haltes

You know that mate! Panic, knee jerk reaction.......everyone's forgotten....back to normal.

Ken I really get the feeling that you don't ever want things to change?

Don't you want things to improve, standards, salaries etc?

I am starting to doubt things will ever change here but I am still stubbornly optimistic that things might improve. I see BCC are recruiting on Ajarn again.

A lot of ideas have been mooted on this and other forums, and the idea of a tiered system is a good one, however this is very unlikely to happen as Thailand just don't want to give westerners control of their own visas and work permits.

It would really empower teachers if we were all screened and checked and then given documentation to work that is not tied to any one school, that means we could come and go and work legally anywhere in the kingdom. This is never going to happen because it would mean that schools like BCC would have to start treating foreign teachers with respect or they would just walk to another job. These schools have no interest in empowering their foreign staff, most don't even pay for the visa runs that they think are necessary and most don't even consider any professional development for their foreign staff.

When schools like BCC start treating their foreign staff with respect, they will get respect back.

When schools know we are empowered, they will treat us better.

When the standard of teachers who are working here improves, then perhaps we will gain some respect.

They already have standards in place

Section 43 The Profession of Teachers, Educational Institution Administrators and Education Administrators shall be a licensed Profession under this Act. Other licensed Professions shall be as stipulated in ministerial regulations.

No one shall practice a licensed Profession without a License under this Act, except in any of the following cases:

(1) Those occasionally providing knowledge to learners in any Educational Institution as guest educational lecturers;

(2) Those whose primary Profession does not relate to the teaching and learning process, but has the occasional duty to teach;

(3) Students, trainees or those with a practical training license apprenticing or training under the supervision of Professional Educators, subject to the criteria, procedures and conditions set forth by the Teachers Council of Thailand Board;

(4) Those arbitrarily offering educational courses;

(5) Those teaching in any learning center under the law governing national education or learning establishments arbitrarily operated by nonformal educational agencies, individuals, families, communities, community organizations, local administrative organizations, private organizations, Professional organizations, religious institutions, business establishments, hospitals, medical institutions, charitable shelters and other social institutions;

(6) Public and private instructors, Educational Institution Administrators and Education Administrators at the higher education level;

(7) Education Administrators of a level higher than educational districts;

(8) Other persons as designated by the Teachers Council of Thailand Board.

Section 44 Applicants for Licenses to practice a licensed Profession shall possess the qualifications and have no prohibited characteristics as follows:

(a) Qualifications

(1) Having an age of fully twenty years or older;

(2) Having an education degree or equivalent or other educational qualification accredited by the Teachers Council of Thailand;

(3) Having completed a practical training in an Educational Institution in accordance with an educational curriculum of not less than one year and having passed the practical training requirements in accordance with the criteria, procedures and conditions as set out by the Teachers Council of Thailand Board;

( Prohibited characteristics

(1) Having improper behavior or immorality;

(2) Being incompetent or quasi-incompetent;

(3) Having previously been sentenced to imprisonment in any case, which, in the opinion of the Teachers Council of Thailand, may bring dishonor upon the Profession.

Has to be a wind up.....

I'm sure I've seen 'qualified IELTS teachers' advertised though???

Real examiners will have a letter from the UK or Australian embassy which has a unique ID to identify them. If they don't have this letter then they are not qualified. There are no 'qualified IELTS teachers' unless they are also examiners or have been examiners at some point in the past.

TOEFL and IELTS are sufficiently different to warrant a different approach to teaching for them.

There is no IELTS teaching qualification, there is only the qualification for those that are examiners.

I just came back from immigration today.

I had a 3 million baht investement visa from a condo bought from a Thai national.

As of right now:

You cannot get this visa anymore if you bought the condo second hand.

You can't even extend the visa you already had for another year if you bought it second hand.

You can:

Sell your condo and buy a new one from the developer

or

Sell your condo and put three million in a Thai bank

I did not push it too hard as I have a job with a work permit and I don't need the investment visa right now, I might need it in the future however

I hope no one else is affected.

That is worrying

I bought a condo for more than 3 million baht from a Thai national and I got the investment visa 3 years ago.

Now I have been offered a good job with a work permit. Can I keep my investment visa or do I need to change to a non-b from the company employing me?

I really don't want to give up the investment visa if I can't get it back.....

No they can't give information without your authorisation, the data protection act in the UK is there for that. When I used to do recruitment for a London company and checked up on a few potential employees the universities would not answer any questions over the phone, it all had to be in writing.

Mark it right and give an extra credit for being innovative.......

IMHO the primary failure in Thai schools at the moment is due to a move away from a centralized curriculum and examination structure to one that the individual schools themselves control, this can partly be attirbuted to the fact that there has been a shift towards school based management over the last decade with schools having far more autonomy than they used to have. It is important to have outcomes following say for the sake of argument Bloom's taxonomy, outcomes does give focus in the classroom, and should be part of any standards based strategy and teachers will use outcomes in their lesson plan formulation anyway even if they follow a standards based curriculum but it seems madness to still base everything only on out comes especially after looking at the research.

