Participatory Action Research for School-based Management and Teacher Professional Development

The new five-year curriculum for a bachelor’s degree in education with more than one year internship at a school site has provoked Thai educators ’ concerns about the qualification of cooperative teacher professional development schools (CTPDS). These two successive studies were conducted at a primary school in order to look for the patterns of school development and to find out the influential factors of teaching and learning in the school. One of the research projects was to set general standard for the eligibility of CTPDS. The other focused on one specific aspect of teacher development. Both research projects were qualitative participatory action research (PAR); the collaboration of school’s personnel and university’s faculty members. Each project took one year to be completed. Data were collected via supportive group discussions, individual interviews, classroom visitations and documentations. For the first project, eight standard criteria of CTPDS were proposed as the results. In the second project, findings revealed the patterns of the development. Specifically, the success of these two studies revealed the effectiveness of utilizing PAR process to develop school-based management and teacher professional in Thai educational context