examines the experiences of being stranded in the home country due to the restricted mobility caused by the COVID-19 pandemic of 10 international doctoral students of different nationalities (Chinese, Vietnamese, Malaysian, and Indian), majoring in different disciplines (Education, Linguistics, Applied linguistics, Economics, Public health, and Civil engineering), and studying in different countries (New Zealand, Australia, and the United States). With an aim to explore the abrupt immobility and its subsequent impacts on the students’ learning, the article highlights the challenges that the students had to tackle including the feelings of being in limbo, nostalgia, and detachment, and faced with academic challenges due to the physical distance from the study destination. Accordingly, they had to self-position and reposition themselves and enact different forms of agency to confront the difficulties, including agency for becoming, needs-response agency, and agency as struggle and resistance. The findings highlight how the international PhD students mobilized resources to develop their independence as future researchers, as well as their connection with the academic communities in their home countries in various ways

Self-injurious Behavior of Children with Autism in Vietnam: Across Sectional Study

This study explored self-injurious behaviour (SIB) of autistic children in Vietnam through a crosssectional design. 60 informants, including 57 parents and 3 caregivers completed the questionnaire on problem behaviour consisting of aggression, self-injury, stereotyping, property destruction, other problem behaviours and their functions. Results revealed that children experienced all mentioned problem behaviours, especially self-injurious behaviour. The topographies of self-injurious behaviour of the children included head-hitting, head-scratching, head-banging, hair-pulling, face-hitting, facepuncturing with a pen, ear-scratching, lip-picking, hand-biting, hand-scratching, hand-pinching, and belly-scratching. The most common area of self-injurious behaviour is the head. The functions of these problem behaviours were expressed in four types (social positive reinforcement, social negative reinforcement, automatic positive reinforcement and automatic negative reinforcement). Social positive reinforcement appeared as a prominent function. Out of these 57 children, 21 of them who were autistic with self-injurious behaviour went through a functional behaviour assessment (FBA) in which the four conditions known as attention, tangible items, escape from task/activities, automatic stimulation were tested. The results of functional behaviour assessment (FBA) further indicated the correspondence between the FAST-R and FBA outcome on function of problem behaviour, especially self-injurious behaviour. The research concluded that the prominent function of these self-injurious behaviours was social function. It means self-injurious behaviours usually occur within a condition of social interaction, especially, in this present study, in the tangible condition. The antecedent of selfinjurious behaviour is the removal of tangibles (e.g. food, preferred items). This paper contributes to our knowledge of self-injurious behaviour of children with autism in Vietnam where empirical research of this field was still very rare

The effect of emotional intelligence on the performance of auditors

This study aims to evaluate the impact of effective emotional intelligence on the work of auditors in Ho Chi Minh City, Ho Chi Minh. The authors conducted a survey for 355 auditors at companies and organizations operating in the field of auditing. The results show that there were 4 factors of emotional intelligence that affect job performance, arranged in the following sequence: (1) Perception of emotions, (2) Positive thinking with emotions, (3) Understand emotions, (4) Control emotions. This is the basis for the authors to give some implications to improve the emotional intelligence characteristics of auditors towards work efficiency

Pre-treatment potential of electro-coagulation process using aluminum and titanium electrodes for instant coffee processing wastewater

This study aimed at investigating the potential of electrocoagulation (EC) process using Al-Al and Al-Ti electrodes for the pre-treatment of instant coffee processing wastewater. Effects of various operating conditions, including cell voltage, time of treatment, inter-electrode distance, pH of solution, solution conductivity and agitation speed on the removals of chemical oxygen demand (COD) and color were considered. The maximum removal of COD and color was achieved at 87% and 99%, respectively, corresponding to COD and color in the effluents of 359-384 mg/L and 58-101 Pt-Co. Biodegradability of treated wastewater was significantly improved since BOD5/COD increased from initial value of 0.42 to 0.65 after treatment. Nether mixing nor adding of electrolyte was recommended. Moreover, the COD removal kinetics during EC process appeared to follow the first-order kinetic model. The operating costs were also determined as a reference for cost assessment of the treatment

A SOCIAL SURVEY ON COMMUNITY RESPONSE TO ROAD TRAFFIC NOISE IN HANOI

Joint Research on Environmental Science and Technology for the Eart