Part II was concerned with English-teaching problems divided into five subcategories:
1) Problems involving teachers (20 items). The questions included teachers’ qualifications related to ELT, their
competence in using English in class, problems with using ICT, teaching main skills and/or integrated skills of
English, using techniques for arousing learners’ interest, and their own opportunities to be exposed to English
language.
2) Problems involving students (20 items). Examples of questionnaire items involved student attitudes towards
English, motivation, insufficient knowledge and basic skills of English, and opportunities to practice or
experience the use of the language.
3) Problems involving curricula and textbooks (10 items). It included curricular objectives, coverage of the
content, textbooks mandated, and lack of expert curriculum advisors.
4) Problems involving assessment (9 items). This section included lack of knowledge or abilities in creating tests
of different language skills, appropriateness of each test types, etc.
5) Problems involving other factors contributing to successful teaching and learning (10 items). Such factors
included funds and support in production or adaptation of teaching materials and teaching aids, sufficiency of
English native speakers in schools, class size and time allocation for English subjects, and availability of the
language laboratories or computers in the schools.
In addition, there was an open-ended question asking: What are other English-teaching problems you are facing?
Part III was concerned with teacher-perceived needs for professional development. It comprised two subsections:
types of PD (13 items), and content areas of PD (25 items). Some examples of the former included short term
and long term training courses, in-house training, study trips, and workshops. The latter included the training
courses on English-language proficiency, teaching methodology of English and communicative skills, and
conducting classroom research.
There were also two open-ended questions: Are there any other types or content areas of PD you need? If/When
not getting financial support from school, are you willing to pay for your own professional development?
2.4 Data Analysis
The demographic information was analyzed and descriptive statistics of frequencies, percentage, mean and
standard deviation were used to measure the levels of agreement to the statements concerning teaching problems
and needs for professional development. An average score of a 5 rating scale was interpreted to show levels of
agreement to each questionnaire item as the following: 4.51-5.00 representing very high level of agreement;
3.51-4.50, high; 2.51-3.50, moderate; 1.51-2.50, low; and 1.00-1.50, very low.
3. Research Findings
3.1 Information about the Respondents
The findings show several features typical of Thai teachers of English. For example, the stereotyped gender of
English teachers in Thailand is female. It comprises 82.3% of the subjects in this study. The majority (91.2%) of
the secondary school teachers is bachelor’s degree holders and 8.8% have a master’s degree in ELT. A minority
of the subjects are novice teachers while over half of them have been in service for more than fifteen years, and
their teaching workload is about 16 to 20 hours per week, excluding administrative tasks. Over 55% of the
respondents had no more than 3 days of PD experience, while only about 14% of them had more than 10 days of
PD experience during the past two years.
3.2 Responses to Research Objective One
To survey English-teaching problems related to teachers, students, curricula and textbooks, assessment, and other
teaching support in the nine schools from three SESAs.
The findings from this section can be presented in the following figure