Ecological Integration of Social-Emotional and Life Skills Education in Vietnamese Primary Schools: A Whole-School Reform Model

Life skills education (LSE) has become a strategic priority within contemporary educational reform, particularly in competency-based systems such as Vietnam’s General Education Curriculum 2018. However, implementation at the primary level remains fragmented, content-heavy, and insufficiently aligned with developmental psychology and ecological systems theory. Drawing upon a systematic synthesis of Vietnamese and international literature, policy documents, and empirical school-based reports, this study develops a theoretically grounded and practice-responsive framework to enhance life skills education for Vietnamese primary students. Anchored in WHO’s life skills framework, UNESCO’s competency-based paradigm, Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory, and social-emotional learning (SEL) research (Durlak et al., 2011) [4], the article proposes five integrative solutions: (1) Whole-school SEL integration; (2) Structured family–school partnership; (3) Experiential and contextualized pedagogy; (4) Teacher professional capacity building; and (5) Multi-tiered support and evaluation mechanisms. The proposed framework advances coherence between policy, pedagogy, assessment, and school culture, contributing a scalable model aligned with Vietnam’s reform agenda and international quality standards.