Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching

The Case of Thailand

P. Darasawang, H. Reinders, P. Darasawang, H. Reinders

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781137449757
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Teaching Languages

This book investigates the ways in which new developments in areas of language teaching practice, such policymaking, planning, methodology and the use of educational technology spread globally and are adopted, rejected or adapted locally.

1

Innovation in Language Teaching: The Thai Context

Pornapit Darasawang, Hayo Reinders and Alan Waters

This book is concerned with the study of innovation in English language education, in particular in the Thai context. It draws lessons from recent experiences in implementing innovation that can be useful for future developments, both in Thailand and abroad. This chapter begins by describing how English language education in Thailand has developed over the years, and how changes are initiated and implemented. We also briefly introduce each of the subsequent chapters.

English language education in Thailand

The teaching of English as a foreign language (TEFL) in Thailand dates back at least as far as the reign of King Rama III (1834–1851) (Darasawang 2007), as a result of the growing influence of western powers in the south-east Asian region, especially the US and the UK. This process was given further impetus during the reign of the next monarch, King Rama IV (1851–1868), when, because of a perceived need to cope with the political and economic pressures resulting from ever-increasing western interest in Thailand, it was felt important for members of the royal family to receive a westernised education. Because of the predominant influence of Britain on Thai affairs at this time, the language chosen for this purpose was English. Thus, right from its beginnings in the mid-19th century, the growth of TEFL in Thailand can be seen as intimately connected with the encroachment of the outside world on Thailand and the consequent perceived need for knowledge of western ideas by the Thai elite in order to handle the challenges presented by this early form of a ‘New World Order’.

In certain ways, these trends have continued in a more-or-less unbroken line up to the present day, increasing only in scale. The influence of the outside world on Thailand, and Thailand’s interconnectedness with it has become truly global, and the consequential interest in acquiring an understanding of the knowledge-base underpinning such globalisation has grown to embrace not just the Thai political elite, but the citizens of the nation as a whole. At the same time, especially since the Second World War, Anglo-American economic, technological, scientific and cultural activity has come to dominate the world as a whole, and of course, as a consequence, English has developed to become the primary global lingua franca.

On the other hand, what has changed significantly over the period in question is the predominant type of educational ideology associated with western thinking, especially since the advent of the age of mass education, a matter which, as will be seen, has had major consequences for the topic which is the focus of this book, that is, the critical analysis of innovations in English language education in Thailand in recent times.

During most of the 19th and well into the 20th century, the dominant western educational ‘values system’ was what is referred to in Clark (1987: 5–13) as ‘classical humanism’ (cf. ‘academic rationalism’ (Richards 2001: 114–15)). Such an approach to education can be characterised as follows:

Knowledge is seen as a set of revealed truths, whose underlying rules and regularities should be studied and consciously mastered. The teacher is seen as someone who possesses knowledge and whose task is to pass it on to the learners in his/her charge. The task of the learners is to acquire knowledge and become consciously aware of the rules underlying it, in order to control it and apply it in new contexts. (Clark 1987: 5)

In English language education terms, the main teaching method associated with such a philosophy of education has been ‘grammar translation’. In this method:

The content to be taught and learnt is expressed in terms of the elements of phonology, grammar, and vocabulary that are seen to make up a particular language. These are sequenced from what is deemed simple to what is thought complex, and then woven into a graded series of texts created or chosen to exemplify them and the meanings they might be used to convey. Learners are required to go through these texts and master the elements of knowledge embedded within them. They are to do this through conscious understanding of the rules behind the elements, and through deliberate practice of them, one after the other. (ibid.: 8)

Such an underlying educational philosophy and type of English language teaching approach can be seen as consonant with Thai traditions in such matters. Education in Thailand was traditionally provided by the monkhood, and to this day monastic instruction consists primarily of absorbing sacred texts by a process of rote memorisation, on the grounds that religious education is primarily concerned with the mastery of ‘revealed truths’ (Adamson 2003).¹ The deep-seated adherence to the Buddhist religion in Thailand means that such pedagogical practices widely permeate everyday views about the role and conduct of education (ibid.).

