The Guidelines for Academic Administration of Early Childhood Affairs in School under Phranakhon Si Ayutthaya Primary Educational Service Area Office 1

Abstract

   The objectives of this research were: 1. to investigate the problems of early childhood academic administration, and 2. to study guidelines for improving the academic administration of early childhood education. The research was conducted in two phases. Phase 1 studied the problems of early childhood academic administration. The sample consisted of 121 school administrators under the Phra Nakhon Si Ayutthaya Primary Educational Service Area Office 1, who were selected through multi-stage sampling. The research instrument was a 39-item questionnaire with a reliability coefficient of 0.98. The data were analyzed using mean and standard deviation. Phase 2 examined guidelines for improving early childhood academic administration. The key informants consisted of seven experts, selected through purposive sampling. The research instrument was a semi-structured interview consisting of 15 questions, and the data were analyzed using content analysis.

   The findings revealed that: 1. the overall level of problems in early childhood academic administration was high. The aspect with the highest mean score was learning experience organization, followed by developmental measurement and evaluation, curriculum development, and learning media and environment organization, respectively; 2. the proposed guidelines for improving early childhood academic administration consisted of 51 action items, classified into four areas: 1) curriculum development (17 items), such as developing a school curriculum aligned with the Early Childhood Curriculum and community context with participation from administrators, teachers, and parents; 2) developmental measurement and evaluation (12 items), such as organizing meetings to build teachers’ understanding of supervision and engaging them in determining supervision issues and formats to enhance their role in improving teaching and learning quality; 3) learning experience organization (12 items), such as organizing training workshops on active learning for early childhood teachers; and 4) learning media and environment organization (10 items), such as clearly defining goals and objectives for the use of media, innovation, and technology in early childhood education.