Inside bilingual education in Thailand : staffroom and classroom perspectives

This research investigates the professional backgrounds, experiences and working conditions of teachers on the bilingual programme (English Programme) in Thailand. Its main purposes are to provide an insight into the professional lives and working situations of these teachers and to contribute to a better understanding of the current state of bilingual teaching in the country. The study adopts a qualitative approach to data collection and analysis. The data set comprises thirty-eight in-depth interviews with a group of Thai and foreign teachers involved in bilingual teaching in Thailand, fieldnotes from school and classroom observation conducted in a leading bilingual school in Bangkok, and an analysis of documentary evidence relevant to bilingual education and bilingual teachers in Thailand. Data analysis uses a grounded approach, employing open, axial and selective coding. The research results reveal a number of fundamental problems for bilingual teachers in Thailand and highlight several factors that undermine the implementation of bilingual education in this context. The overall picture of bilingual teaching and teachers emerging from this study reveals considerable fragmentation and an overall lack of coherence, producing a situation that falls far short of the ideal representation of bilingual education to be found in official Ministry of Education documents. The research reveals that, although bilingual teachers are regarded as a homogeneous group, considerable differences are to be found between different categories of teacher and this gives rise to a range of different problems, including the absence of a shared vision of what bilingual education actually involves, a lack of effective communication between groups and, in some groups, a feeling of not belonging to the school community. The study also reveals problems that affect the quality of educational provision, such as inefficient recruitment procedures and related problems of retention, a failure to appreciate fully the contribution made by foreign non-native speaker teachers, and tensions arising from the relationship between subject and language teaching. The thesis concludes with recommendations for responding to these problems and suggestions for further research.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceThailand. Ratthasaphā [Thailand. Parliament]GBUnited Kingdo