Integrating Information Technology into the Elementary Curriculum: Case Study of Watmueng School, Department of Education, Bangkok Metropolitan Administration

Abstract

The research on "Integrating Information Technology into the Elementary Curriculum :   Case Study of Watmueng School, Department of Education, Bangkok Metropolitan Administration"

is a participatory action research with the research purposes were to develop and evaluate the quality of the developed integrated elementary curriculum of Watmueng School. The 2 stages of research procedures were the curriculum development and quality evaluation. There were 2 sets of population and samples; the first one were the population of Watmueng School, comprising of 10 school board committees and 31 school curriculum development committees, the second set were the 2 sample groups that were selected using simple random sampling: 1) 8 experts, inspectors of 8 learning areas; and 2) 10 school board committees of Watmueng School. The research instruments were the need analysis questionnaire and open-ended interviews for the population, the questionnaires and the open-ended interviews for the experts. The data were analyzed, using percentage, mean and standard deviation and the narration.

The research findings were as follows: 1) The population of Watmueng School showed their needs for the integrated curriculum at a high level (4.19); the school administrators and teachers showed their collective agreement for the development of the integrated curriculum. 2) The school curriculums were designed using the infusion and parallel model of integration with 8 different areas of the curriculum framework instead of teaching ICT as a core subject. All 48 course descriptions were modified, according to the SAMR model by focusing on level 1 and 2 of ICT integration (substitution - augmentation) for the lower elementary level and on level 3 and 4 (modification - redefinition) for the upper elementary level. The 693 unit plans have been adjusted according to their learning objectives and instructional activities and assessed by using  the TPACK model 's concepts on blending the 3 kinds of knowledge: Content - CK, Pedagogy - PK and Technology - TK. The ICT educational resources were developed for all unit plans and presented in the form of weblog at the following URL: http://ictwatmueng.blogspot.com 3) The quality evaluation of the integrated curriculum showed the high level of opinions for the two sample groups of experts at 4.20 and 4.18 respectively.