Ngo Phan Anh Tuan
Open and flexible technical and vocational education and training (TVET) is increasingly organized around a set of open modular pathways delivered through a blend of learning settings and contexts, making use of recognition of prior learning and new forms of small scale credentials, increasingly located in and around the world of work. The educator workforce is seen as merely a delivery mechanism in most of the current TVET reform agendas. This workforce is in fact the central condition that determines the quality of education, the equity of access and the overall system coherence. This critical integrative review examines the capabilities and enabling conditions required across institution-based teachers, workplace trainers, assessors, guidance personnel, instructional leaders, digital learning specialists, and industry experts. A structured purposive review brought together 49 scholarly and policy sources, interpreted through four lenses: system openness, flexibility, workforce capability, and contextual transfer. The synthesis identifies an interconnected development architecture spanning initial preparation, induction, occupational renewal, reciprocal industry engagement, collaborative professional learning, career progression, and evidence-informed quality assurance. It also reveals persistent tensions. Flexibility can fragment curricula; digital provision may marginalise the material and social dimensions of vocational learning; employer responsiveness can narrow educational purposes; and formal standards may displace professional judgement when they become compliance-oriented. In Viet Nam, recent legislation and governance reform create an important policy window, although available evidence does not yet show how consistently occupational currency, professional learning, industry mobility, and workplace learning are supported across institutions and regions. The article therefore proposes a heuristic Open and Flexible TVET Educator Workforce Development Framework and a three-phase policy roadmap for 2026–2045. It concludes that open and flexible TVET becomes credible only when those who teach, assess, mentor, design, and connect learning with work are themselves supported through coherent systems of lifelong professional learning.