Hill Tribes Children in Northern Thailand - Essay Example

?TEACH TO TEACH PROJECT FOR HILL TRIBES CHILDREN IN NORTHERN THAILAND Situational analysis 1 - Historical background 11 How did hill tribe people come about? There remain legends and reports that give varying historical antecedents to the migration and origin of the hill tribe people in Thailand. It must be noted however that the hill tribe people are made up of six major tribes within Thailand. These tribes are known to be Akha, Lahu, Karen, Hmong, Mien, and Lisu (Psacharaopoulos & Patrinos, 2002). Of these six tribes, it is only Karen that there exists some level of certainty about their origin as the origin of the other five tribes remains debated and a conjecture (Appadurai, 2000). As part of the legend leading up to where the hill tribe people came from, it has been said that their migration into Thailand can be traced as far back as 2000 years ago from ancient China (Poovatanikul, 1993). Specifically, reference is commonly made to the interior of Southern China as being the origin of the hill tribe people. The fact that they did not move together or at the same time makes it difficult for anyone to be very certain about a specific origin. The gradual and slow migration was however necessitated for the need for new land to be acquired to make their farming needs sustained. 1.12 Location of these hill tribe villages? The need for the hill tribe people to settle in Thailand was provoked by the need for new farmlands because through a system of farming that involved the burning of farm lands, the people had exhausted their farms back in China (Pan & Chen, 2011). The mission for migration influenced where the people would settle or stay, and thus their present location greatly. When they found their way to Thailand therefore, the place of settlement for these people became the remote highland areas of Thailand (International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs, 2009). In Thailand, the hill tribe people are generally a minority ethnic group and so they did not need very vast piece of land. All these needed was a place to support their farming effectively. Their location therefore comprises occupancy from highland areas with good rainforest and generally moist to wet climate. Presently, there are calculated to be 3,527 hill tribe villages covering a total of 20 provinces in Thailand (Altbach, 1999). Out of the number, an estimated 751,886 persons exist in some 113,070 households. Of the total, 46.18% are known to be of the Karen tribe as this tribe forms the largest population. 1.13 Issues on national identity Issues of the nationality of the hill tribe people have been a major issue of contention in international and local politics. This is because the hill tribe people have been generally regarded as sidelined and placed in a disadvantaged corner of national development due to a misplaced sense of identity for the hill tribe people. Specific cases of misplaced sense of national identity have been argued with reference to the widespread of lack of infrastructure and limited access to Thai citizenship (FAO, 2002). There is also the problem of delayed land settlement all attributed to the reasons of frequent migration and indigenous traditional practices. In some literature, the hill tribe people have been accused of being the cause of their own identity predicament because the people themselves lack a sense of national identity. It is not surprising that due to this firm sense of lack of national identity, the Thai government has always been reluctant in giving Thai identity to new immigrants from hill tribes. In all of this, what most commentators think is that the most disturbing situation with the Hill Tribe people is that they have not had time to be concerned about the need for their national interests and identity to be protected. This is because they have often been involved in acts such as illegal tracking and immigration abuses, which makes the Thai government distant itself from them and see them as aliens (Bell, 1999). 1.2 - Development background: 1.21 Economic development 1.22 Gender Status Data available to the Department of Social Development and Welfare (2002) indicates that of the total population of 925,825 hill tribe people living in Thailand, close to 54% are females and the remaining 46% males. The large size of female population notwithstanding, there is an imbalanced level of development against females when compared to males. This is because educational opportunities are more open to males than they are open to females. In a recent survey, it was realized that there is actually very high level of discrimination against females when it comes to educational opportunities with more male dominant schools as against the number of girls’ schools available (Oumthanom, 2001). Quite disturbing is the fact that the few women who go into education are not encouraged to push through to the highest levels such as the tertiary levels. Rather, greater percentage of these females is pushed into farming right after middle school. 1.23 Socio-economic Background Farming is the most predominant economic activity among the people. Even though farming cannot be pointed to as the major reason why the socio-economic background of the hill-tribe people will be said to be deteriorating, it has been found that the system of farming used in the region is a major cause of poverty among the populace. This is because greater numbers of the people are into sustenance farming, which is a system of farming designed to take care of one’s self and family (Hallinger, 1998). There is virtually no form of rigorous commercialization of farming among the hill tribe people, even though farming is the most predominant trade among the people. Socially, the people are thought to be highly entertained, living a more comforting social live that is free from most of the troubles of normal life. This is because there are very minimal concerns with huge budgetary expenditure for most households (Cheng, 1999). 