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Age gap between spouses has important implications for a range of outcomes—from fertility and longevity, to gender relationships, marital quality, and stability. This paper examines the age gap between spouses in 12 countries in South and Southeast Asia. The average age difference (husband's minus wife's age) is positive in all countries and ranges from 2.7 in Myanmar to 8.4 in Bangladesh. Age homogamous marriages accounted for 5% of all marriages in Bangladesh to close to half of all marriages in Thailand. The proportion of age hypogamous marriages was uniformly low in all the countries except for Myanmar where it reaches close to 10%. Men's marriage age has a stronger effect in determining the age gap. In general, the age gap for women with lower education was larger than for those with higher education. However, much of this effect was explained by the difference in marriage timing across educational groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Education is increasingly becoming central to debates about how to promote peace in conflict-affected societies. Equitable access to quality learning, promotion of social justice through educational reforms and conflict-sensitive curricular and pedagogical approaches are viewed as peace supporting educational interventions. Drawing upon the existing body of literature in the area of education, conflict and peace in Southern Thailand and reflecting on Nancy Fraser's theory of social justice and applying the 4Rs framework, this paper provides a critical analysis of inequalities, cultural repression and epistemic domination through education. The paper argues that the 4Rs framework usefully exposes underlying structural tensions in education but does little to show avenues for rupturing unequal power relations and hegemonies that reproduce systems of domination and social exclusion at the macro level. The real hope, however, lies in the potential use of the 4Rs as a tool for grassroots political socialisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although critical thinking has been widely accepted as an educational goal for decades, clear evidence for the development of students' critical thinking is sparse. Critical thinking has been conceptualised as skill, knowledge, and disposition respectively in psychology, philosophy and critical theory, but which applies to education is unclear. In this paper, we argue that treating critical thinking as skill is most appropriate in education. However, there are still three competing theories of critical thinking as skill: as a single unitary skill, as a set of disparate sub-skills, and as a composite skill with several sub-skills. We evaluated the validity of these theories through conducting Rasch and correlation analyses on the results of 385 undergraduate students in Thailand on the Multi-Purpose Assessment of Critical Thinking (MPACT) test. The findings suggest that critical thinking is a composite skill with several sub-skills with implications for the teaching and testing of critical thinking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in education systems around the planet to shift to an emergency-response mode. This paper explores educational responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in the national education systems of Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. In order to examine the educational responses, this study employed a document analysis technique in building a simple case study for each country. To furnish the document analysis, social media platforms of each country’s ministry or departments of education were searched for items related to COVID-19 education management. To provide a granular understanding of local educational responses, one English-based online newspaper was selected from each country and educational news related to COVID-19 were coded and analysed from the period of global lockdown in March 2020 to July 2020. It was evident that whilst all of these countries pivoted to online learning during the initial stage of the lockdown, all of them pushed to open schools as early as possible as online learning was found to be ineffective and further exacerbated existing inequalities in education. This study established several takeaways, which included that private-public partnerships and community-based initiatives are essential in mitigating the education crisis caused by COVID-19. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increased education affects market and non-market outcomes. This paper investigates the causal impact of the extension of compulsory education from 6 to 9 years on females' education, marriage, and fertility outcomes in Thailand. Using data from the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) and a donut-hole Regression Discontinuity (RD) design, we show that the new law increases lower secondary school completion in girls, leading to decreased probabilities of giving birth in the school-age years (14–17 years). The policy primarily affects the marginal child leading to the postponement of the timing of their fertility to after-school years. We also document heterogeneity and show that the fertility effects are stronger for Muslim women. The policy leads to a consistent drop in the probability of marriage and cumulative births for Muslim women, which sustain beyond the completion of schooling years. The results hold with alternative empirical model specifications and falsification tests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the long attempt to transform teacher education in Thailand. Although a brief summary of educational systems and models of teacher preparation from 1892 to 1973 has been provided, the prime focus of the paper is on presenting changes in teacher education from 1974 to the present day, against the backdrop of key political and social forces. