Inclusive Education in Thailand after 1999 National Education Act: A Review of a Pre-Service Teacher Education System

Abstract

In Thailand after 1999 National Education Act., education policy of the government was shifted to the target of Education for All. In 2008 reviews were conducted in seven project countries except in Thailand. Some major gaps were identify such as the gap between pre-service teacher education and what follows throughout the teacher's career, as well as the gap between the best and worst practices of inclusive right-based education in the region.This study aims to identify both the gaps and omissions with regard to the inclusion of human rights, gender equality multilingual mother-tongue-based educational inclusive of marginalized, underprivileged groups, as well as special education, with policies, curricular material and pedagogy of pre-service teacher training institutes in four regions.The study was carried out mainly with qualitative method. The data were obtained from the two parts of data collection: documentary study and analysis of curriculum of sixteen teacher training institutes in four regions.It was found that: 1) the policy analysis revealed that the Ministry of Education launched supporting scheme to strive to Education for All, 2) the pre-service teacher training policy revealed that there was no explicit item related to rights based, opportunities, limitation of students to attend schools, gender promotion, or mother tongue based multilingual education. There were few universities provided clear issues in human rights education, 3) provision of knowledge, formation of attitude, behaviours and skills necessary for a thoroughly understanding and practice of a right-based teaching were integrated into special education and inclusive education courses. All sixteen sampling institutes offered a course or two in Special Education and Inclusive education, and teaching material and pedagogical aspects, stressed issues in education for special needs.In conclusion, every in-service teaching institute provided special education or inclusive education course. It was believed that experiences from the course would help students develop attitude, value and respect toward persons with special needs. As for issues of gender education, human rights education and mother -tongue-based multilingual education, there was still the gap between pre-service teacher education and practical work among school teachers.