Abstract:
Purpose: The purposes of this study were: to study problems concerning the producing and utilizing the instructional media of the elementary school teachers; to survey the instructional media service centers in schools and communities including the utilization of the centers by the teachers themselves; and finally to study the needs, opinions and the suggestions of the educational administrators and those who were involved in order to set up the improvement project of the elementary schools educational media in Phitsanuloke Province. Procedure: The constructed questionnaires were distributed to 252 teachers and 48 principals and assistant principals from 19 elementary schools. The interviewing part was conducted to 305 subjects composed of the Provincial Education Administrator, the District Education Administrator, the Provincial Education Officer, the District Education officer, and the municipality Education officer, respectively. Both of the data were statistically analyzed in terms of percentage, x̄ and S.D. Findings: The answers to both the questionnaires and the interviewing can be concluded that: 1. In order to get the instructional media for the classrooms, the teachers either asked the students or help each other to produce the indeed ones. The materials the teachers used were those: they can find in their local area, the low costs or the useless objects such as used papers, colored paper boxed, small plants, leaves and fruits etc. 2. While preparing the media those teachers always keep in mind about the level of ability, the needs and the problems of their students and also evaluated their progress through exercises, questions or the tests after learning. 3. The instructional media were used in all four fundamental areas that are: Skill Subject, Life Experience Subject, Working and Basic Professional Subject, and the Support Disposition Subject, and used them in both approaching and skill practicing techniques. 4. The instructional media commonly used in the schools are chalk boards, flash cards, charts, textbooks and songs and the most common that can be found in almost every school are flash cards, charts, pictures and sentence cards, respectively. 5. The problem and obstacles the elementary teachers confronted were: the lack of idea, time, school budget and amount of instructional materials and most of all they expressed the difficulty of sending for the service from the Instructional Media Resource Center. 6. According to the needs of those teachers, they revealed the yearning for a personnel who knows how to help them both suggesting and producing the low cost instructional materials, and at the same time. They requested the opportunity to express their needs and problems about getting the materials done. The instructional Media Resource Center was highly demanded among those teachers as a service from Teachers college and Srinakarindhavirot University in Phitsanuloke Province from the schools to lend certain instructional media they cannot produce. 7. The teachers in the elementary schools needed to know some techniques of producing the instructional media from materials they could find in their local area, the low costs or the useless objects and also the techniques of how to produce the alphabet styles. The Provincial Education Administrators and the School Administrators expressed their Opinions that: because of too much load teaching and too much time spent on travelling from homes to schools, the teachers have no time to prepare and to produce the instructional media. The problems and obstacles that the Provincial Education Administrators and the School Administrators confronted mostly were the lack of school budget for purchasing expendable supplies and basic equipments for preparing instructional media. They asked for renunciation or lending some instructional media from other schools. In order to encourage the teachers to produce and develop the instructional media, they set up the instructional media course, providing some materials, encouraged the instructional media competition and approving the Instructional Media Service Centers Project in the community. Recommendation: 1. The Provincial Education Administrators should set up the follow-up program and supervision on the instructional media and should also set up the Instructional Media Resource Center for the schools and also in the Ampher level in order to give services to those teachers. 2. The School Administrators should support the idea of producing the instructional media from local materials, low costs or wasted materials to encourage the academic progress of the teachers.