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The agricultural sector has played a significant role in Thailand's national economy and is a major source of income for many Thais. Yet globally, and for much of South East Asia, agriculture is one of the greatest contributors to environmental problems. At the same time there have been many debates about Thailand's unsustainable agricultural system and the role of education in addressing such concerns. To illustrate broader issues and challenges this paper analyses related themes at an institutional level, while examining specific policies and concerns about sustainability among Thailand's nine government-designated National Research Universities (NRUs). This paper reviews courses and programmes in sustainable agriculture (SA) offered by each NRU, research funding and budget allocations intended to contribute to sustainability and environmental awareness. Also, this study employs SWOT analysis to demonstrate strengths and weaknesses of sustainability and education in Thai NRUs. The results of this study suggest that national education plans and policies on SA learning and research to support NRUs seem unclear and there is still a lack of comprehensive SA courses and programmes with solid support from most Thai universities and the government. This paper is a first step to systematically document and explain the state of higher education about and for sustainable agriculture reflected in policies and practices of Thai universities and their implications for national development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary This study aims at understanding the role of education in promoting disaster preparedness. Strengthening resilience to climate-related hazards is an urgent target of Goal 13 of the Sustainable Development Goals. Preparing for a disaster such as stockpiling of emergency supplies or having a family evacuation plan can substantially minimize loss and damages from natural hazards. However, the levels of household disaster preparedness are often low even in disaster-prone areas. Focusing on determinants of personal disaster preparedness, this paper investigates: (1) pathways through which education enhances preparedness; and (2) the interplay between education and experience in shaping preparedness actions. Data analysis is based on face-to-face surveys of adults aged ≥15 years in Thailand ( N = 1,310) and the Philippines ( N = 889, female only). Controlling for socio-demographic and contextual characteristics, we find that formal education raises the propensity to prepare against disasters. Using the KHB method to further decompose the education effects, we find that the effect of education on disaster preparedness is mainly mediated through social capital and disaster risk perception in Thailand whereas there is no evidence that education is mediated through observable channels in the Philippines. This suggests that the underlying mechanisms explaining the education effects are highly context-specific. Controlling for the interplay between education and disaster experience, we show that education raises disaster preparedness only for those households that have not been affected by a disaster in the past. Education improves abstract reasoning and anticipation skills such that the better educated undertake preventive measures without needing to first experience the harmful event and then learn later. In line with recent efforts of various UN agencies in promoting education for sustainable development, this study provides a solid empirical evidence showing positive externalities of education in disaster risk reduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Authentic leadership has been a topic of interest among various fields of study due to positive impacts on several desirable individual and organizational outcomes. Authentic leader was defined as being self-aware, showing sincerity, judging fairly, and behaving according to their own values, beliefs, and principles. These qualities were essential for educational leaders as well. Research showed that authentic school leaders helped improve trust, work engagement, intention to return and academic optimism among teachers. Nonetheless, there were very few studies on authentic leadership in the context of Thai education. Thus, the aims of this paper were to present a brief history, significance, and related research findings and recommend notable research topics on authentic leadership in Thai educational context. The knowledge could be a foundation towards further educational research on authentic leadership in broader scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] The paper analyzes the household factors that determine the investment decision on youth's education. [•] The paper also decomposes the school enrollment rate gap between municipal and non-municipal areas. [•] Family background significantly affects youth's school decisions. [•] Household income and parental education account for municipal/non-municipal gap in school enrollment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The past two decades have been a period of active education reform throughout much of the world, and East Asia is no exception. This paper synthesizes findings from a series of empirical studies of educational reform in Thailand where an ambitious educational reform law was adopted in 1999. The purpose is to identify lessons learned about educational leadership and change that may be applicable both in Thailand and other parts of East Asia. The studies reveal successful reorientation of the nation’s educational system around a new vision and education goals. However, the vision of change has been much slower to penetrate the daily practice of Thailand’s 35,000 principals and 400,000 teachers. The paper identifies factors that are impacting successful reform in Thailand and draws implications for leading educational reform and change in the East Asia region. