Thailand-World Bank Partnership in Education Helps Students Improve Learning

CHON BURI, Thailand, July 6, 2007 – Wat Radsatta School teacher Poon Buttree completed  teacher development training. Now, student Sunan Piyanan has found mathematics much more fun.

Sunan Piyanan, one of the students in four Thai provinces who have benefited from the teacher training program

Secondary students in four provinces across Thailand have had similar experiences after their mathematics teachers have received the Teacher Development in Core Curriculum Skills training.

The program, supported by the World Bank and financed by the ASEM Trust Fund, was designed to improve the skills of mathematics and science teachers. It focused on helping the teachers to apply the new knowledge in an actual classroom setting. 

Officially titled “Teacher Development in Core Curriculum Skills through Distance Education and a Roving Team Support System,” this training program was a component of the Country Development Partnership in Education (CDP-ED). Lots of words, but the result has been a real benefit to students.

Support for Thai Education Reform

In general, CDP is a knowledge-sharing agreement between Thailand and the World Bank for specific priority areas as identified by the Government. Launched in 2004, the CDP-ED was designed to help Thailand expedite education reform. That reform has been around for a while, beginning in the late1980s and then formalized by the 1999 National Education Act.

Poon Buttree (right), the mathematics teacher of Wat Radsatta School, whose teaching skills have improved after completing the teacher training. Standing nearby is Rattana Chevapon, Poon’s “mentor teacher.”

“The CDP-ED has resulted from mutual understanding that the World Bank could help the Thai Government address the capacity and information constraints that were slowing down the implementation of the National Education Act,” recalled Ian Porter, World Bank Country Director for Thailand.

“Through this CDP, we brought our international experience to Thailand’s education sector, helped the Government build institutional capacity for the decentralization of education finance and administration, and supported the development of a practical teacher skill training program focused on the impact on student learning.”

The $850,000 grant for the CDP-ED has been provided by the ASEM Trust Fund 2, the second set of the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) response to the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis.

The Teacher Development component was a search for a practical teacher training model, compared with the traditional methods of teaching practiced throughout the 7,000 plus “expanded schools” in Thailand. The training program began in June 2004 with a series of satellite training sessions involving 25 master trainers, 200 leader teachers, and 3,000 science and mathematics teachers nationwide.

Training Accompanied by Teacher Support System

The training module was developed by the Institute for the Promotion of Teaching Science and Technology, with inputs from highly experienced teachers of mathematics and science and content experts. The World Bank provided technical support to the development of this module.

The design itself was intended to address the actual experience of the 16,000 mathematics and science teachers throughout Thailand, most of whom had not majored in these fields.

World Bank Vice President for the East Asia and Pacific Region, Jim Adams (left), and Thailand Country Director, Ian Porter (center), interacting with Wat Radsatta School students during recent visit

These experts will visit the 92 “participating” teachers, observe them on site, and help them review teaching plans and teaching aids. Each of the participating teachers was asked to keep a journal on the challenges they faced during class for further discussion with the mentor teachers. When the mentor teachers returned a few weeks later, both sides would work together to resolve the issues and answer any questions the participating teachers may have had about applying the new teaching technique.

Keeping a journal has another positive effect on student learning, said Achariya Kohtbantau, the Bank’s Human Development Program Specialist. In the journal, the participating teachers were required to write down the differences between the class’s fast and slow learners, with emphasis on how to help the slow ones improve.

“It forced the teachers themselves to individualize the treatment of students, rather than using one methodology for everyone,” Achariya said.

This training and support system has proved helpful indeed, said Poon, 28, whose teaching career literally began at Wat Radsatta School three years ago. “I was so happy to have had the opportunity (to participate in this program),” she said.

“I was still very new to teaching when this project started, and I have been able to improve my teaching skills significantly since I enrolled to this program” Poon recalled. “More importantly, student learning has markedly improved.”

Focus on Creative Learning

What made the Teacher Development component of the CDP-ED different from the training Poon had in college was the use of creative teaching aid – a major part of the active learning strategy aimed at stimulating class interaction and student learning.

Transformation: A prop designed by the students to demonstrate their knowledge of geometry

For many, this experience was as dry as the chalk on the blackboard. The new teaching strategy utilized props to demonstrate complicated mathematic ideas. For example, the concept of transformation – an elementary term for a variety of different geometric operations - was demonstrated on a color cardboard with graphic designs that helped each student visualize the specific changes to each geometric shape.

“Before she completed the Teacher Development training, Kru Poon just wrote everything on the board and asked us if we had any questions,” Sunan recalled. “I couldn’t understand most of it. But with the prop, geometry has become so easy.”

The sentiment was well demonstrated one morning last month, when the World Bank Vice President for the East Asia and Pacific Region, Jim Adams, visited the school to review the CDP-ED’s progress. Students staged a play to demonstrate how much they enjoyed the learning by shouting “Oh, no!” when the bell rang at the end of class, compared with before the teacher training, when most students were yelling “Yeah!” at class’s end due to boredom.

“I was very impressed with the quality of education in Thailand, and I think the work we were doing (in the CDP-ED) really revolved around the issue of quality, which is supporting growth and development,” commented Adams during his visit. “The key message I got during the field visit was the real improvement in student learning, which I was delighted to hear.”

Many bright students can repeat lessons from memory, but a lesson has been truly learned when the students can use the knowledge they have gained. Rattana Chevapon, Poon’s mentor teacher has seen this first hand. Some of Poon’s students have created their own “props” to demonstrate their knowledge of different branches of mathematics. “This shows that they have truly learned their lessons,” she said.

For more information about the Country Development Partnership in Education (CED-ED), please contact Tsuyoshi Fukao at tfukao@worldbnak.org  or tel. (0) 2686-8347.

For more information about the Thailand-World Bank Country Development Partnerships,
please click here.

For more information about the World Bank in Thailand, visit:  http://www.worldbank.org/th