21st Century Education

This is an updated version of my article from 2018.
Making news again last week was an on-going and worsening crisis in the Thai education system; the incredibly high rate of debt being carried by Thai teachers. Like all public policy challenges, the reasons behind the high rates of debt

A Professional Learning Community in Action
The air is brisk as I step outside my hotel and into the Khon Kaen morning. Brisk for Thailand, anyway: it’s about 18 degrees Celsius, a welcome break from Bangkok’s heat. I’ve come back to Khon Kaen for an eagerly anticipated follow up to

How an Eager Young Teacher Learned to Make STEM Education Fun for Students
Mr. Kriangkrai Sungthong began his teaching career as an assistant professor at a university, where rising rows of eager students attended his lectures. For most people with advanced degrees in microbiology, this is a dream job but

If Thai students were stacked up against other students from around the world in terms of their knowledge of science and math, how do you think they’d fare? Well, every three years we get an answer to that question as Thai students join their peers from 78 other countries and

It’s still dark outside when I pull up to the domestic terminal at Don Mueang Airport in Bangkok. It’s a Monday morning and I am booked on the 5:50am flight to Khon Kaen to witness something special: students taking a test.
Admittedly, this may not be what would get some

Thai Teacher Didn’t Think a New Approach to STEM Education Would Work. She was in for a Big Surprise.
Even after two decades in the classroom, Ms. Sumonta Aimaek knew she could become a better teacher. The question was how. She had participated in a handful of different professional development

Simple DIY Science Experiment Builds Kids’ Interest in STEM Learning
Parents, do you ever grow weary of seeing your kids spend hour after hour glued to their tablets? Convincing kids to disconnect is difficult. Rather than pleading with them to do something (anything!) else, why not do a fun, exciting

‘Where are my kids?’ Ms. Pannee Sriyab would ask herself as she scanned her sparsely populated classroom. Few of her students were interested in math and even fewer wanted to watch Pannee squeakily scribble combinations of letters and numbers on the whiteboard. The formulas, after all, seemed as useful to

Thailand’s economic prospects depend on its ability to build a world-class workforce. The Thai government has acknowledged this fact by making workforce development a core pillar of its Thailand 4.0 industry model. By building a world-class workforce capable of filling 21st century jobs involving innovation, technology and creativity, the vision

Can you remember your basic algebra days? The endless equations asking you to solve for X or Y? Maybe you were assigned 40 or 50 problems a night, Y+2 = 5, solve for Y, or 4X-7 = 33, solve for X. I must have performed thousands of these equations and […]