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper presents the development of a data warehouse and a decision support system for executives of educational facilities in northern Thailand. The aim of this research is to support executives' decisionmaking, teacher's work operations, and students' learning. The present studies of the work system development are based on the System Development Life Cycle (SDLC), the SQL Server, a web-based application using HTML5, and JavaScript. They are operated on the Windows Server providing all services on .NET technology. Both PivotTable andPivotGrid are employed to improve the business intelligence. They are also used as a tool to analyze and to create all information in terms of both tables and graphs (e.g. query, dice, slice). The sample group is chosen from twenty-six educational facilities in Northern Thailand because this area is directly involved by using the data warehouses for the educational facilities. As the results, the improvement of the data warehouses, this research provides data systems for three different groups: the work operation of the educational facility, teachers, and students. These data systems can be processed by producing the sixteen sets of desired values and data dimension. Furthermore, they also report all information in terms of tables and graphs for sixty-ftve different reports. System test results can be divided into two groups: the Alpha Stage and the Beta Stage 5. First, the Alpha Stage is tested by the system developers. The test results of this stage show that the system works perfectly without any faults. Second, the Beta Stage 5 is tested by the sample groups. The results of this stage can be sorted in ascending by users' satisfaction as follows: the Functional Requirement (very good: 4.39 points), the System Design (good: 3.98 points), the Usability (good: 3.92 points), the Performance (moderate: 3.82 points), and the Reliability (satisfied: 3.70 points) respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Isan Culture Maintenance and Revitalization Programme was a four-year, 500,000- euro programme devised and implemented by four municipalities in Khon Kaen Province together with the College of Local Administration of Khon Kaen University in Northeast Thailand. The programme pursued five different action lines, with Ban Phai Municipality being responsible for traditionally made "ethnic" uniforms, Chum Phae Municipality for designing and installing multilingual signage, Khon Kaen Municipality for implementing the teaching of the Isan language as a subject in municipal schools, and Mueang Phon Municipality responsible for a multimedia collection of cultural performances. In effect, the programme piloted each of these four action lines in a given municipality and then sought to introduce each into the other three municipalities. The College of Local Administration was responsible for project coordination, research and visibility. The latter mainly took the forms of academic papers, research articles and newspaper columns. The principal results and outcomes of the programme included the first municipal multilingual Thai-Isan-English road signage in Northeast Thailand, the first Thai-lsan-English dictionary using a heritage script, the first Isan subject curriculum, a unique archive of Isan cultural performances, and the production of "ethnic" municipal and school uniforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate whether there are green returns to education, where formal education encourages pro-environmental behaviours using nationally representative surveys on environmental issues in Thailand. To establish the causal relationship between education and green behaviours, we exploit the instrumental variables strategy using the supply of state primary schooling i.e. the corresponding number of teachers per 1000 children, which varies over time and across regions as the instrument, while controlling for regional, cohort and income effects. We find that more years of schooling lead to a greater probability of taking knowledge-based environmentally-friendly actions a great deal, but not cost-saving pro-environmental actions. In addition, the paper finds no significant impact of formal education on concern about global warming nor the willingness to pay for environmental tax. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the effectiveness of using reflective journals in a university language program, through written student feedback, in-class discussion, and the author’s observations and experience of their use over a period of three college semesters. Students in the English Languages Studies Program at Mahidol University International College primarily had used journals for recording course content with a view to revision for the final exam, and journal entries were therefore mainly descriptive. The paper assesses the lessons learned from incorporating reflection into the curriculum during this period and the author’s attempts to provide a more effective framework for critical reflection during this time. Factors that may contribute to the quality of student reflection include defining reflection and clarifying its purpose, and providing scaffolding, such as feedback and guidelines on assessment. Teachers need to apply flexible frameworks for reflection depending on the contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The present paper aims to problematize education in Thailand. Jan Nederveen Pieterse's model of ethnic domination is used as the theoretical framework to reveal the important and often ignored role of education in perpetuating socioeconomic and political elite dominance in Thailand. Ethnic domination is complemented with Paulo Freire's liberation pedagogy. The paper shows how ethnic and economic domination of a small Central Thai elite over the vast majority of the population is achieved through a concerted propaganda effort integrating primary and secondary education with tight control over religious practices and strict censorship of the media. Case studies are provided of the role of Ministry of Education in the central government's attempt to forcefully integrate the Muslim Malay population in the Southern Provinces and the Lao (Isan) region in the North. Finally, the contested role of private education is discussed in relation to central control over education. The paper concludes that civic and religious education in primary and secondary schools is part of a broader strategy for the perpetuation of a narrow ethnocracy, and that the recent growth of the private education. An education model based on Freire's concept of "conscientization" is proposed as guiding principle to empower the peoples of Siam. