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Education/Alternative Education; Linguistics and Language Education^7 (Language
Teaching); Social Science Education (Social Science Teaching); Agricultural
Education (Agricultural Teaching); and Math/Science Education (Science
Teaching). Higher Education research, as a separate discipline, is not present at the
level of bachelor’s degree programmes. Among HEIs offering programmes in
Education are Chulalongkorn University and Chiang Mai University. Both are
research-intensive universities offering a large number of programmes covering
almost all areas of Education. Primary Education, Health and Physical Education,
Arts Education and Math/Science Education seem to be the most popular areas of
teaching and learning at the level of bachelor’s degree at these universities.
It is interesting to see that at the level of bachelor’s degree, programmes that
specialise in Higher Education are virtually non-existent. Fundamentally, HEIs in
Thailand focus more on either Early Childhood Education or Primary Education. In
other words, the country seems to be emphasising more on Basic Education as a
discipline of studies and also on developing contents as well as teaching techniques
and evaluation in Languages, Science, Social Sciences and Arts. This seems to be
the case because the majority of students in the national pipeline are still at the level
of Basic Education rather than Higher Education. In the past 20 years, the number
of students from Basic Education going through to Higher Education has accounted
for about 35 percent of the whole student population in the country.^8 Compared to
other developing and developed countries, the needs for developing Basic Education
still outweigh those of Higher Education. The provision of programmes and courses
in Basic Education in HEIs in Thailand, therefore, corresponds to the demand of the
students and the overall population as a whole. Another explanation is that Education
has been a discipline that originated in Thailand from teaching colleges and not
HEIs. As mentioned earlier in the introductory part of this chapter, teaching colleges
played a greater role in forming the body of knowledge. It is, in essence, the epitome
of the current design of programmes and courses in many HEIs in Thailand.
At the postgraduate level, especially at the level of master’s degree, the courses
and programmes offered in Thai HEIs are not much different from those offered for
bachelor’s degree students. Higher Education, as a separate course of study, is still
nowhere to be seen. The majority of courses still focus on Basic Education. This
includes Curriculum and Instruction Development, Early Childhood Education,
Primary Education, Vocational Education, Health or Physical Education and Special
Education. The courses and programmes offered in the areas of Educational
Research and Psychology, Educational Policy and Management and Education
Technology have also been popular, especially among research-intensive universi-
ties. Rajabhat universities rarely offer courses at the postgraduate levels. This may
be due to the inadequacy of resources.
(^7) Linguistics and Language Education cover various courses providing linguistic studies, including
English, Japanese, Chinese, Thai and so on. Each HEI has different focuses in providing courses
relating to languages.
(^8) The 11th Higher Education Development Plan (http://www.mua.go.th/~bpp/developplan/down-
load/higher_edu_plan/PlanHEdu11_2555-2559.pdf)
N.S. Dhirathiti