Abstract:

Presently, life skills are viewed as important as learning achievement in Thailand. An attempt to shift teaching paradigms and pedagogies to promote students’ 21st century skills is on the national agenda. The students’ skills used in daily life should include critical thinking, problem solving, emotional intelligence, creativity, and cognitive flexibility. These skills are the parts of executive function (EF), the higher brain functions that regulate emotions and behaviors. EF is well developed during the early years of life. One of the most significant factors that promote EF skills in children is the activities and environment exposed in classrooms.

The purpose of the research was to investigate the impact of EF Guideline for writing learning experience plans on the preschool teachers’ teaching skills. EF Guideline is a tool developed to help pre- kindergarten to kindergarten teachers create activities and environments to promote children’s EF skills. It was developed by the collaboration between National Institute for Child and Family Development, Mahidol University and RLG Institute and funded by Thai Health Promotion Foundation. The objectives of this research was threefold. First was to examine the effects of the EF Guideline Program on the teachers’ s knowledge of the EF skills. The second was to examine the effects of the EF Guideline Program on the teachers’ s skills in writing the learning experience plan. The last objective was to investigate the effects of the EF Guideline Program on the teachers’ s self-efficacy toward their ability to promote EF skills in children after participating in the EF Guideline Program.

The research sample consisted of 8 teachers (2 teachers per school) teaching in the kindergarten classrooms at the first semester of the 2017 academic year in 4 schools in four provinces, including Tak, Sakon Nakhon, Chiang Rai, and Phangnga. For the data analysis, the wilcoxon signed rank test was utilized to evaluate the differences in the pre-test and post-test mean score on knowledge of the EF skills, self-efficacy, and skills in writing the learning experience plan of the sample. The results showed that the post-test mean scores of the teachers on the knowledge of the EF skills, self-efficacy and skills in writing the learning experience plan after participating in the EF Guideline Program were significantly higher, comparing to the pretest mean scores (Z = - 2.524, - 2.205, and - 2.524, p < .05). The results indicated that The EF Guideline Program affect to teachers had increased knowledge, self-efficacy and skills in writing the learning experience plan. The discussion, limitation, implications, and suggestions for future research are also presented.

Keywords:

Ef Guideline, Executive Function, Learning Experience Plan, Kindergarten, Preschool.