"The best test of an OBE-type system was Chicago's experiment in the 1970s with Professor Benjamin Bloom's Mastery Learning (ML), which is essentially the same as OBE. ML was a colossal failure and was abandoned in disgrace in 1982. The test scores proved to be appallingly low and the illiteracy rate became a national scandal. Bloom, the father of ML, is well known for his statement that "the purpose of education is to change the thoughts, feelings and actions of students." (All Our Children Learning, page 180.)

A standards based curriculum might seem great but we should ask the question who sets the standards, monitors them, and guarantees that the standards are being met?

This coupled with the fact that it would seem that Thailand never really follows through on any policies and changes them too frequently for anything postive or negative to manifest itself. As most people who have been here for a lengthy time period will acknowledge, teachers here (Thai teachers) have no stimulus to change and I fear few will want to embrace things like brain based learning, multiple intelligences etc etc, and just carry on with a microphone talking at the class. But in a climate where noone can fail does it really matter? I have never heard a Thai school talk about CPD or other important development issues.

Personally, I would lean more towards a standards based approach that is maintained by an independent body but it is worth bearing in mind that no educational system is perfect, in the UK (just as an example) there have been constant complaints that the curriculum has been dumbed down to try to ensure that no student is left behind which still has not yielded a 100% pass rate.

Study after study shows that teacher and quality of leadership are two of the most important factors in student achievement, these are beyond the control of a government who really has no desire to invest the substantial sums of money that are required to see an improvement and guarantee the standards of not just what is taught but who teaches it (whether they have the capacity to do it or just the inclination is perhaps another issue)

How do I get the yellow place of residency book?

I have a blue one from when I bought the condo but I never tried to add my name to it!

Lawnmower

Accepting that your post is genuine I took the time to go over some old posts and here is one from 1/1/2004

An article appeared in the "Nation" recently regarding the Ministry of Education's requirement for all potential teachers who hold a non teaching degree to attent a "teaching creditation (8 month Baht 28000) course at the Rajabhat Institute.

The article did mention that the MoE do not strictly enforce the requirement.

Nothing ever eventuated which supports my previous post which was dragged from the memory bank and also supports PB,ijustwanateach & Kenkannif.

Once again it's now 2005  "who knows"???

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Nobody at the MOE will know for sure....

If you have the same problem I had before with the elite miracle search bar you need to install ad aware which is a free download and the microsoft anti spyware software and then reboot in safe mode and run them both on a full scan to fix your computer. You must be in safe mode to get rid of the spyware or it will just keep on coming back.

To log into safemode hit f8 when the boot menu comes up and choose safe mode (I am assuming you are using windows xp)

English came from............................England, British English is the original (and still the best)

When I taught at university quite a few students used to wai me when I met them walking around or on the street. A few used to wai me everytime I gave them a handout or other piece of paper....

I studied there for a year before carrying on my studies at Union Language school in Bangkok.

They had 3 teachers there, one was a lecturer at Chiang Mai university before, another works for BBC world service Thai section, and the third I think was a student there as well.

Red or Maroon berets in most armies signifies that they are airborne soldiers (paras)

Hi Scott,

I have similar experience to you, I am MCSE, CCNA, and Citrix qualified and have ten years experience. I also speak/read/write Thai. I have been working in Thailand for 2 years now teaching at a university here but I am thinking about getting back into hands on IT as I think there is a lot of opportunity here.

Regards,

Hal

Thai square is a thai restaurant and nightclub near leicester square and Addies is a Thai restaurant and with a Thai karaoke bar downstairs in Earls Court.

Full of mostly Thai students though!

check out http://www.thaibrary.com

look under the DVD section, they only have a small selection at the moment, but I do know they are going to increase the range substantially in the next few months

Bar girls, do me a favour, I have more respect for the girls that work in Starbucks or slave away in Mcdonalds for 8000 baht per month.

These girls have a choice people, and they have chosen to take an easy way to earn a living, a way of life that involves no effort or no thought.

In bangkok check out thaibrary books, they have a library style system and a buy back system as well, look at www.thaibrary.com. They are on sukhumvit soi 24.

I hate the word farang, it just shows ignorance.

Another ignorant farang................

This aint UK or USA, you are a Farang here, a gwailo in Hong Kong and a Gaijin in Japan, its thier language thier country.

Some farang's just cannot grasp it.

So by your logic it is fine to call an black person darkie or n*gger or a chinese person a chink just because it used to be acceptable and they came to "my country"?

Thats crap and you know it

I hate the word farang, it just shows ignorance.

I explained it to my Thai friends as follows, imagine if the first asian people we ever met wereIndian and then after that whenever we meet anyone from the whole continent of Asia we refered to them as Indian would that be ok?

"Khon dtang Bratayt" is a lot nicer and to me has no negative implications.

Farang is the same as using the n word or calling someone a wop, spic, dago etc etc