An Online Program to Enhance Teacher Learning to Develop Students' Self-Directed Learning Skills

Abstract

The objective of this study was to create an “An Online Program to Enhance Teacher Learning to Develop Students' Self-Directed Learning Skills” based upon the following concepts: “Develop the teacher so that they will develop their students,” “Successful teachers, successful students,” and “Knowledge is not power; knowledge plus action equals power." This study employed Research and Development (R&D) methodology, and the created online program consisted of the following: 1) a project for Teachers’ learning development with six online sets of instructions, and 2) a project for the Teachers to assist in developing students with one set of online action instructions. The created online program was examined by 25 teachers and 146 students in a randomly selected school, which represented the Pariyattidhamma Schools in the General Education section, which is under the National Office of Buddhism. The results validated the fact that the created online program had been effective. The findings illustrated that the post-development test for teachers had met the standard of the 90/90 criteria, and that the mean score had been statistically significantly higher than before the development. In addition, the students’ mean score on the assessment of the self-directed learning skills after the development had been statistically significantly higher than before the development. This indicated that the created online program could be disseminated for educational use in other Pariyattidhamma schools with a similar target population.