Transcript Challenges for Thai qualifications framework in distance education

Challenges for Thai qualifications framework
in
distance education and ASEAN context
Chantana Thongprayoon, Associate Professor
School of Communication Arts
Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University
[email protected]
Challenges for Thai qualifications framework
• What is TQF?
• The Thai Qualifications Framework for Higher Education (TQF: HEd) is a
requirement for every educational institution to compete globally with
other educational institutions.
• It helps to support implementation of the educational guidelines set out in
the National Education Act and to ensure consistency in standards and
award titles for higher education qualifications.
• It makes clear the equivalence of academic awards with those granted by
higher education institutions in other parts of the world.
• The Framework is useful to provide appropriate points of comparison in
academic standards for institutions in their planning and internal quality
assurance processes.
September 9, 2015
Chantana Thongprayoon_STOU
2
Challenges for Thai qualifications framework
• Domains of Learning Outcomes
• The TQF: HEd describes five domains of
learning outcomes:
1. Ethical and Moral Development;
2. Knowledge;
3. Cognitive Skills;
4. Interpersonal Skills and Responsibility;
5. Analytical and Communication Skills.
September 9, 2015
Chantana Thongprayoon_STOU
3
Challenges for Thai qualifications framework
• Challenges of learning
• Learning should be seen as a qualitative
change in a person’s way of seeing,
experiencing, understanding, conceptualizing
something in the real world---rather than as a
quantitative change in the amount of
knowledge someone possesses (Ramsden
cited in Weimer 2002: 11).
September 9, 2015
Chantana Thongprayoon_STOU
4
Challenges for Thai qualifications framework
• Challenges of learning here focuses on Weimer’s
concept of the five key changes to practice for
learner-center teaching.
• Learner-center teaching with five key changes to
instructional practice:
1. The Balance of Power
2. The Function of Content
3. The Role of the Teacher
4. The Responsibility for Learning
5. Evaluation Purpose and Processes.
September 9, 2015
Chantana Thongprayoon_STOU
5
Challenges for Thai qualifications framework
• Higher education students should be able to
1) gain deep understanding of concepts
2) critique concepts
3) conduct that critique in front of others
4) perform independent inquiry
5) self-reflect
6) engage in open dialogue.
(Barnett 1990 cited in Palloff and Pratt 2009: 18).
September 9, 2015
Chantana Thongprayoon_STOU
6
Challenges for Thai qualifications framework
• ASEAN Background
• ASEAN stands for The Association of Southeast
Asian Nations (ASEAN). The Association was
established on 8 August 1967 in Bangkok,
Thailand, with the signing of the ASEAN
Declaration (also known as the Bangkok
Declaration).
September 9, 2015
Chantana Thongprayoon_STOU
7
Challenges for Thai qualifications framework
• The ASEAN Community is set on three pillars:
political and security cooperation (APSC),
economic cooperation (AEC), and sociocultural cooperation (ASCC).
• The integration of ensuring durable peace,
stability and shared prosperity in the region.
• The ASEAN Summits organized to advance the
integration expected by 2015.
September 9, 2015
Chantana Thongprayoon_STOU
8
Challenges for Thai qualifications framework
• Research Objective
• To gather the opinions of multiple
stakeholders – students, instructors and
tentative employers on the validity and
efficiency of the Thai Qualifications
Framework for Higher Education (TQF: HEd) in
the ASEAN context
September 9, 2015
Chantana Thongprayoon_STOU
9
Challenges for Thai qualifications framework
• Methodology
• This was a survey research.
• The samples consisted of 30 undergraduate students
enrolled in the Journalism course at Sukhothai
Thammathirat Open University (STOU) in Thailand, five
instructors, and five tentative employers.
• Data was collected during focus group discussions and
face-to-face interviews that took place from October
2012 to July 2013.
• Data was analyzed through descriptive statistics and
descriptive analysis.
September 9, 2015
Chantana Thongprayoon_STOU
10
Challenges for Thai qualifications framework
• The opinions of participants were measured
through a Likert scale:
• 5 = mostly agree;
• 4 = agree;
• 3 = neutral;
• 2 = disagree;
• 1 = mostly disagree.
September 9, 2015
Chantana Thongprayoon_STOU
11
Challenges for Thai qualifications framework
• The interpretation of the mean scores were:
4.51-5.00 = mostly agree;
3.51-4.50 = agree;
2.51-3.50 = neutral;
1.51-2.50 = disagree;
1.00-1.50 = mostly disagree.
September 9, 2015
Chantana Thongprayoon_STOU
12
Challenges for Thai qualifications framework
• Results:
• Students and the tentative employers valued
highest on the Ethical and Moral Development
• Instructors valued highest on the Knowledge,
followed by the Ethical and Moral
Development.
September 9, 2015
Chantana Thongprayoon_STOU
13
Challenges for Thai qualifications framework
• Table1 Students’ Opinions on the TQF: HEd Domains of
Learning
TQF: HEd
Mean
Meaning
Ranking
1. Ethical and Moral Development
4.83
mostly agree
1
2. Knowledge
4.13
agree
4
3. Cognitive Skills
4.34
agree
3
4.75
agree
2
3.69
agree
5
4. Interpersonal Skills and Responsibility
5. Analytical and Communication Skills
September 9, 2015
Chantana Thongprayoon_STOU
14
Challenges for Thai qualifications framework
• Table 2 Instructors’ Opinions on the TQF: HEd’s Domains of
Learning
TQF: HEd
Mean
Meaning
Ranking
1. Ethical and Moral Development
4.24
agree
2
2. Knowledge
4.35
agree
1
3. Cognitive Skills
4.15
agree
3
3.85
agree
4
3.67
agree
5
4. Interpersonal Skills and
Responsibility
5. Analytical and Communication Skills
September 9, 2015
Chantana Thongprayoon_STOU
15
Challenges for Thai qualifications framework
• Table 3 Tentative Employers’ Opinions on the TQF’s Domains
of Learning
TQF: HEd
Mean
Meaning
Ranking
1.Ethical and Moral Development
4.92
mostly agree
1
2. Knowledge
4.35
much agree
3
3. Cognitive Skills
4.50
much agree
2
4.15
much agree
4
3.93
much agree
5
4. Interpersonal Skills and Responsibility
5. Analytical and Communication Skills
September 9, 2015
Chantana Thongprayoon_STOU
16
Challenges for Thai qualifications framework
• Discussion
• The discussion follows the cognitive
constructivism approach that aims to assist
students in assimilating new information to
existing knowledge, and enabling them to
make the appropriate modifications to their
existing framework to accommodate the
information.
