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The purpose of this paper is to explore the influence of culture on the sense of self-efficacy in teaching English as a Foreign Language of a group of university teachers in Vietnam. Research exploring the relationship between culture and self-efficacy is extremely rare despite the acknowledged importance of culture in the formation of self-efficacy beliefs.

This study took the form of qualitative research with diverse, data collection instruments: individual interviews, focus group discussions, observations and journaling.

Findings indicate that certain features of the Vietnamese cultural context impacted on the way the study teachers constructed their sense of self-efficacy. Specifically, under the influence of a Vietnamese sense of belonging, the study teachers tended to rely more on efficacy-building information from other people rather than from themselves. The perception of inequality in power may have heightened negative emotional arousal, thus contributing to a negative sense of self-efficacy among the teachers. The Vietnamese concept of face and the high status of teachers in the social hierarchy in part mediated teachers’ sense of self-efficacy.

The perceived burden of performing both parenting and teaching roles and responsibilities may have diminished the self-efficacy in teaching of female teachers.

The contribution and implications of the study are discussed.

This study aims to answer two questions: do self-efficacy and outcome expectations serial mediate the effect of entrepreneurial education (EE) on the intention to start a business? and how can the social cognitive career theory explain entrepreneurial intention (EI)?

This study is based on the social cognitive career theory to examine the effect of EE on start-up intention via self-efficacy and outcome expectations by a serial mediation model. A sample of 1,232 students in Vietnam and the structural equal modelling method was used to test the hypotheses.

The results of this study reveal that entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE) significantly mediates the effect of EE on the intention to start a business. Similarly, entrepreneurial outcome expectations (EOEs) mediate the association between EE and EI. Especially, the results of serial mediation analysis show that ESE and EOEs serially mediate the EE–intention relationship.

Under a new perspective of social cognitive career theory, the current study is expected to contribute to clarifying the gap in the relationship between EE and EI. In addition, this study also contributes to investigating the antecedents of ESE and outcome expectations and providing empirical evidence supporting the relevance of social cognitive career theory in explaining EI.

Across societies, gendered climate response decisions remain top-down and have limited progress because the influenced risk dynamics and their interrelations are not adequately understood. This study aims to address this gap by proposing an interdisciplinary innovative method, called women climate vulnerability (WCV) index, for measuring and comparing a diverse range of risks that threaten to undermine the adaptive capacity and resilience of rural women.

This paper builds on the literature to identify 12 risk categories across physical, economic and political sectors that affect rural women. These categories and attendant 51 risk indicators form the WCV index. A case study in Ben Tre Province (Vietnam) was used to demonstrate the application of the WCV methodology to rural contexts. The authors combined empirical, survey and secondary data from different sources to form data on the indicators. Structured expert judgment was used to address data gaps. Empirical and expert data were combined using a few weighting steps and a comprehensive coding system was developed to ensure objective evaluation.

The WCV assessment results reveal a reasonably worrisome picture of women’s vulnerability in Ben Tre as top highest-likelihood and deepest-impact risks predominate in physical and economic risk sectors. Stability, human security and governance categories have lowest scores, demonstrating a fairly politically favourable condition in the province. The medium risk scores captured in land and infrastructure categories reveal promising determinants of the adaptation of women in this rural province. The results demonstrate the usefulness of the WCV index in collecting bottom-up data, evaluating a wide variety of risks that rural women face and pinpointing priority areas that need to be addressed.

The WCV is systematic, customisable and localised. It combines field research and empirical data through structured expert judgment, thus enables researchers to fill data gaps and to do evidence-based assessment about diverse risk vulnerabilities. By doing so, the WCV index gives critical insights into the challenges that rural women face. This enables local governments to better understand cross-sectoral risks, pinpoint priority areas of action and timely channel funding and policy resources to support women where they need it most.