A Study of Business Education Teachers’ Actual and Desired Competencies in Hotel and Tourism Management Program in Bangkok under Teacher Competencies in ASEAN Economic Community (AEC)

Abstract

The aim of the dissertation was to assess the actual and desired competencies of business education teachers teaching Hotel and Tourism Management in Vocational Colleges in Bangkok. The study mainly focused on four competencies namely; knowledge, skills, self-image, and motivation of the teachers. The study also questions whether or not teacher’s characteristics such as age, gender, and so on. are the main factor to identify their actual and desired competence. The population in the study was 99 teachers teaching Hotel and Tourism Management Program in Vocational Colleges Located in Bangkok. The research tool was a rating-scale questionnaire. Then Frequency, Percentage, Mean, Variance and  Content analysis were used to analyze the collecting data.

The study found knowledge of most teachers was ranked as very good (4) and excellent (5) in the actual competence. Skills and Self-image were leveled by the majority of teachers as very good (4) while motivation was most graded as excellent (5). The desired competence of the teachers found to be excellent (5) in all four competencies. It was also found in the study that teachers desire to attend seminars held by hotel-and-tourism related governmental and private organizations. The teachers would also like to develop their foreign language skills especially English and those languages spoken in ASEAN countries.  They also wish to join or to be a part of any hotel-and-tourism related department, association, or organization in the country as well as at international level if possible. Moreover, the teachers desire to have more time to helping others and their schools to develop educational management and students.

The results of teachers’ actual and desired competence were compared in the study to identify whether or not their characteristics (such as age, gender, years of work experience, and etc.) has a significant relationship to their competence. The answer was that male teachers have slightly greater competence in knowledge than female teachers. Teachers who hold a Masters degree have greater competence in all four competencies than those who hold a Bachelor’s degree. The same can be said to expert teachers/ teachers of special expertise/executive teachers/head teachers and those who are not in such positions.