Purpose The purpose of this paper is to identify challenges in education for sustainable development (ESD) implementation in teacher education institutions (TEIs) in Vietnam and propose some appropriate solutions to advance ESD in training teachers toward sustainability. Design/methodology/approach The authors interviewed ten lecturers and 75 students in five TEIs across Vietnam and organized focus groups to obtain qualitative data which were coded to identify themes and provide quantitative results for analysis. Findings ESD-related topics were included in both formal and non-formal education. However, there remains a wide gap between ESD cognition and ESD teaching capacity among teacher trainees due to the prevalence of top-down pedagogy, large classes and poor facilities. Through strengthening collaboration among multiple stakeholders, TEIs should achieve more effective ESD approaches. Research limitations/implications Future research is required to examine the role of non-formal educational educators, NGOs, for instance, in training teachers about ESD. Practical implications Low-cost initiatives generating from the paper may be applied in higher education institutions, particularly in training teachers across developing countries. Social implications The paper analyses the key role of lecturers in ESD implementation and promotion which should be useful for ESD educators. Originality/value The paper points out current challenges in ESD implementation in TEIs in Vietnam and suggests some solutions which may be applied in ESD teaching education in other developing countries.

Her research focuses on education for sustainable development at higher education. Jane Singer is associate professor in the Environmental Education study area, Graduate School of Global Environmental Studies, Kyoto University, Japan. Her research focusses on sustainable development, particularly migration and displacement and community resilience.

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The USAID-funded Building Healthy Cities (BHC) work in Da Nang, Vietnam, engaged 108 multi-sector stakeholders to gather qualitative data across two workshops and three citizen town halls from 2019 to 2021. These data were synthesized with the results from BHC’s seven other activities in Da Nang to build systems maps. Contextual findings showed that multi-sector, multi-level participation and collaboration have been the key to moving the city toward their smart and livable city goals. Currently, citizen, nongovernmental organization, and private sector collaboration are low for many government sectors, which results in policy and programs that are mismatched to actual needs and therefore have less powerful impacts. When these policies and programs are implemented, they struggle to demonstrate strong benefits to these stakeholder groups, further decreasing participation. This is central to the systems map that BHC developed, and is expanded upon through additional patterns that fall within four main areas: management quality; vision and leadership; workforce capacity; and community engagement. Stakeholders found four key leverage points within this context that, if included in every action, could help overcome barriers. These leverage opportunities are: (1) investing at all levels; (2) improving function and innovation of information technology; (3) increasing participation and feedback; and (4) creating more responsive policy. As BHC concludes activities in Da Nang, local university students will be trained on systems mapping techniques to embed systems thinking skills into the next generation of workforce, and a set of recommendations will be developed to share with the government to act on these findings.

This paper details how two popular non-formal actors at Vietnamese universities, the Youth Union and youth environmental clubs, promote engagement by student teachers in sustainability. Though their activities were found to have enhanced students’ awareness of environment and sustainability, there remain two categories of constraints, internal and external, preventing students from proactive performance in sustainability. Based on an analysis of each organization’s strength and weaknesses, and on students’ demands, the authors suggest four steps to improve sustainability planning, including establishment of a hub of sustainability promotion, fostering sustainability leadership, conceiving a systematic action plan, and creating a communication network to promote students’ active efforts towards sustainability Keywords: youth, sustainability-linked activities, education for sustainable development