Background
Since 2021, the Ministry of Education has been overseeing professional development schemes for Thai teachers. As part of teachers’ individual development plans, classroom research skills have been developed in order to allow teachers to better explore and interact with the students in their classrooms to identify current challenges and to experience first-hand change in the classroom. In doing so, teachers become more self-directed and empowered as decision makers, leading to improvements not only in the teaching of English but also in student learning outcomes.
About Exploratory Action Research in Thailand (EAR-Thailand)
The British Council, in partnership with King Mongkut's University of Technology Thonburi (KMUTT), Regional English Language Office (RELO), the Association of English Teachers in Thailand (Thailand TESOL), and the Equitable Education Fund (EEF) have collaborated to provide this capacity building programme to develop Exploratory Action Research (EAR) skills for groups of teachers from primary and secondary schools across Thailand.
The project aims to develop Thai teachers to become classroom researchers and agents of change in their intact classrooms. For project sustainability, some teachers and university lecturers are also supported to become mentors (school-based and university-based mentors).
Throughout this 8-month programme, teachers are provided with initial orientation and training sessions, resources such as classroom research handbooks, the know-how to conduct EAR step-by-step and ongoing support through one-to-one mentoring. EAR research skills help teachers to uncover challenges commonly faced by their students and provides teachers with the tools to address these specific challenges. The EAR-Thailand project extends these supports for teachers by providing valuable opportunities to go on and disseminate their research by attending and presenting at conferences, support from leading editors in the field of EAR to publish their findings, and an EAR research community, both at national and international levels.
Since the pilot project began in 2022, the project has trained approximately 80 teachers and 25 mentors across Thailand (now in its third cycle in 2024).
Under this programme, Thailand-UK links have been strengthened by bringing together classroom research experts from both nations at school, university and educational policy levels. The British Council provides key support to the EAR-Thailand project through UK expertise and learnings from previous iterations across the globe.