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to discuss the increasingly unbalanced structure of public communication in Thailand. To this end, an Internet survey and an in-depth interviews will be employed to investigate the unprecedented popularity of the Internet with people who are dissatisfied with the mainstream media (commercial newspapers, radio and television), which do not serve their need to have their voice heard in public. The study argues that due to (1) the media domination of political and business powers, (2) the lack of a public channel of communication and (3) the suppression of opposing viewpoints by the government, people utilise the Internet and the bulletin boards, in particular, as an alternative form of communication to express their concerns and engage in public affairs. The main argument of this paper is to dispel the notion that the Internet is a medium that is exclusively the purview of those who are affluent, who are privileged with resources, income or education. The predominant belief in Thailand today is that the Internet is there to serve the privileged and that this could lead to even more elitist control and censorship. Conversely, this investigation reveals that people as users can in fact make a difference; that is, to a large extent, they are capable of influencing the medium to be more supportive of them and their environment. As the Internet is capable of being a venue of popular usage, this paper argues that it is crucial to support this new medium’s penetration of a wider public. The problem of a digital divide needs to be addressed; large sections of population, especially those who lack either financial resources or technical skills, must be included in this Information and Communication Technologies development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the motivation and circumstances of a group of Thai teachers in government schools which influenced their becoming teachers of English. Through data derived from in-depth interviewing it seeks to privilege the perceptions of the informants and thus illuminate features of teachers' experience of their educational systems, in this particular case how they entered the teaching profession. The paper contends that the reasons why individuals who are non-native speakers decide to teach English as a foreign language has been little studied in the TESOL professional discourse, but that such research is crucial for any educational discipline, given that initial motivation and personal circumstances may have a significant impact upon future classroom practices and long-term commitment to teaching. The findings here suggest that individuals may choose to become members of their state teaching systems first and foremost and that their choice of subject to teach is a secondary consideration, simply arising from their own school performance in and aptitude for that particular subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What have been the forces and constraints structuring the late and slow establishment of women's studies as a field of scholarship in Thailand? This paper seeks to provide a historical and cultural context for understanding the distinctiveness of Thailand in the region of Asia, especially the unique combination of political, social and educational institutions that have militated against the emergence of a culture of critique. In particular, the presence of a system of bilateral and matrilocal kinship in traditional times high work participation rates among women in modern times in a rapidly globalizing economy have been selectively viewed as signs of an absence of a high degree of gender discrimination in Thai society. The paper examines the divide between the household - where women are often pivotal in the sustenance of their families - and a public political culture, where women's internationally renowned 'pleasing personality' is a critical ingredient in a complex structure of subservience. The paper also draws attention to the consequences of the Thai royal ruling class's more or less successful avoidance of colonization and the maintenance of a highly status-conscious if not feudal social order. The main break in an otherwise closely organized bureaucratic monarchical system came in the 1970s, when Thailand was drawn into the turbulent political upheavals in the region, led by left-leaning students. One of the outcomes of these struggles was the emergence of women activists and development workers located mainly in academic and bureaucratic institutions. By 1980 this resulted in the first efforts of Thai scholarship on gender issues by activists and interventions in the field of development by government bureaucracy. The demand to establish women's studies in certain universities followed in the 1990s, with small successes and many setbacks. At the same time, some of the first graduates of women's studies programmes who were already leaders have become significant defenders of women's rights, and more nuanced perspectives on gender are gaining ground. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We conducted in-depth interviews with 20 women living with breast cancer and invited them to take part in a drawing method. In this paper, we discuss the lived experiences and meaning-making of breast cancer among women in southern Thailand. Our data revealed that the diagnosis of breast cancer generated numerous emotional responses. However, after the initial shock, most women started to accept their reality. The acceptance of their breast cancer played an essential role in the meaning-making discourse because it assisted the women to be able to sustain the equilibrium of their emotional well-being. Meaning-making and the Buddhist belief about bad karma was a prominent theme. The belief that adversities in life were the result of bad deeds that one had committed to others in the past not only helped the women to accept their fate but also to deal with their life situations better. Our findings suggest that these women act in their own agencies to counteract any negativity they might encounter from their breast cancer trajectory. It provides a theoretical understanding about the ways Thai women deal with their breast cancer which can be adopted as a means to provide culturally sensitive care for women with breast cancer in Thailand and elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After fifty years of almost continuous economic growth in Thailand, it is now possible to re-evaluate the developmental process of the education system. Until now, the structural indicators of education development that have been mainly used are the level and pace of the increases in public expenditure on education, the effect of increasing enrolment on social mobility, and the private and public distribution of investment in education. The impact of these factors undeniably offers a better understanding of the quantitative advances in education. However, the dynamics of the education system nowadays encounter structural limits related to both the integration of what is now widespread education within the social structures and Thailand's contribution to globalization. As a result, the contribution of education to the growth regime is increasingly questioned. The aim of this paper is to use a historical approach to explore this evolution. Theoretical and historical perspectives are combined within a quantitative history methodology, drawing on new time-series. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Thailand, several barriers exist that prevent people with life-limiting illnesses from accessing good-quality palliative care, namely: lack of palliative care providers; lack of training and education for the palliative care workforce; and issues with availability and distribution of opioids. Without palliative care, people suffer needlessly during the last months of their life. This paper gives an analysis of these issues and provides recommendations for clinical practice, research and health policy that may help to alleviate these issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cohabitation has been understudied in the Thai context where national data on the complex forms of contemporary unions remain extremely rare. This paper uses data of the National Survey on HIV/AIDS Risk Behaviours and ART Knowledge in Thailand (NSBS), 2006 to understand the issue of cohabitation in contemporary Thailand. The data were collected from 6048 individuals aged 18-59, among whom about half were aged 18-24. In general, cohabitation is still uncommon in Thailand, accounting for only 2.4 per cent of 18-59-year-old individuals. The multivariate analysis of the study sample in Bangkok, where cohabitation is most common, suggests that married individuals and cohabiters are significantly different in terms of geographical area, age, education, religion, religiosity and work. Results reveal both consistent and different effects across genders. Further research on family formation in Thailand should acknowledge the complex forms of sexual unions and explore how differentials in background characteristics between married persons and cohabiters affect other aspects of family processes such as the well-being of couples and children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 21st century will be characterised by aged and ageing nations, making eldercare a growing concern. Most eldercare in most nations will be provided informally, primarily by female family members. Helping these people understand the dimensions of eldercare is a key to effective and cost-effective caregiving. The Person-Environment Model (Lawton and Nahemow 1973) is proposed as a theoretical framework for understanding, assessing, and optimising family-based caregiving. This paper presents findings from a qualitative study of informal rehabilitation caregiving provided to elderly stroke survivors in Thailand. Four main rehabilitation dimensions (biological, psychological, social, spiritual) are identified, as are three main caregiver needs (information, assistance, and support). We suggest that while the Person-Environment Model is useful in developed nations, it is perhaps more valuable in societies where fewer options to family-based eldercare exist, and thus where effective informal eldercare is more critical. Implications for education and training of health care providers are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on the implementation of a guided note taking strategy to promote Thai students' understanding of electromagnetism during a lecture course. The aim of the study was to enhance student learning of electromagnetism concepts. The developed guided notes contain quotations, diagrams, pictures, problems, and blank spaces to encourage student interactive engagement with the lectures. The guided note templates were critiqued by a group of experienced university physics lecturers and piloted with graduate physics education students to check the content validity. Over 300 first year university students (aged about 18-19 years) attended lectures that did not involve guided note taking. Six hundred students participated in the guided note taking approach. Students' understanding of electromagnetism was investigated using a conceptual test. Comparison of the pre- and post-test results of the two groups of students indicated that students who were involved in the guided note taking approach performed better on the conceptual test than students who were not involved in this approach. From interviews, it was found that students viewed the guided note taking approach as a supportive tool that helped them concentrate on the lecture. Promoting student involvement in the lecture class through the process of guided note taking was shown to be a meaningful learning strategy for first year university physics classes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Instructions are an under-researched aspect of classroom discourse. In this paper, we attempt to describe the functional structure of teacher instructions using the framework proposed by Sinclair and Coulthard (1975). We examine nine directing transactions or sets of instructions from four lessons taught on an English for Academic Purposes course at a Thai university. The directing transactions were video recorded and transcribed, and the functions identified from the teacher comments in an interview. The frequency of the various types of exchange and move in the discourse, correspondences between exchanges and moves, and pairs of exchanges and moves which co-occur significantly frequently were identified. From these, a potential structure of directing transactions is suggested. This structure starts with a boundary exchange which is followed by one or more instruction exchanges. The teacher instructions can also include insertion and inform exchanges, and usually end with a further instruction exchange. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background/Context: It may appear a simple question for a 12 year old girl to ask: "what should I wear today for school?" But simplicity is deceptive when the possibilities are many and each carries with it a specific and dangerous weight. In this paper I start with a Hmong girl in Ban Rongrian, Thailand, as she faces forms of identifications commonly used for herself and her parents: "the dangerous communist insurgent," "the good Thai student," and "the colorful and peaceful ethnic minority. "Interestingly, these identifications are not only made public through speech, but through styles of dress as well. Purpose: Building on the concerns raised by Michel de Certeu and his problematics of enunciation, as well as Judith Butler's attempts to understand agency and subjecthood within the constraining possibilities provided by language, I examine how Hmong students tell themselves and others who they are, not only through their speech acts, but also through the practice of dressing. Research Design: In particular, by analyzing two case studies compiled during a two and a half year period of ethnographic research, I demonstrate the ways in which some young Hmong girls struggle to understand the social relations that obtain between the Hmong and the Thai and the ways they creatively appropriate different styles of dress and speech in an attempt to play with the identifications that structure their lives. Conclusions: I conclude by showing how it is through these practices that Hmong girls enact a present and give us a sense of how they imagine futures for themselves in which they have greater control over the representational systems that seek to identify them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two-hundred and thirty-one students in 6 Grade 9 classes in 2 secondary schools in Thailand attempted 54 pencil-and-paper tasks related to linear equations and linear inequalities immediately before and after they participated in 13 lessons on those topics. Students' written responses, and transcripts of pre- and postteaching interviews with 18 interviewees (a high-performer, a middle-performer, and a low-performer, from each of the 6 classes), were analyzed, the aim being to identify changes in student understanding. At the postteaching stage, students improved their performance and had a better understanding of associated concepts than they had at the preteaching stage. However, many remained confused about the meaning of an inequality and about what solutions to an inequality represented. Six months later, students in low- and medium-stream classes performed only slightly better than they had performed at the preteaching stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If producing quality research and meeting the attendant demands of thesis and dissertation writing is a difficult process for native speaker students, it is often doubly so for non-native speakers. ESL/EFL students may have the level of language proficiency for admission to their course of study, without yet possessing the necessary textual knowledge, genre knowledge and social knowledge required of them to succeed at this level There is thus growing awareness in academic circles that ESL and EFL graduate students in countries such as Thailand may need assistance and guidance, not only in designing and carrying out their research, but also with the presentation of their research in an acceptable standard of English (Allison et al. 1998). Since the nature of this assistance is often multi-faceted, spanning cognitive, organizational, generic, linguistic and socio-affective aspects, a multi-thrust approach becomes necessary to provide student support. The paper describes one such attempt at meeting the multiple needs of EFL graduate students in Thailand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at the functions of repetition of lexical items which fall within a single T-unit. Examining data from a foundation English course at a Thai university, transcripts of eliciting transactions from 12 lessons were divided into T-units. Within-unit repetitions were identified and categorized. Categories of repetition found, in order of frequency, were emphasis, clarification, affirmation, left-fronting, choral units, re-initiation, and pedagogic reformulation. These functions were found to be related to the discourse move the repetition occurs in and to the type of repetition, but were not related to individual teachers. The findings suggest that within-unit repetition is primarily used to aid students' comprehension of teacher talk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main principles of the tourism policy as established by the Ministry of Tourism and Sports during 2003–2006 is to develop Thailand to be Tourism Capital of Asia within 3 years starting from 2004 to 2006. To achieve the ambitious government target, the success of any tourism development strategy will be determined to a large extent by human resources, which can deliver efficient, high quality services. The travel and tourism education in Thailand at an undergraduate level was offered in the Faculty of Commerce and Accountancy, Chulalongkorn University in 1955 under the Bachelor of Commerce Degree with a major field of study in ‘Travel Management.’ Prince of Songkla University (PSU) brought the concept of community college from the U.S.A. to put into action by setting up Phuket Community College by offering 2-year diploma program in Hotel and Tourism Management to meet the staff requirement of tourism industry in Phuket in 1977. The findings of ‘Baccalaureate and Graduate Degrees in Tourism and Hospitality Studies in Thailand: The Current Situations, Problems and Future Development’ studied by Chaisawat (1997) and Chaisawat (2000) found that the situation of the universities/institutes that offered programs in hospitality and tourism had changed with a lot of quantity improvement in terms of institutions, number of staff, and number of input/output students as well as research projects. But the very important issues that relate directly to the quality of graduates, problems and constraints running in the hospitality/tourism programs still existed. The National Economic and Social Development Board (NESDB) (2004) did an in-depth study of the labour force situation among middle- and high-level personnel within the tourism industry in order to increase productivity and capability of the national competitiveness. Chaisawat and Boonchu (2005) did another study on Baccalaureate and Graduate Degrees in tourism and hospitality studies in Thailand in 2003. Both studies also found that the quantity of graduates from the educational institutions was sufficiently to serve the demand of the industry. However, there were problems in terms