The research entitled “The Study of Administration Model of Buddhist Sunday Schools in Nakhonpathom Province”, had three main objectives; 1) To study the background and the administrative model of the Buddhist Sunday Schools. 2) To study the administrative model the Buddhist Sunday Schools in Nakhonpathom Province. And 3) to propose the administrative model of the Buddhist Sunday Schools in Nakhonpathom Province. The researcher had applied a qualitative approach through documentary investigation and in-depth interviews conducted with one hundred and fifty four informants in total containing twenty two administrative monks, fifty five full-time monks/teachers, fifty five students and twenty two parents for clearer perspectives on the administration of Buddhist Sunday Schools.
The results revealed that:
1. In the area of context, the Buddhist Sunday Schools applied the Buddhist Dhamma principles of tri-sikkha: sila, Samadhi and panna, to implant morality among children and Buddhist believers in order to bring peace, wisdom, understanding causes and conditions, and to fathom social trends covering the development of all life dimensions for the genuine benefits of societies.
2. In the area of input, the Buddhist Sunday Schools organized five inputs, i.e. 1) personnel, 2) management, 3) the curriculum preparation, 4) the Buddhist Sunday School environments and 5) the community involvement with the Buddhist Sunday School.
3. In the area of process, the teaching process was based on the Buddhist teaching principles and the learning principles of the 21st Century to develop the three domains, i.e., 1) the cognitive domain emphasizing to spark knowledge and to enable to solve problems; 2) the affective domain focusing on Buddhist attitudes and values; and 3) the psychomotor domain aimed at applicability or the effective performance based on the principles of behavioral sciences.
4. In the area of output, the quality of the graduates had to be “the intellectual” and “the good” persons with developed domains of 1) the physical development 2) the social development 3) the mental development and 4) the intellectual development.
5. In the area of impact, the consequences were temples, homes and schools gained benefits from the Buddhist Sunday Schools and raised endless mutual harmony between the Buddhist Sunday Schools and societies in the Buddhist way with the confidence that the Buddhist Sunday Schools would help solve the moral problems among the Thai children and youth.
6. Developing the Buddhist Sunday Schools to meet AEC was 1) to spark the idea of “the Buddhist Way - the ASEAN Way”, teaching the Dhamma Studies at the levels of Bachelor, Master and Doctoral degrees while developing English skills and the third language; 2) to develop the model of the way of life for the Thai youth as the new generation equipped with education availability, world-edge, and morality; 3) to acquire knowledge of AEC by strategizing “One who knows the enemy and knows himself will not be in danger in a hundred battles” ; and 4) to improve and to prepare the curriculums and textbooks of the School emphasizing universalism in associate with way of life and culture.
7. Problems and limitations in running the Buddhist Sunday Schools were 1) the personnel, 2) academics, 3) budget, 4) establishments and environments, 5) student affairs, and 6) relations-built with the community, homes and schools.
8. The administrative model of the Buddhist Sunday Schools was for sustainable development and to develop the entire system of the education quality. Those were the inputs and the process i.e. curriculums, teachers, education personnel, learning process and management to gain outputs, which leveraged the high quality education of the students based on the Thai culture and international standards. The students would be enabled to encounter problems and changes to be well settled in societies and sharing responsibility in developing the national communities and living in the global community happily. |
