Quality Development of Child Development Centers for External Quality Assessment: A Case Study on Pilok Sub-district, Thongphaphum District, Kanchanaburi

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to oblige all Child Development Centres of Pilok Sub-district Administration Organization, Thongphaphum District, Kanchanaburi to be prepared for the 4^th round external quality assessment. The study was carried out using Participatory Action Research (PAR) method containing 3 steps, building up a strong relationship with a target group, implementing knowledge and understanding in educational quality assurance, and concluding the results. In this study, the target group was 4 teachers from 4 Child Development Centres, the Senior deputy, and an officer in charge of early childhood education of PilokSub-district Administration Organization.

From interviewed data of the centres’ basic and quality assurance information and content-analysed data of their earlier self-assessment reports (SARs), it apparently showed that the target group had low-level conceptual understanding in education quality assurance. Therefore, the reports were unable to reflect their actual quality processes. We implemented them in the education assurance knowledge and understanding and hence re-determined the written contents on the current SARs. We then explored the stronger writing abilities of all teachers. The reported issues were clearly stated, but some issues were misplaced or unavailable. Among them, the one from the 4^th centre had the highest understanding followed by the rest from the 3^rd, 1^st, and 2^nd centres consecutively. In addition, they further extended the understanding to other colleagues for the next quality assessment.