Learning environment in Thailand : A case study regarding teaching methods and motivation in a Thai school.

Sammanfattning: The aim of our case study is to illustrate what teaching methods the teachers in an elementary school in southern Thailand use and if they motivate the students and in that case, how they do it. In the background we briefly report about Thailand, their school system and their development. The following presentation processes previous research that has been made within our chosen subjects. The theories are linked to our research questions, such as teaching methods, learning environments and approaches to motivate the students. Through a qualitative method ten observations have been conducted and the result of our observations have been analyzed and discussed. The result shows that the teachers in our case study use very personal and different teaching methods. The Ministry of education (2006) describes that the educational reform that took place in Thailand should develop teachers’ education methods to be more student-centered. The result of our observation shows that the teachers are in different stages in this development. Some of the teachers have much to develop before they reach this goal. The teachers also motivate the students differently. Some teachers motivated the students through external motivation where the goal was to pass the examiner’s tests, while others used the students’ internal motivation. The results cannot be generalized for all schools in Thailand. Since the study is relatively small, it only shows how a part of the teachers implemented their teaching at the school where the study was conducted.