Integrated Management Model for Learning Organization on Sufficiency Economy in Small School, Thailand

Abstract

The aim of this research was to study an integrated management model for learning organization on sufficiency economy of small schools. Thus, to synthesize the indicators of the integrated management model, and finally propose the integrated management model for learning organization on sufficiency economy in small schools. This research was conducted in three phases as follows: The first phase was a documentary analysis. This is followed by the second phase to confirm and verify the model based on the indicators identified by collecting empirical data. Lastly the third phase was to conduct the connoisseurship focus group discussions for confirming and verifying the findings from the second phase. The target group of this study included small schools under the Office of Khon Kaen Primary Educational Service Area. The key informants consist of school administrators, teachers, students and school boards. Data are collected by using in-depth Interview for the teachers, school administrators, students, and school boards. Data obtained from in-depth interview, observation, documentary analysis, and focus group discussion analyzed by using content analysis, and presented in descriptive form. Findings indicated that the integrated management needs to cover the combination of various perspectives including the school administrators, teachers, students, administrative factors, environmental condition in school and community. All these factors are associated to administer the school organization a whole system for usefulness and succeeded in implementing various school activities. Furthermore, from the result of empirical data shows that the major components and indicators of the integrated management model for learning organization on sufficiency economy that comprised of the administrators, teachers, students, administrative factors, school and community environmental factor. According to the documentary data, environmental condition in school found to be an additional factor. Each aspect of component can be practiced in more detained and obvious. The proposed integrated management model for learning organization on sufficiency economy in small schools by connoisseurship, has confirmed the six components are the school administrators, teachers, students, administrative factors, and environmental condition in school.

Keywords: Integrated management model, learning organization, sufficiency economy, small schools

Introduction

The basic concepts of sufficiency economy will lead to self-reliance education that based on the principles of Thai lifestyles. By depending on the aim of this sufficiency economy, it will channel the Thai people for their holistic development. Therefore, the implementation of the sufficiency economy should become guidelines for school management. This mentioned concept is known as 'The philosophy of sufficiency economy'. The ninth and tenth National Economic and Social Development Plans (2002-2011) have included the sufficiency economy which was granted by His Majesty the King since 1974 as guideline philosophy for governing and developing the country. Owing to the major emphasis is on 'moderation', applying the philosophy of sufficiency economy will lead the country to overcome the economic crisis and further stabling the system. Additionally, it will help to improve quality of the society with sustainability under the rapid changing of globalization. The people will become more considerate of economic well being, reasonableness and keep up to the changing world.

One of the important components that complementing integrated management is the learning organization that focusing on team learning and the development of learning leadership. This team learning would encompass the transfer of knowledge as well as the exchange of experiences and skills among the personnel. Therefore, it would lead to the continuity in organizational development that assists the organization being able to keep up the momentum to change and being competitiveness. The establishment of leaning organization will create the system for the personnel learn to work effectively and efficiently. At the moment the personnel being able to transfer their working experience into learning process and gain some understanding, their readiness to cope with the change will be established. This approach will provide the opportunities for the team grows by gaining the empowerment. This will motivate personnel to be initiative and innovative. Consequently, the philosophy of sufficiency economy will lead to strong and self-reliance organization when facing competitiveness situations (Senge, 1994).

The main principle of the integrated management model is the benefits of the customers. The key factor that included specifically in the mentioned model is the leaders' management style. Therefore, the school leaders need to take the full responsibilities and play their specified roles to ensure that all the tasks can be achieved from the beginning stage until the end stage of accomplishment. In other word, they have to utilize their leadership skills, meaning to say that they must react fast, their actions are based on good information, thus they must have their own opinion, good team work complemented with the monitoring and evaluation teams. Under the integrated management model, strategic approach is employed along the administrative work. There are four key supporting factors that need to consider by the leaders in order to accomplish the task. The key supporting factors are update data for decision making, specify main strategies and sub-strategies, management with good governance and follow and evaluate in management work continuously (Thuan, 2010).

Problem Statement

The current school management needs to be developed continuously under the assisting changing society and thus identify an appropriate model as reference. Due to the school as a prime teaching and learning organization under the administration of the school director, therefore the school leaders have to develop their capabilities in every aspect in order to successfully managing the schools in the rapid changing world whereby the changing situation are encompassing all aspects, namely materials, society and environment.

