Teachers’ Experiences in Developing Educational Innovation: A Case Study of Primary School Teachers in Education Service Area Two of Nakhon Sawan Province, Thailand.

Abstract

             This research investigates the factors motivating school teachers to innovate, as well as exploring the challenges for school teachers to create educational innovation. A phenomenological qualitative research study was conducted with 16 teachers, 3 education advisors, and 3 school principals. In-depth interview was chosen as the main data collection technique. The preliminary results of the research show that there were main factors that motivated school teachers to develop educational innovation, which are getting inspiration from their students, educators and school principals, knowing the importance of innovation. Factors that lead school teachers to not develop educational innovation, which consists of discouragement from educators, not receiving clear instructions from training courses, not getting support from schools and having workloads that were too heavy. The unmotivated factors led the researcher to set up a focus group to gain suggestions from educators, which consist of giving more encouragement, encouraging teachers to be positive thinkers, doing a survey and discussing interesting training topics, setting up a social network community, setting up a time for discussion between education advisors and teachers, setting up a team to do the school’s works that would reduce the workload. This study could be the starting point which leads education advisors and school principals to provide teachers with the necessary support to increase innovation in the future.