The deprofessionalisation of teachers in Thailand’s education reform

Student thesis: Doctoral ThesisDoctor of Philosophy

Abstract

This thesis is anchored in the recognition that teachers are the ultimate ‘point of contact’ between education policy and its beneficiaries, i.e. students, and that teachers’ professional agency, professional autonomy and professionalism are critical ingredients for any education policy to be effective and successful. However, based on my own previous research as well as growing public sentiment, teachers have been experiencing work overload, policy fatigue, disempowerment in their work, and a sense of being ‘powerless’ in the various arenas of Thailand’s education reform. Given that Thailand’s basic education system is widely perceived within policy and public discourse to have been in a deep state of ‘quality crisis’ over recent decades, a holistic, in-depth and contextually grounded understanding of Thailand’s education system is needed. This thesis therefore examines how and why this problem persists, guided by the following research questions:

1. What does being a ‘professional’ teacher involve for teachers in Thailand?

2. What are the different ways that teachers experience deprofessionalisation or
limitations to enacting their professionalism and professional agency?

3. What mechanisms within Thailand’s education system and reform contribute to these different forms of teacher deprofessionalisation? How do they work together to reproduce a deprofessionalised teaching profession?

Informed by social constructionist, critical policy and policy ethnography perspectives, the study involved semi-structured in-depth interviews with 26 policy actors and 18 teachers whose collective data provided the basis for the insights generated in this thesis:

1. The first key finding relates to how teachers’ sense of professionalism and professional identity in Thailand is primarily centred around the notions of teachership (ความเป'นครู:kwaam bpen kruu) and the teacher’s spirit (จิตวิญญาณครู: jìt win-yaan kruu), which are distinct from Western conceptualisations.

2. Based on this understanding, the second key finding of this thesis pertains to the eight distinct but interconnected ways that deprofessionalisation is experienced in the context of Thailand’s recent education reform. These are presented through constructions of the deprofessionalised teacher, which include: the overloaded teacher, the un(der)supported teacher, the fearful teacher, the upward-looking teacher, the alienated (from the self) teacher, the silent/silenced teacher, the individualised and isolated teacher, and the classroom- and school-bound teacher. Importantly, these constructions not only relate to and reinforce each other, but are also undergirded by power relations, institutional cultures, cultural logics and discourses, and a regime of ‘upward accountability’ that operate throughout the education system.

3. These insights enabled the third key finding of this thesis, which concerns the systemlevel mechanisms and processes contributing to the deprofessionalisation of teachers, presented as five major ‘clusters’ of mechanisms: upward accountability and Thai governmentality; Thai performativity and fabrication; the centralisation and (fragmented) centralism of education governance; the neoliberalisation and bureaucratisation of education reform; and the politicisation of education policy and depoliticisation of teachers. These understandings point to the way that the deprofessionalisation of teachers in Thailand is a structurally, systematically and discursively situated phenomenon. They also enable a clarified and systematic view of the root causes, amplifying elements and self-reinforcing cycles that contribute to the problem — as well as, perhaps even more importantly, how they work in tandem to produce a system-wide effect that is greater than the sum of its parts.

4. This thesis also offers two methodological contributions, which include, firstly, the advantages of a participant-centric methodological ‘strategy’ and, secondly, the importance of navigating the cultural logics informing not only the topic being researched but also the processes of the research itself. In particular, it demonstrates the ways that a ‘curious outsider-insider’ researcher positionality can enable insights that are rich, honest and even ‘raw’ — which may have otherwise remained behind the ‘curtain’ of Thai cultural logics and research formalities.

5. Additionally, the insights from this thesis also offer alternative theorisations of teacher professionalism and professional identity, and point to the need for — and benefits of — grounding theorisations of these concepts in the cultural logics and legacies of the contexts in which they are researched. This thesis also contributes to theoretical understandings of neoliberal education reform and, more specifically, the various ways that neoliberal policy technologies of governmentality, performativity and accountability can ‘evolve’ to suit — and in turn amplify — the hierarchical and centralised nature of Thailand’s education system.

Overall, this thesis sheds light on the systems, conditions and processes that any attempt at ‘improving’ or ‘remedying’ the interconnected web of problems in Thailand’s education system would need to address. Based on an in-depth and systematic examination of the issue of teacher deprofessionalisation in Thailand’s education reform, this thesis offers a holistic lens through which policies and interventions can be developed to achieve effective, desirable and sustainable change. It is also intended to offer a beginning point for envisioning a ‘version’ of Thailand’s education system that is able to benefit from, operate on and do justice to the ‘good intentions’ of its teachers, which have withstood the test of time — and policy.













Date of Award1 Jun 2024
Original languageEnglish
Awarding Institution
  • King's College London
SupervisorSharon Gewirtz (Supervisor), Diego Santori (Supervisor) & Eleanor Gurney (Supervisor)

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