แนวโน้มการศึกษาวาทวิทยาในยุคโลกาภิวัตน์: สถานภาพการเรียนการสอนทางวาทวิทยา ในประเทศสหรัฐอเมริกาและประเทศไทย

Abstract

This article is a part of research entitled ‘Trend of Speech Communication Education in the Era of Globalization’, and was mainly purposed to study the status of Speech Communication curricular and instruction in the USA and Thailandso as to find trend of Speech Communication education in Thailand.  Multi-methodology was employed. Documentary study (including websites), quantitative content analysis, in-depth interviews with Thai and foreign scholars and curriculum executives in Communication and Speech Communication were conducted.

The results indicated that due to different history and background, the recognition and understanding relating toSpeech Communication in Thailand were limited and were not as popular as inthe USA. For instance, Speech Communication education in the USA has been long-established (more than 100 years)in a number of well-known universities; whereas in Thailand, there is only one department (Department of Speech Communication and Performing Arts, Chulalongkorn University), andhas been established for less than 40 years.Although the results from the documentary study revealed that universities in the USA had adapted themselves continually in several ways in response to many changes, the findings from the content analysis showed thatthe subjectsin the courses were still strongly focused on Human Communication, Rhetoric and Speech Studies.  In contrast, it was found that Communication schools or faculties in Thailandoffered only few courses in Speech Communication area, most of which were applied rather than fundamental courses or core knowledge inHuman Communication.