Teacher’s Colleges to Rajabhat Universities respectively. The word “Rajabhat” means the teachers of
the King, as it was directly given by His Majesty the King of Thailand. This incident encouraged the
government and educators to pay more attention to teacher education and educational development.
In 2004 the newly developed “Five-Year Teacher” degree program was implemented with its focus on
teachers’ academic development.
Article 81 of the Constitution of the Kingdom of Thailand (1997) also discusses “Teacher
Educator’s Perspectives” in order to draw attention to the importance of the role of schools and
teachers in the transmission and perpetuation of Thai social values. This is seen as important part of
educational reform in Thailand, in which academic, social and spiritual dimensions of the teacher’s
character are addressed. It can be concluded that teachers have an important duty, that is, to shoulder
the responsibility of society’s expectations. The word “teacher” within the discourse of the ‘teaching
professional’ has different expectations, for example, teaching, comprehending, being best model, and
meeting society’s expectations. Within the Thai context, the Teacher Educator’s Perspectives have
been outlined the personal characteristics and responsibilities of teachers in accordance with society’s
expectations. It is from the teachers that culture, values and tradition are being inherited. Therefore,
the issue of teacher recruitment is critical to the development of the quality of the citizens of the
country, and must be done with a high standard and diligence to recruit those who are likely to become
good and effective teachers.
Today, the Educational Strategy Plan has been reformed through the Teacher and Educational
Personnel Strategy Plan (2002-2006). There are 4 issues to this reformation. One of these 4 items is
the Teacher and Educational Personnel Production System in which the study period of the Bachelor’s
degree in Education has been increased from 4 years to 5 years. The purpose of the extra 1-year
internship is to produce teachers who are capable, experts in their major, with good skills in teaching,
and a good attitude to being a teacher. This new project persuades good and smart students to study
teacher education and rewards the newly graduated teachers with a job.
The purpose of this study is to investigate problems in the 5-year pre-service teacher education
programs as identified by pre-service teachers and to study the solution to the problems at the Rajabhat
universities.
Research Questions
1. What are the problems that occur during the attention to the new teacher education program in
according to the learning process at Rajabhat universities?
2. To what extent do the ways in solving the problems that occur in the Rajabhat universities?
Literature Review
Teacher Profession Development
It is generally admitted that the teaching job is an occupation with grace and honor. In the
past, Thai society teachers deserved high admiration. At present, it is still widely accepted,
especially in country areas because teachers are seen as having knowledge in academia and social
characteristics. Therefore, the duty of a teacher is to handle the expectation of the society. The
definition of teacher itself is filled with discourse on the profession such as teaching, being a
knowledgeable person, being a good role model, and being dependable in the society. Teacher
development should be directed to the same direction as society’s expectations. In learning
and teaching theories, it is necessary to use a distributed learning model which emphasizes
multiple strategic teaching in order to promote cooperative and dynamic learning. There is no
one formulation of efficiency teaching (Amornviwatana, 1990) Teachers are compared with
conductors of a symphony orchestra where strategies and teaching guidelines in various aspects
can be compared with musical instruments which develop the learning guidelines using a variety
of methods. Teachers should receive the reinforcement to build a creative teaching model which
is appropriate with context and self-status. In order to bring the distributed learning model
to apply as the focusing point in the development, life long learning for teachers has to be
developed.