The Curriculum Development of Teacher Training in the Vocational Instruction to Develop Work Problem Solving Thinking Skills

Abstract

The purposes of this research were to 1) study the problems of the vocational instruction; 2) study the needs for teachers in instruction training courses; 3) develop the model of vocational instruction; and 4) develop the curriculum of teacher training course in vocational teaching. The results revealed that 1) The opinions of the administrators included: The teachers did not understand the process of work problem solutions. The teachers did not understand the measurement and the authentic evaluation. The teachers did not understand the defining of the problems or they could not choose a suitable case study to help them solve the problems in their teaching to develop the thinking skills for work problem solving. The overall problems of the teachers in vocational instruction consisted of the measurement and the evaluation. The comments of the students for this case mostly found was the teacher did not follow the procedures of teaching that promote their thinking skills for work problem solving. 2) The teachers need the vocational instruction training courses to develop thinking skills for work problem solving in high level. 3) The developed model comprised 6 parts: Theory and concept, principles, objectives, steps of instruction, techniques and teaching, and evaluations of learning. There are 8 steps in managing learning and teaching: motivation, defining the problem, problem inquiry, analyzing the problem, selecting the best solutions creatively, implementing, evaluating, and summarizing the knowledge. The results of the evaluation was appropriate at the high level. 4) The results of the developed training curriculum can be concluded as follows: This 8-hours intensive workshop training course consists of lectures, workshops, exercises with the given handbook for studying before the training. The efficiency of the curriculum of the training course was E1/E2 at 85.87/83.05 and the effective practice average was at 82.34 percent. The follow-up study after the training from the administrators and students’ satisfaction from the teaching of the trained teachers was found that the satisfaction to use of knowledge and the skill implementation to the instruction was at a high level. The average score of behavioral indicators to develop thinking skills for work problem solving of students’ satisfaction from the teaching of the trained teachers were higher than the general students’ average score.