1.24 Educational Background Thanks to outreach educational programs and campaigns, education has reached most villages within the hill tribe. However, there cannot be said to be universal and free education. Through government initiatives and interventions such as the use of laws and policies, a number of schools have been opened in various areas of the hill tribe. Typical example of this is the introduction of FCUBE, which was meant to bring Free Compulsory Universal Basic Education to all children of school going age (Hall & Hord, 2002). The principle of FCUBE has however not been realized as there remain a good number of children of school going age who have not entered the classroom before. Some parents have also complained that though there are interventions that provide capitation grant to subsidizes the fees of students, extra costs that come with education such as feeding and buying of textbooks make education too expenditure for them. 1.3 Why the Hill Tribe need this Project Rightly stated above is the poor nature of educational background for most students of hill tribe in Thailand. This is a very disturbing trend that cannot be made to continue. This is because of the growing importance that education carries in all aspects and sectors of a person’s life. The current project, which aims at targeting parents who have not been involved in formal education as deeply as possible and providing them with basic learning skills for onwards passage to their wards, is important to bridging the educational gap. The picture below shows the relationship that exists between mothers and their children. In most hill-tribe homes, mothers are the caretakers of their kids. In effect, when the project gives quality education to mothers, be it formal or informal education, there is the guarantee that the teaching and learning process will be passed down to children. This is especially so as the educational project with specifically look at ways of training the mothers to be teachers to their own kids. Source: FAO, 2002 3. Stakeholder analysis Generally, stakeholders are identified as people with some level of interest in a program or project that is being organized (Bennell and Pearce, 2003). In often cases, it is important to have a stakeholder analysis to rightly identify who the stakeholders of a program are, what the interest of the said stakeholders are, the roles that will be played by the stakeholders, and the outcomes that are expected for the said stakeholders. Stakeholder analysis is useful in the planning of the entire project, including its budget. 3.1 Primary Stakeholders Primary stakeholders are the stakeholders who are closest to the project and receive direct interaction with the organizers of the project. In the current Teach to Teach project, three major primary stakeholders are identified. 3.11 Trainers Trainers of the project are the teachers who are going to impact knowledge to the recipients of teaching and learning. They are identified to be trained teachers with professional certificate or degree in Education. The likely impact that these stakeholders will have on the program is that they will determine the teaching and learning coverage or curriculum of the project, the teaching-learning methods that should be deployed in the project, assessment methods that should be used, and the kind of feedback that should be expected from the project. These trainers are expected to be volunteers and so they will not internal interests in the project such as financial benefits, even though they will receive motivation. In terms of priority, these stakeholders may be ranked as the highest priority because of the scope of role they are expected to play in the project. 3.12 Trainees Trainees are the people who are going to directly receive the teaching training from the trainers for onward passage. In this premise, the trainees are identified to the parents of children who are found to be out of the formal educational system. The interest of these stakeholders is that they need to abreast their wards with quality education that will make their wards highly responsive people in the nearest future. Without proper education, these kids can hardly support their parents in the future (Bouma, 2000). The likely impact that these stakeholders will have on the project is that they shall become the medium by which the transmission of teaching will be done. It will only have to take the presence and involvement of the trainees to make the concept of “Teach to Teach” possible because the “to teach” aspect of the project depends on them. 3.13 Students Even though in the context of the project, parents are going to learn from the trainers, they are not regarded as students in terms of stakeholder base. Rather, it is the children, who are going to receive onward teaching from their parents that are regarded as students. These students are expected t acquire various forms of knowledge and skills from their parents so that they can develop their cognitive abilities. These stakeholders do not have any direct interest in the project because they are the direct beneficiaries (Carnoy, 2003). However, they have a role to play when it comes to submitting themselves to the project and its successful implantation. Again, these stakeholders will not impact the project directly but indirectly. The indirect impact will be that they will serve as an evaluation outcome for the project. 3.2 Secondary Stakeholders Primary stakeholders are not going to be directly involved in the implementation and participation of the project. However, they are going to influence the project to a very large extent. Two of these secondary stakeholders are identified. 3.21 The community The community of hill-tribe is concerned a stakeholder because that is the premises within which the educational project will take place. It is expected that the community will present itself as a very breeding grounds for the seed of education that is going to be sowed to graciously geminate. Some of the stakes that the community would have will be the need to motivate and encourage both trainees and students for the project. They are also expected to live peacefully with the trainers as most of the trainers are expected to be visiting guests. Because this is going to be a community based educational program, the community is expected to support in terms of helping with the mounting of the learning centers and provision of basic motivational supports, both intrinsically and extrinsically. 3.22 Government Agencies Government agencies are included as stakeholders to play various roles and stakes. For example, government agencies such as the Parliament of Thailand are expected to provide a legislative instrument that will support the use of informal education as a mainstream educational system in Thailand. With such legislative instrument backing the activities of the project, it will be easier to receive other forms of external aid and support because the project will become legally regulated (Friedman, 2000). Government is also expected to provide some kind of funding to the project because government is going to be a beneficiary. The reason it is said government will be a beneficiary is that the protection and promotion of right to education of hill tribe people is actually the responsibility of the government that this project will be seeking to leverage some. 6. Monitoring and evaluating 6.1 Monitoring Monitoring has generally been referred to as the practice of tracking on the process of the project so as to measure whether or not it is in tune with previous goals set for the community development project. The researcher shall carry out two major forms of monitoring on the project, which are summative and formative assessment. 