Parents’ Opinions on Promoting thinking skills in Young Children of School Cluster 44, under Nong Chok District Office, Bangkok Metropolitan Administration

Abstract

This study aims to examine parents’ opinions on promoting thinking skills in young children of School Cluster 44, under Nong Chok District Office, Bangkok Metropolitan Administration in 2 aspects, namely learning activities at home and environmental management. The population was 307 parents of young children in the academic year 2023 from 5 schools. The instrument used for data collection was a questionnaire with a 5-point Likert scale, and the data were analyzed as frequency, percentage, mean and standard deviation.

The results of the study revealed that the overall level of parents’ opinions on promoting thinking skills in young children was high (µ = 4.33, σ = 0.76). For the aspect of learning activities at home (µ = 4.32, σ = 0.75), the item with the highest mean score was that parents should allow their children to use their own imagination and ideas to play, such as role-playing, imitating people of various occupations, playing selling and cooking, etc. Meanwhile, for the aspect of environmental management (µ = 4.33, σ = 0.78), the item with the highest mean score was that parents should be a good role model for their children. In addition, parents provided additional suggestions to support and promote thinking skills in their children, which can be grouped into 5 issues. Among them, 3 issues with the highest frequencies were that parents should receive more knowledge about promoting thinking skills, followed by the idea that materials to promote children thinking skills should be provided for parents more to be used at home, and that children should be encouraged to have the courage to think and express their opinions more.