of quality since graduates' qualifications were not up to the standards required by the employers. Finally the paper recommended that Thailand should be positioned as a centre for hospitality and tourism studies and training, locating at major tourism destinations. In terms of strategic implementation of tourism development, tourism educations and training institutions should play the catalyst and coordinating roles with the stakeholders in each region or destination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper presents the result of a large thermal comfort survey conducted using 1520 Thai volunteers from different climatic regions of Thailand. The survey was conducted using different types of air-conditioned buildings from the private and public sectors. Apart from common thermal comfort factors such as air dry bulb temperature, relative humidity and air velocity, two non-quantifiable factors were considered. These are the acclimatization to the use of air conditioner at home and the education level, i.e., post graduate, graduate and scholar. A general database for thermal comfort studies in Thailand was created, and different thermal comfort standards were developed for the three climatic regions of Thailand. Twenty six degree Celsius and 50–60% relative humidity could be used as a comfortable environment condition for the whole country. The data was then used to generalize an earlier concept we developed for setting thermal comfort standard using data from non air-conditioned buildings. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Using data from Thailand’s National Labor Force Surveys, this paper describes changes in the distribution of educational attainment among young men and women, and assesses changes in the returns to schooling. The results show that the average educational attainment of the population increased between 1985 and 1998, and that the inequities in educational attainment between rural and urban areas declined. The analyses show that the impact of education on earnings fluctuates widely depending on the level of schooling completed and gender. While the value of years of schooling is generally stable over time, the impact of completing secondary or higher education depends on the time and gender. The policy implications of this research focus on the importance of adopting a diversified strategy to educational investments at the national level, rather than simply using rates of return evidence to make decisions about how to expand education. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper examines the broad patterns, trends and characteristics of child labor in Thailand in the last decade. It then undertakes an empirical analysis which suggests that the determinants of education and child labor, and policies to address them, are sensitive with respect to the age of the child and income of the family. Education subsidies are found to be justified from a social policy point of view. The cost benefit simulations suggest that private considerations make children withdraw from school and join the labor market earlier than is socially desirable. However, subsidies alone will not reduce child labor/increase education by much: the econometric results suggest that the education/child labor response of such incentives is small, albeit statistically significant. Therefore, public support to basic education should continue along with policies that enhance growth and reduce poverty. These measures are very much preventive and unable to improve the working conditions of those children who will keep working or unlikely to make many children withdraw from the labor force. Those children that will remain at work will benefit from a combination of a more rigorous enforcement of regulations against exploitative forms of child labor, targeted schemes (for example, for boys in the construction sector and girls in prostitution), awareness campaigns and greater participation of local organizations, communities, unions and employers in the design and implementation of these programs. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Based on a study of leprosy destigmatisation campaigns conducted in Thailand since the 1970s, this article examines the difficulties in their implementation, the extent of their success and the degree to which they are actually needed. The findings indicate that these campaigns are doomed to fail because of problems inherent in any attempt to transmit a normalising message, and also because of stigmatisation derived from the metaphorical use of leprosy in spoken language. The study also found that educating the public about leprosy only increased the risk of stigmatisation. However, it appears that the stigma itself bears the potential for destigmatisation, since the worse the image of the disease, the less likely its identification with the patients diagnosed today, thus sparing them actual negative reactions. These conclusions serve as a basis for examining assumptions about knowledge and power underlying the constructionist analysis of destigmatisation processes. The paper calls to abandon these presuppositions, as they have led constructionism to a pessimistic view of the possibility of destigmatising diseases and disabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The FEP financing formula contributes at reducing income inequality across schools. • Still, the FEP is not sufficient to significantly reduce recurrent income gaps. • Better locally and privately financed schools still show higher learning results. • Rationing and weak targeting of the poor student subsidy reduces the program equity. This paper examines the capacity of the "15-year Free Education program" (FEP) funding formula in Thailand at reducing inequalities in resource allocation across primary and secondary schools and at narrowing learning outcomes inequalities. The analysis uses data from an education sector survey carried out in 2015-2016 covering 240 public schools, 2463 teachers and 2500 households. We find that while the FEP contributes at reducing disparities in resources per student across schools, the funding formula is not sufficiently progressive and large enough to compensate for local government and private sector contributions, nor to significantly reduce inequalities in learning outcomes across communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]