Thai Alternative Education

Abstract

This chapter on alternative education in Thailand presents a variety of evidence which reflects the development and expansion of alternative education in Thailand during the past 30 years. It discusses the social context and dilemma of a learning society. While the conventional education system offers single standard-based curricula covering preschool and kindergarten, basic education, and vocational and higher education, small groups are responding to the varieties of demand and creating innovations focusing on outcomes and the quality of individual learners. The content in this chapter covers three major areas: firstly the terminology and approaches of the first influential alternative schools and their impact on subsequent developments; secondly, the evolution of the contexts of alternative education for quality learning and sustainable living; and thirdly, the variety of providers and their innovations of creative arrangement of the education system while struggling with the rigid official bureaucratic system of the regulators. Importantly, from this chapter it can been seen that while the government’s conventional education system is limited and struggling, stakeholders in the society are gradually becoming aware of the important goal of human development through the education system for achieving better citizens and declaring this need as paramount as in the examples given. No matter what difficulties these leading catalysts of so-called alternative education face in being accepted by the conventional system, there is no halting the growth of education in Thailand for self-directed learning and sustainable living for this twenty-first century.