Aktuelle Südostasienforschung Current Research on Southeast Asia
Teaching Migrant Students From Myanmar: Professional Development Program to Facilitate Multicultural Competence for Teachers Thithimadee Arphattananona a
Mahidol University, Thailand
www.seas.at
10.14764/10.ASEAS-0059
► Arphattananon, T. (2021). Teaching migrant students from Myanmar: Professional development program to facilitate multicultural competence for teachers. Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies, 14(2), 213-226.
In recent years, the migration of people from Myanmar into Thailand has increased tremendously. Since 2005, when the Thai government officially allowed migrant children to enroll in Thai government schools, there has been a steady increase in the number of migrant students. In such a context, it is imperative that teachers develop multicultural competence, or the knowledge, skills, and attitudes required to work with culturally diverse students. However, teachers in Thailand reported that they have not been trained in the knowledge and skills to teach in multicultural classrooms. The study has two main objectives. Firstly, it attempts to design a multicultural education training program that incorporates modules that will lead to building and strengthening teachers’ multicultural competence. Secondly, it implements the training program, and measures the level of multicultural competence of teachers who received the training by comparing them to those who do not receive the training. Results revealed that teachers appraised the module about cultures of migrant students and the module about the rules and regulations in enrolling and graduating migrant students as the most useful. Results from an independent-samples t-test showed that the overall multicultural competence level of teachers who participated in the program was significantly different from those who did not participate; teachers who took part in the training demonstrated a higher level of multicultural competence compared to those who did not participate. Keywords: Cultural Diversity; Migrant Students; Multicultural Competence; Myanmar; Professional Development
INTRODUCTION
In recent years, migration of people into Thailand has increased tremendously. In 2018, the number of non-Thai residents was around 4.9 million, increasing from 3.7 million in 2014 (United Nations Thematic Working Group on Migration in Thailand, 2019). Among these, the number of labor migrants from neighboring Southeast Asian countries, namely Myanmar, Lao PDR and Cambodia, accounted for 3.9 million, or 80% (Harkins, 2019). These newly arrived migrants add to the country’s ethnically diverse population, making Thailand one of the most culturally diverse countries in the region. ASEAS 14(2) | 213
