Situations, Needs, and Guidelines for Developing the Professional Learning Communities in the Schools under Amnat Charoen Primary Educational Service Area Office

Abstract

The objectives of this research were 1) to study current and desirable situations, 2) to evaluate the needs, and 3) to develop guidelines for developing the professional learning communities in the schools under Amnat Charoen Primary Educational Service Area Office. The samples were 80 school administrators and 245 teachers. They were randomized by stratified random sampling. The sample size was determined by the percentage criterion of Boonchom Srisa-Ard. The research instruments used in this research were four forms: 1) a questionnaire asking for the current situations of the professional learning communities with the discrimination of each item between .52-.84 and the reliability of the whole questionnaire of .96, 2) a questionnaire asking for the desirable situations of the professional learning communities with the discrimination of each item between .46-.71 and the reliability of the whole questionnaire of .98, 3) a structured-interview form, and 4) an evaluation form used to evaluate the appropriateness and the possibility of the guidelines for developing the professional learning communities. The research instruments of the four forms had the Index of Item Objective Congruence (IOC) of 1.00 of all items of all forms. The statistics used were percentage, mean, standard deviation, and the Modified Priority Needs Index

(PNI_Modified).

The research findings were as follows.

1. The current situations of the professional learning communities in the overall were at a high level and the desirable situations of the professional learning communities in the overall were at the highest level.
2. The findings of the evaluation of the needs of the professional learning communities showed that the top three highest mean scores were that the opening to accept the comments of the implementation was 0.242, the conversation focusing on the reflection of the findings of the implementation and the implementation having the same goals were 0.229.
3. The guidelines for developing the professional learning communities were 0.205. The findings of the evaluation showed that the guidelines for developing in the overall were appropriate at the highest level and possible at the highest level.