At present, there are some problems specifically faced by the small school which have their students' enrollment below 120, reported by the Office of National Primary Education Commission (1996). The numbers of schools which are categorized under small schools are 10,877. Majority of these small schools produce low quality students compared to other schools. This is caused by the schools' readiness level in many aspects are at low level. For example, they are having shortage of teachers to fill in the classes, lack of teaching equipments and material especially those high cost educational technology. All these problems are because of the budget allocation provided usually based on the number of students' enrollment. Besides that, the small schools also facing the problem of inefficiency in school administration. This is due to the cost to manage small school is always higher than the larger schools. This happened because the management cost is based on the ratio of students to the teachers' salary.

In order to solve all the above mentioned problems besides promoting an effective and efficient small school management, it is an emergent need to develop an administrative model. It is believed that the integrated administrative model will be able to solve the mentioned problems. The approach utilized in this integrated administrative model is to integrate all the separate units together. However, this integration does not mean that dissolve all the work units or destroy the independence of work unit, but it refers to the integration of personnel who have the same vision, goal and outcomes of the organization. This approach would not encourage the personnel to be self-centered or even consider their work units as their centers. The personnel need to change their attitudes toward their units as a mechanism to mobilize or activate their vision to accomplish their set goal. For the school administrator who involved in the integrated administrative mode, should be the individual with integrity, virtue, public strength and weaknesses. In other word, these administrators have to be open-minded and being ready to provide opportunities for those personnel who are capable to replace them for the sake of the public benefits.

Although there were quite a number of small schools in Thailand which contributed toward education reform greatly and successfully, but we still need a specified model for small school management. This is because researchers believed that the appropriate model would be able to lead to the better administration and instructional development. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate and propose a comprehensive integrated management model. The proposed development model will be able to promote and extend capacity of education management in schools as well as in the educational service areas. It is also anticipated that the proposed model not only would be able to change the school administrators to change their behavior and contribute for the school effectiveness but also would lead to the goals and benefits of the educational institutions. These institutions will be able to operate continuously and sustainably, thus would help to solve the school organizational problems. Hence, it will lead the schools toward their effectiveness and efficiency on sound economy and the success of educational reform

• Research Questions
• What is the integrated management model for learning organization on sufficiency economy in small school?
• What are the indicators of integrated management model for learning organization on sufficiency economy in small schools?
• What should be the integrated management model for learning organization on sufficiency economy in small schools?
• Purpose of the Study

Based on the problems discussed above, researchers intend to find the solution according to the objectives below:

• study the integrated management model for learning organization on sufficiency economy in small schools;
• synthesize the indicators of integrated management model for learning organization on sufficiency economy in small schools, and
• propose an integrated management model for learning organization on sufficiency economy in small schools.

Research Methods

The population of this study are all the small schools under the Khon Kaen Primary Educational Office Service Area. The purposive sampling was employed to targeting those schools under the sufficiency economy school program and voluntary participation is the criteria for selection. Therefore, there are 32 key informants consisted of one school administrator, two teachers, one student, one school boards from each schools and seven experts. The study duration was conducted from October 2009 until December 2010. The research instruments used in this study were documentary analysis form, observation checklist, interview questions and focus group discussion questions. Pilot study has been carried out for validation and reliability checking with the three other schools under the Office of Primary Education Service Areas and excluded in the target population, but these schools are having the similar background with the study schools.

This research has been undergone the three phases. The first phase was to construct a suitable model. Therefore, researchers conducted a document analysis encompassed analyzing principles, theories, guideline and research reports related to integrated management model for leaning organization based on the philosophy of sufficiency economy. The second phase of the study is to confirm and verify the indicators of the model based on the empirical data obtained from the five small schools under Primary Education Office Service Area. Finally, finding from the connoisseurship focus group discussion, researchers are checking the created integration management model by the seven experts for the purpose of confirmation of the indicators therefore validate the model.

There are various methods of data collection, including in-depth interview, observation, documentary analysis and focus group discussion. During the data was collected, recorded by using tape recorder, manual record and checklist. Content analysis is the sole method of obtained data being analyzed. Finally, the data would be interpreted, synthesized and presented in descriptive manner.

Findings

Finding showed that the integrated management model should merge various related factors into administration as a whole. Therefore, the integrated management model referred as a shared model whereby needs to considered parties including school administrators, teachers, students, community and administrative factors.

According to the empirical data report, researchers were able to identify and verify the components and indicators of the integrated management model for learning organization underlining the philosophy of sufficiency economy for small schools. Result revealed that the identified components and indicators were administrators, teachers, students, administrative factors, school environment and community. Meanwhile, according to the documentary analysis report showed that environmental condition was an additional factor. Each factor of the components covered detailed indicators that were clearly stated the way of actual practice.

