WHOLE SCHOOL PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT FOR COMPENTENCY-BASED INSTRUCTION THROUGH PROFESSIONAL LEARNING COMMUNITY IN PHUKET PROVINCE

Abstract

In Thailand, reform efforts are often unsuccessful because they failed to understand that teachers play a key role in making educational reforms successful. The competency-based school curriculum development is a key mechanism for successful implementation of the national curriculum framework. However, the problem discovered is that schools continue to lack knowledge and clear guidelines. Teacher and School Quality Program (TSQP) was continuous project that funded by the Equitable Education Fund (EEF), Thailand. This project was a long‐term school professional development program (PD) that aimed to educating and coaching teachers and school principal to conduct competency- based instruction (CBI) through active learning. Whole school approach was used as PD design framework. The research objective was to identify, follow and document the processes that science teachers went through as they assimilated. The research accompanied the PD program throughout its 2‐year period. There were 25 science teachers, 25 school principals and 4 supervisors who took part in the PD program, were exposed to CBI including coaching skills. The research instruments included teacher portfolios, which contained projects and reflection questionnaires, classroom observations, teacher interviews, and teachers feedback questionnaires. The portfolios contained the projects that the teachers had carried out during the PD program, which included case studies and accompanying student activities. We found that the teachers gradually moved from exposure to new teaching methods and subject matter, through active learning lessons that were an integration-based project, to interdisciplinary, active classroom teaching using the real world situation/ phenomena they developed. Their teaching plans were flexible to student’s learning that these teachers gathered along with their practices. Qualitative and Quantitative data confirms these science teachers have positive prospective on CBI and their practices are moving forward to more open-inquiry instruction through providing active learning with overlapping multiple disciplines that are examined.