Vietnam's National Foreign Languages Project (NFL) is a far-reaching national initiative that aims to develop national policy and practice in foreign language education, with a strong focus on the English language, as well as the use of emerging technologies in the teaching of languages. As an under-represented context in CALL literature, Vietnam provides the international research community striking insights into attempts at CALL integration and its links to national educational development and economic growth, from macro-level policy development to meso-and micro-level implementation, in all its complexity. In this chapter we explore contexts of ICT integration into Vietnamese educational policy, methodology, and practice, from a sociocultural ecological perspective, highlighting tensions between a desire for autonomy and technological and pedagogical innovation on one hand, and existing top-down structures and historically embedded educational practices on the other. After a brief discussion of the relevance of competency-based education-with a specific focus on technology standards-we provide an in-depth analysis of Vietnam's aspirational (and expensive) educational, language, and technology policy frameworks, highlighting challenges related to the borrowing of policies developed in other contexts, and top-down, across-the-board methods of implementation. We then explore, at the micro-level, challenges for CALL integration in language teacher education in ICT, in the specific context of Public University (PU, deidentified). Drawing on our reflections on PU's policy-driven implementation, and recent research literature into CALL integration, we conclude with a set of contextualized principles aimed at sustainable CALL integration at the micro-level, while acknowledging the existing meso-and macro-level requirements, aspirations, and challenges. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023. All rights reserved.
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