In addition, a country’s sociocultural values play an important role in its views about education. According to Hofstede (1991), chief among the characteristics of Thai national culture are (i) high ‘power-distance’ relations, meaning that those in ‘subordinate’ positions (such as learners) traditionally exhibit a high degree of deference and respect to ‘seniors’ (such as teachers); (ii) high ‘collectivism’, i.e., a preference for group-oriented (rather than more ‘individualistic’) development of attitudes and behaviours; (iii) high ‘uncertainty avoidance’, i.e., when faced with instability, people show a predisposition towards rules and regulations; and (iv) high ‘femininity’, meaning the attribution of a great deal of value to social relationships and group harmony. These traits can be seen as contributing, respectively, to a view of education which values the authority of the teacher, discourages individualism in learners, emphasises rules and facts as a way of reducing uncertainty, and inhibits behaviour likely to lead to social conflict. There are obvious similarities between such a set of educational beliefs and the main characteristics of ‘classical humanism’ as outlined above. As a consequence:

English teaching in Thailand has been dominated by the traditional ‘talk-and-chalk’ approach where classrooms are teacher-centred and explanation of English grammar given in Thai predominate … this traditional approach is still the most common … (Watson Todd 2005: 45)

While Thai basic educational values do not appear to have changed markedly over the years, the dominant espoused educational ideology in the West (and increasingly elsewhere) has altered profoundly, to become largely ‘progressivist’ in nature. As Clark (1987: 49–50) explains, progressivism as an educational value system has the following main characteristics:

It makes for a learner-centred approach to education, which attempts to promote the pupil’s development, as an individual with intellectual and emotional needs, and as a social being. The learner is seen as a whole person and not just a disembodied intellect or a skilled performer …

For progressivists, education is not seen as a process for the transmission of closed truths, but as a way of enabling learners to learn how to learn by their own efforts. Teachers are not instructors but creators of an environment in which learners learn …

Knowledge is … seen as a … creative problem-solving capacity that depends upon an ability to retrieve appropriate schemata from a mental store, to utilize whatever can be automatically brought to bear upon a situation, and to bend existing conceptual structures to the creation of novel concepts that offer a working solution to the particular problem in hand …

Learners are seen as active participants, shaping their own learning, with the teacher cast in the role of guide or facilitator. Thus progressivists lay great stress on the need for learning by doing, rather than by being taught.

In English language education, progressivism can be seen as the core educational philosophy underlying methods such as the ‘strong’ form of the Communicative Approach (Howatt 1984), the ‘learner-centred approach’ (Nunan 1988), Content and Language Integrated Learning (Dalton-Puffer, Nikula, & Smit 2010) and Task-based Learning (Ellis 2003). All of these methods are based on a learning-by-doing, problem-solving view of learning, centering around the needs of the individual learner.

Evidence to support the claim that the progressivist view of education has become the dominant one in the educational discourse in the west and elsewhere in recent times exists in, e.g., Christodoulou 2014; Hirsch 2006; Kirschner, Sweller, & Clark 2006; Peal 2014; Schweisfurth 2013; Sweller, van Merrienboer, & Paas 1998.² In addition, it is clear that the majority of the recent government educational reform proposals in Thailand have had a strongly progressivist flavour, especially those deriving from the ‘landmark’ 1999 National Education Act, which mandated forms of pedagogy and related administrative structures aimed at creating a much more ‘process-oriented’ and ‘delegated’ educational system than hitherto. As a result, as Darasawang (2007) and Darasawang and Watson Todd (2012) explain, an attempt has been made since the Act to introduce innovations into English language education in Thailand such as ‘learner-centredness’, task-based learning, English-medium teaching of school subjects such as mathematics, and so on, as well as giving a renewed boost to self-access and other forms of independent learning.

It is clear that there is a considerable gap between the ideology underlying progressivist reforms of the kind just discussed, and that which underpins the historically prevalent indigenous view of education in Thailand. It is therefore to be expected that to engineer successful innovation of the former kind in the Thai context will require considerable skill and effort, since it clearly amounts to not just the alteration of a prescribed set of teaching techniques, but to a much more deep-seated form of change, one affecting fundamental beliefs about education. The experiences and degree of success and failure in undertaking a number of reform projects of this kind form the focus of the subsequent chapters in this book. Before saying more about them, however, it is important to try to understand not only the ‘what’ of recent attempts to bring about change in the Thai educational system, but also the ‘why’? Why, in other words, have changes involving such a fundamental shift in educational values been attempted?

