Abstract:
The purposes of this research were to study the operation and the problems of the operation of Instructional Development Centers in Science under the jurisdiction of the Department of General Education. The data were collected from four working rooms of the centers as the population and from the samples of the collaborative committee of the centers by means of purposive selection. The instruments designed by the researcher were 1) the questionnaires and the interviewing form for studying of the operation of instructional development centers in science 2) the survey form on the study of working rooms of the centers. The instruments were validated by the experts. The obtained data were analyzed by means of frequency and content analysis. The research findings were as follows: 1) The operation of Instructional Development Centers in Science was as follows: sharing common goals by the collaborative committee, making annual operational plans and acquiring budget from the Department of General Education, the Ministry of Education, and from the associations of teachers and parents. Instructional media, tools and equipment were prepared for teachers and students for utilizing. Training was also organized to enable teachers to apply the student-centered approach in their teaching and to produce instructional media and innovation. Moreover, the centers had self-evaluation on their operation too. Besides, the center's offices were adapted from classrooms where there were facilities, instructional media, scientific equipment for service. 2) The problems of the operation of instructional development centers in science were as follows: unclear operational objectives which made them hard for implementation, lack of experts in instructional media production, lack of master science teachers, lack of resource persons in science and unclear evaluation methods of the centers' operation.