There are seven steps need to follow in the proposed integrated management model for learning organization based on the philosophy of sufficiency economy in small school. The seven steps were as below: Firstly, the school administrators called for meetings of teachers and community. The main purpose of these meeting was to provide exposure on understandings of the implementation of sufficiency economy to administrators and teachers in schools. Second step is organizing brain-storming discussions among school personnel and members of community regarding the guidelines to implement sufficiency economy in small school. Thirdly, conducting study trips to those best practice schools. Fourthly, the teachers would integrate the self sufficiency economy concepts into their teaching and learning organization. Fifthly the school administrator and researchers were having continuous classroom supervision, evaluation and following up the outcomes. The sixth step would be gathered the information from supervision and evaluation reflection and used those information as guidelines for the school to implement action plan for the following year. The last step was expanded the successful model to those related network schools.

After creating the proposed integrated management model based on the philosophy of sufficiency economy for learning organization for small school, this model needs to undergone the verification process, namely confirmation the identified components and indicators hence validation on the whole model by connoisseurship. The connoisseurship team consisted of seven experts confined the six steps components found by the researchers. These components were school administrators, teachers, students, administrative factors and school environment. As for the implementation steps of the developed model in this research made up for nine steps. The additional two steps were: Step one that studied on the community context for readiness in accepting the implementation of the integrated management model based on the philosophy of sufficiency economy into small school and step four implemented the model, curriculum, lesson plans and school management

Conclusions

There are some controversy data derived from the two methods of data collection, namely in-depth interview findings and documentary study on the integrated management model for learning organization based on sufficiency economy for small schools. There are five components found from documentary study whereas six components found in-depth interview study. The five components which identified concurrently by both methods of study are administrator, teacher, students, administrative factors and community except school environment. Therefore, researchers conclude that the school environment as an additional component.

In respect to the above issue, integrated management model based on the philosophy of sufficiency economy for small school mainly referring to the knowledge and understandings of teacher and administrator, finding found from documentary study. This is because they are the key persons that should understand the underlining administrative theory in order to be able to integrate the developed model into school context (Hathaikarn, 2009). Hathaikarn (2009) had studied the integrated management model in small school using multi-case approach.

Furthermore, Sudsaward Prapai's (2008) study on the indicators of integrated management of the school administrators under the Basic Education Office, Ministry of Education, indicated five components as principle, organization, characteristics and behavior. School environment is not reported in her study.

However, the finding from in-depth interview of the current study indicated that majority of the key informants viewed the school environment factor as a very important component. Researchers believed that school environment should be an important component to implement the integrated management model based on the philosophy of sufficiency economy due to in actual situation, those schools which fail to provide appropriate environment for learning organization on sufficiency economy like inappropriate location or climate would hinder and become obstacles for learning organization. Therefore, the school environment has been proofed as evidence.

There are two important steps need to take serious consideration while implementing the integrated management model based on the philosophy of sufficiency economy in small school. First step will be the understanding of the model through the meeting among the school administrators and school board. Next is the readiness to implement the developed model. For example, each expert group would study the readiness to implement the developed model under the community context. From the point of views of the practitioners who had been practicing the philosophy of sufficiency economy, seem to be already ready. However, depend on the experts’ views, once needs to ensure about the community readiness before being able to implement the integrated management model for learning organization successfully. This can be explained as the full participation from the community is the key factor to determine the success of the developed model.

In addition, there was another coherent issue that both practitioners and experts agreed with, is the expansion of the developed model to the relating network schools. This result is supported by Saowanee Treputharat (2010). She reported that networking was the importance approach on effectiveness of educational reform. Finding from the school administrators’ and teachers’ opinions, indicated that networking would help schools to develop in many aspects such as learning and teaching, teaching materials, exchange knowledge as well as establish good relationships among network schools. These aspects would create learning climate especially those schools that needed to implement the integrated management based on the philosophy of sufficiency economy.

Acknowledgements

The author(s) declare that there is no conflict of interest.

References

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• Saowanee, T. (2010). The Network System Development of Effective School Management for Education Reform in The North Eastern Region Thailand. Paper presented in Hawaii International Conference on Educational, Honolulu Hawaii, USA, 1041-1050

• Senge, P. (1994). The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook: Strategies and Tools for Building a Learning Organization. New York, NY: Doubleday.

• Sudsaward, P. (2008) The Development of the indicators for Integrated Management of the Basic Education Administrators. Master of Education Dissertation: Department of Education Administration, Graduate school, Khon Kaen University.

• The Office of National Primary Education Commission. (1996). PBB The Budget Planning based on Task Oriented: From theory to practice in higher education. Bangkok: Religion Publishing Company.

• Thuan, T. (2010) Integrated Administration Management. Retrieved from http://www.dusitthost.dusit.ac.th