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 The Institute for Innovative Learning was set up in 2002 in response to problems of learning/teaching at all levels in the educational system. In traditional Thai education, the learner waits to be fed information and the teacher propounds this knowledge nearly in a disciple-master relationship of old. Very little is demanded of the learner in terms of self actualization and dedication. Thus learning/teaching is never geared toward reflection, profundity or even the context of the subject taught. Most teachers with a degree in education with at least a subject major, although exposed to theoretical aspects of good pedagogy in their student years, usually cannot conduct classes to produce the preceding desirable outcomes because they themselves were never taught in the way that they should, i.e., exposure to student-centered pedagogy in an interactive way. The latter demands mastery of contents and pedagogy, a rare combination.
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| For a long time the Government has recognized this problem and tried to make incremental changes at the school level up to the tertiary level, with limited success. We at Mahidol recognize these limitations of teachers as being due to lack of hands-on and minds-on experiences during their training. Research, in the sense of innovative work lending to rigorous scholarship, is never a part of their requirements. After spending their years with us, we are confident that most of them will have had mastery of both content and pedagogical techniques. |
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