September 9, 2015
Chantana Thongprayoon_STOU
17
Challenges for Thai qualifications framework
• The cognitive approach developed by Jean
Piaget and William Perry focused on the inside
of the learner’s head, which concerns the
mental processes more than the observable
behavior which is the behaviorism’s focus.
• According to cognitive view, knowledge is
actively constructed by the learner rather than
passively absorbed.
• So learning is a process of active discovery.
September 9, 2015
Chantana Thongprayoon_STOU
18
Challenges for Thai qualifications framework
• The instructors’ role is not to drill knowledge
into students through their repetition, but to
facilitate by providing necessary resources and
to guide the assimilation of the new
knowledge to the former ones.
• Teachers should take into account the
knowledge that the learner possess when
deciding the curriculum.
September 9, 2015
Chantana Thongprayoon_STOU
19
Challenges for Thai qualifications framework
• One of the challenges of the learning outcomes
for distance education institutions are the
competency the students acquired from their
learning.
• The acquisition should be seen as a qualitative
change in an individual’s way of seeing,
experiencing, understanding, conceptualizing
something in the real world--rather than as a
quantitative change in the amount of knowledge
(Ramsden cited in Weimer 2002: 11).
September 9, 2015
Chantana Thongprayoon_STOU
20
Challenges for Thai qualifications framework
• The concerns for the institution management are
facing challenges within the stakeholders’
benefit.
• For ASEAN context, a distance education
institution in Thailand like STOU has to follow the
TQF: HEd while preparing itself to encounter the
ASEAN community to provide appropriate points
of comparison in academic standards for
institutions in their planning and internal quality
assurance processes.
September 9, 2015
Chantana Thongprayoon_STOU
21
Challenges for Thai qualifications framework
• For distance education context, students
should be the focus of the institution
management since they are the main
stakeholder of the institution’s mission.
• For learning and teaching strategy, it is
recommended to use the learner-center
approach. The key changes to instructional
practice for learner-center teaching are
relevant to the STOU mission.
September 9, 2015
Chantana Thongprayoon_STOU
22
Challenges for Thai qualifications framework
• For STOU, the main academic content that is sent to
the students are text books that should be able to
promote the students’ learning and facilitate the
higher-order thinking skills so that they can develop
the ability to analyze, synthesize, and evaluate. The
content should be designed to let the students
encounter unfamiliar problems, uncertainties,
questions, or dilemmas.
• According to Brown (2014: 170-171), the learning
should be active that facilitates the students’ selfmonitoring, open-minded, and flexible attitudes that
were positively correlated with greater course
achievement.
September 9, 2015
Chantana Thongprayoon_STOU
23
Challenges for Thai qualifications framework
• The result is correlated with Weimer’s concepts.
Information management skills are important as
information acquisition skills.
• Learners must be able to access information, find
resources, organize them, and perhaps most
important, evaluate the ocean of information that
now exists in the electronic era.
September 9, 2015
Chantana Thongprayoon_STOU
24
Challenges for Thai qualifications framework
• The changes are accomplished through active
learning strategies that allow students
experience with the content.
• The competencies involve an explicit
understanding of complicated learning skills
like the ability to be methodical and
systematic, to have well-developed
information-seeking and retrieval skills, and to
have the ability to be flexible and creative.
September 9, 2015
Chantana Thongprayoon_STOU
25
Challenges for Thai qualifications framework
• Students need to leave college knowing content
and knowing how to learn more.
• As for the instructors, they should balance their
power to the students. They should encourage
the students to actively construct their own
knowledge rather than passively receiving
information transmitted to them from teachers
and textbooks. From a constructivist perspective,
knowledge cannot simply be given to students.
Students must construct their own meanings.
September 9, 2015
Chantana Thongprayoon_STOU
26
Challenges for Thai qualifications framework
• For the employers’ point, their concerns are
the ethical and moral development, cognitive
skills, and knowledge, respectively. This means
that they valued the ethical and moral issues
more than the other domains. Therefore
another issue that STOU should take into
consideration is this aspect. Nowadays there
are a lot of clever and hand-on people, but it
is not easy to find the ones who are moral
oriented.
September 9, 2015
Chantana Thongprayoon_STOU
27
Challenges for Thai qualifications framework
• For distance education context, students are the
prime focus of the institution management since
they are the main stakeholder of the institution’s
mission.
• As a result, STOU is challenging the expectation
balance of all stakeholders, especially the
students, the instructors, and the employers so
that the mission of the institution is succeeded as
well as reaching the students and the employers’
satisfaction.
September 9, 2015
Chantana Thongprayoon_STOU
28
Challenges for Thai qualifications framework
• Thank you
• Discussion
• Questions
• Chantana Thongprayoon,
• Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University
• [email protected]
September 9, 2015
Chantana Thongprayoon_STOU
29