6.11 Formative Assessment Formative assessment has been explained as a type of monitoring that is done in an educational program such as this one to supply students with ongoing feedback on their learning (Dye, 1972). Essentially therefore, formative assessment takes place in the course of the teaching and learning process and will be very ideal for the students as stakeholders for the project. Formative assessment is necessary and advantageous also to the teacher as a primary stakeholder because it gives the teacher an indication of improvements that ought to be made in the teaching process. This is because depending on the level of performance of students and areas of weaknesses and strength, the teacher can know where he is personally doing well and where his teaching style is not suiting students so well. Formative assessment is therefore a 2-tier monitoring program that will ensure that teaching and learning are both enhanced. Specifically for the hill tribe teaching process, it will be expected that parents who are going to receive the teaching lessons to later pass it on to their children are assessed bi-weekly to help keep track with teaching and learning process. 6.12 Summative Assessment Summative assessment is used on the other hand as a monitoring tool that assesses the learning that has taken place among students or learners at the end of an entire instructional unit or session (Duke, 2002). In effect, summative assessment is a monitoring program that measures the degree to which learning has take place, rather than looking at how learning is taking place. Generally, summative assessment is undertaken by comparing student learning outcome with a given or specified learning standard, outcome or benchmark. For the current educational community development learning program that is being designed, there shall be three major benchmarks that the summative assessment will seek to compare student learning outcome with. 1. The inculcation of hill tribe culture and native language into teaching and learning 2. The development of suitable local curriculum that meet specific local needs of the people 3. Training of teachers with high levels of courtesy for the hill tribe culture It is based on the rate of scoring of the benchmarks above that the researchers can make a summative conclusion as to whether or not their project objectives have been achieved (FAO, 2002). 6.2 Evaluation Evaluation may be differentiated from monitoring with the manner of tools and objects with which they are carried out. Evaluation is judgmental in nature and generally tries to rate the stakeholders of the program on their general performance in relation to the aims of the project. In the current circumstance, there shall be three major forms of evaluations. 6.21 Goal-oriented evaluation This is a kind of evaluation that aims directly at the goals with which the researchers went into the community development education program. It will be noted that right from the onset, there were key aims and objectives that were outlined for the program. The general aim was to teach parents within the hill tribe to be in a position to also teach their children. This means that there was supposed to be a learning impartation intervention created with the Teach to Teach program. In order to achieve the aim, there were specific objectives, which were set to act as delimitations and scope for the project. These are referred to as delimitations because the entire learning process was supposed to be around the objectives only. In undertaking the goal oriented evaluation, the objectives of the study shall be used as standards, by which specific changes must be seen in the recipients of the entire teaching and learning process that will take place. Because the objectives are directly rooted to the aim of the project, failure to achieve the objectives would mean an outright failure of the project. 6.22 Process evaluation As the name implies, process evaluation is a type of project evaluation that focuses mainly on the success or otherwise of the actual processes that were involved in undertaking the entire program. Meanwhile, a process is known to be made up of a series of activities, events or tasks (Edwards & Usher, 2000). In effect, the process evaluation will be committed to judging how effect each activity, event or task that was involved in the program was. By implication, the process evaluation will look beyond the outcome of the teaching and learning process to look at all other aspects of the community development project as a collective agenda. One very important aspect of process evaluation is that it has a component that makes it possible for third party evaluators or assessors to be involved in the whole evaluation process. What this means is that the actual researchers can assign the evaluation process to third party or independent quality assurance team who will give objective and neutral of how they viewed the various processes that went into the implementation of the program (Freed & Klugman, 1997). 6.23 Participatory evaluation Participatory evaluation takes its root from the word participation, and thus participants in the program. Essentially therefore, a participatory evaluation assesses the program from the perspective of stakeholders and other people who were involved in the program (Eble, 1988). The need for participatory evaluation to take place sets the tone and precedence for very thorough stakeholder analysis to be performed. This is because through the stakeholder analysis of the program, the roles and duties expected of the stakeholders will rightly be defined. Subsequently, the roles and duties that were assigned to the stakeholders will serve as a benchmark with which the participatory evaluation will be performed. Generally however, the participatory evaluation will look at how involving the participants were in the program, whether their involvement was done willingly or out of reluctance, the impact of the outcome of the program on participants, and how participants are going to be monitored after the program to ensure that the impact of the program continues to resound in them. In often cases, participants who did not benefit from the program in a manner that is expected will have a remedial program designed for them. References Altbach, P. G. 1999. 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Psacharaopoulos, G., & Patrinos, H. 2002. Returns to investment in education: A further update. World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 2881. Read More