There are, of course, a number of possible answers to this question. For example, as Darasawang (2007: 189–90) explains:

Like many other Asian countries, Thailand went through an education reform in order to cope with the advances in modern technology which transformed Thai society from an agricultural one to a semi-industrial and service-based one … Other causes also have contributed to educational reform, the chief one being the economic crisis in mid-1997 which reflected the country’s social and educational weaknesses. Developments in information technology have changed the world and the way of life of many, especially those in the rural areas. The lifestyle of rural people has become more urbanized due to high-speed telecommunications. In addition, changes in demographic structure and the results of family planning, public health, and medical progress have all had their influence on education reform. With the increasing ratio of older people to younger people, education needs to focus more on human development, i.e., producing qualified manpower for the economic development of the country, and creating a higher quality of life that involves morality, intellectual progress, happiness and lifelong learning.

However, although such economic, technological and demographic factors have undoubtedly played an important role in creating a need for educational change, the question still remains as to why the particular model of education enshrined in the 1999 National Education Act – a largely progressivist one – was seen to be the logical choice for meeting the new national needs.

In order to attempt to explicate this conundrum, it is first of all necessary to make reference to the underlying model of change that tends to be associated most strongly with innovation initiatives steered by political systems (such as national governments). This is the so-called ‘centre-periphery’ model of change, whereby ‘developed “center” countries transfer institutional models … , resources … , and educational ideologies … to underdeveloped “periphery” countries’ (Markee 1997: 63). Such an approach to bringing about change can operate internally as well, within a national political system which is strongly centralised (ibid.). Given both the lengthy history of outside influence on Thai educational policy in the modern era (see, e.g., Darasawang 2007: 187–9), as well as the national cultural predilection for ‘high power-distance’ relations, such a model of change can be seen to have operated in the case of the events leading to the 1999 Thai National Education Act, both in terms of external influences on its formulation, as well as with respect to its internal implementation.

Also, as Schweisfurth (2013) makes clear (cf. Chisholm & Leyendecker 2008), the particular educational value system being most heavily exported from the ‘centre’ to the ‘periphery’ at this time (a process continuing on up to the present day, for that matter) was what she refers to as ‘Learner-Centred Education’ (LCE), a term which, to all intents and purposes, can be regarded as identical with what has been described here as the ‘progressivist’ educational ideology. As Schweisfurth points out, LCE has been ‘marketed’ by the ‘centre’ in terms of a number of basic ‘narratives’ which have particular appeal both to international development agencies and developing countries. The LCE ‘cognitive’ narrative argues that evidence from educational psychology demonstrates the superiority of the ‘constructivist’ approach underlying LCE, since it results in more personally meaningful forms of learning; the ‘emancipation’ narrative takes the view that LCE has at its heart the promotion of individual learner freedoms and therefore its pedagogy ‘can help learners to develop the knowledge skills, attitudes and behaviours which over time can transform society’ (ibid.: 2); and the ‘preparation narrative’ indicates that LCE develops the skills of ‘flexibility, critical independent thought and entrepreneurship (which) are believed to support the development and sustaining of an effective knowledge economy’ (ibid.). As Schweisfurth goes on to say:

these are appealing narratives in any context, but in developing countries the promise of their link to various understandings of development gives them particular salience. Evidence … points to the power of education to develop human capital and thereby contribute to economic growth … Some understandings of development place rights, freedoms and democracy at its centre … in line with the emancipatory narrative. And while most higher-income countries are functioning as knowledge economies already, most middle-income countries aspire to this; developing countries naturally do not want to be left behind. (ibid.: 2–3)

Finally, Schweisfurth (ibid.: 3) points out that the LCE model is therefore not only ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Notes on Contributors
• 1 Innovation in Language Teaching: The Thai Context
• 2 National-Level Educational Innovations in Thailand
• 3 Innovation in Teacher Education in Thailand: The KMUTT MA Programme
• 4 Flying Free: Unfettering the Spirit of Innovation in Doctoral Level Language Education Programmes
• 5 The Implementation of an Online Collaborative Project: Lessons Learned from Failure
• 6 Roles of Self-Access Centres in the Success of Language Learning
• 7 Teachers’ Beliefs about Task-Based Language Teaching for Science and Engineering Students
• 8 E-time: A Pilot Study of Blended Learning in Corporate Language Training
• 9 Implementing Outcome-Based Assessment: Lessons Learned from an English for Pharmacy Course
• 10 Implementing Play-Based Language Learning with Children: From Potential to Practice
• 11 Innovation in Language Teaching: Lessons Learned
• Index