Development of Holistic Creative Learning Skills for Older Persons in Rural Area of Thailand: Career Dimension

Abstract

This research was carried out to 1) study the learning conditions for careers of the older persons in rural areas of Thailand, 2) develop certain creative studying skills for careers of the older persons in rural areas of Thailand, and 3) find guidelines for the development of holistic creative learning skills for careers of the older persons in rural areas of Thailand.  Research and Development (R&D) was used for this study. The study areas included all rural parts of Thailand, the samples of the study were 1) 380 members of the elderly in Thai rural communities, and 2) the older persons living in four communities of best practice to join in-depth studies conducted in four areas of the four regions. The data were collected from the sixty samples through focus group discussions, answering the questionnaire, and interviews. Furthermore, the samples who assessed the model of the development of creative learning skills for career of the older persons in Thai rural areas as well as found guidelines to develop the model of the development holistic creative learning skills for career of the older persons in the Thai rural areas were composed of representatives of the elderly in communities; the representatives of the organizations relating to the elderly development in the communities in two areas, altogether ten-fourteen representatives from each area.  These representatives were collected data from focus group discussions.  The period of data collection was during February - October 2014.  The collected data were analyzed by using frequency, percentage, average mean, standard deviation, and content analysis. The results of the study could be concluded as follows:

1. The situations of the older persons in the Thai rural were found that the older persons participated in groups according the group's interest and need for working for income, building happiness in the careers of handicrafts and agriculture. Happiness could be created in the agricultural career based on the idea of sufficiency economic, namely, raising chicken for eggs, planting organic crops, producing adequate food and necessities for consumption and supplies in the households, e.g. processing medicinal herbs, desserts, producing supplies for the household's use, e.g. cloth weaving, basket weaving, productions for entertainment, e.g. making coins for charity throwing. For the career's learning skills, of Thai older persons, the findings showed they learned their careers from the local people in the local and they gathered groups of careers in their own community and learned the careers together in their groups, or from the experts in the local, e.g. cooking dessert, wavering utensils, agriculture careers. For the learning methods, the findings showed the older persons mostly learned from doing, observation, remembering, and trying to do it themselves, learning from the local experts, respectively, e.g. making products from available knowledge in the local, development and creation of new careers, and inheriting their knowledge to their descendants. Other channels of learning were from radio and television media, and the Internet.


2. Models of the development of creative learning skills for career of the older persons in Thai rural areas, the findings showed the SPACE of Happiness Model created with eight factors, namely, 1) sustainability: S, 2) participation of community: P, 3) appropriate planning: A, 4) creation: C, 5) efficiency economy: E, 6) opportunity providing: O, 7) friendship: F, and 8) happiness: H.

3.         Guidelines for the development of holistic creative learning skills for career of the older persons in Thai rural areas were producing more various products from their careers, adding more value to the products through designing the products to meet the customers' needs, developing the products in the way of adding value to the existing products made by the local wisdom, and developing more effective public relations and distribution channels.