Contextualizing Conceptual Foundations: Educational Citizenship Curriculum Development in Chiang Mai Peri-Urban Schools

Abstract

This article forms part of the dissertation on Development the English Language Curriculum Base on Culturally Relevant Pedagogy for Students in Chiang Mai Peri Urban Area. In this paper, I analyze data collected from a school and its community in a peri-urban area of Chiang Mai to understand better the cultural context for curriculum development of a migrant population. The paper synthesizes general and practical concepts within a cultural context to provide a better foundation for developing curricula for creating educational citizenship for learners in the suburbs of Chiang Mai. Specifically, this paper aims to: 1) present general concepts for developing a curriculum framework for creating citizenship for grade 8 students in a suburb of Chiang Mai; 2) present operational concepts in the daily life of secondary students to understand better how these concepts affect their practical lives both within in the school, and the larger suburban community. The researcher employed a phenomenological, qualitative methodology, including data from documents and observations of various school and classroom activities. Additionally, in-depth interviews were conducted with key informants, including three teachers, twenty-three students, and five parents from October 2021- February 2022. To test for accuracy and reliability, the researcher used methodological triangulation. The results revealed that educators could transform contextual concepts at both general and practical levels into foundations for a curriculum framework for educational citizenship at two levels: 1) the general contextual concept, which is a physical environmental issue; migration and loss of community are all affecting the learning ecology of learners in classrooms and schools in suburban areas, where these learners are new educational citizens who live at the seams 2) Contextual concepts at the practical level become practical in everyday life because of the Community Cultural Wealth (CCW) capital knowledge within the learners, culminating in the family-specific contexts and suburban community areas in which the learners lived and grew up. The operation from CCW knowledge capital is, therefore, support--or scaffolder–to create hope and encouragement for meaningful and valuable learning for learners. Furthermore, it facilitates the setting of goals for living for oneself and negotiating with the expectations or demands that clash with the family and surrounding society. The conceptual consideration of the contextual conceptualization from the general concept to the relationship with the concept of the operational level can create conceptual foundations for defining the components of the curriculum framework development to create educational citizenship, which is: a comprehensive learning concept with spatial facts and correlation with the social background and cultural wealth of the learner's community. As a result, the curriculum implementation aims to develop life skills for coexistence with others and a broader understanding of social relationships.