Abstract:
The purposes of this mixed-method research were 1) to study guidelines for implementation of child development centers in local administrative organization in Nangrong District, Buriram Province, and 2) to evaluate these guidelines forimplementation of child development centers in the research target. The research process was divided into four phases as follows:
Phase 1: The state of implementing 25 child development centers in this area was studied. In this stage was reviewed from three sources i.e., 1) research documents 2) the multi-case s was carried out focusing on three best-practice child development centers and 3) 118 samples who were randomly selected from the people involved about the implementation of the child development centers in local administrative organizations in Nangrong District, Buriram Province by a questionnaire with the reliability of 0.98. The statistics used to analyzed the obtained data were frequency, percentage, mean and standard deviation
Phase 2: The guidelines for implementation of the child development centers in the local administrative organizations were drafted by applying the first stage data of the lowest scores of the samples' opinions as a framework for drafting.
Phase 3: The draft of the implementation of the child development centers in the local administrative organization was examined by eighteen experts by in-depth interview.
Phase 4: Suitability of the implementation of the child development centers in the local administrative organization was assessed by thirty experts via the process called connoisseurship.
The research results revealed that:
1. Having studied the current state of implementing the child development centers by using a quantitative research method, it was found that the centers were overall implemented in a high level, In addition, the personnel aspect was overcalled implemented in a moderate level. This was based on the lowest level of six implemented aspects. Upon considering each aspect, it showed that 1) administration of the centers was overall found at high level. 2) The center personnel were overall at a moderate level. 3) Buildings, environment and safety were overall at a high level. 4) Academic affairs and curriculum-oriented activities were overall at a high level 5) Participations and supports from all sectors were overall at a high level. And 6) promotion of early childhood development networks was overall at a high level
2 Having established and developed the guidelines for the implementation of the child development centers, it was discovered that the guidelines consisted of the following aspects
1) For planning, namely study the problems, survey the needs and migration survey
2) For recruitment, namely public relation committees appointment and recruitment criterion.
3) For appointment, namely announcement of the selected persons, control staff and workforce planning. 4) For evaluations and developments, namely goal setting, plan developing and performance evaluating, etc.
3. Having assessed the following aspects of suitability of the guidelines for the implementation of the child development centers, it showed that all aspects were overall found at a highest level. Moreover, the evaluations and developments was ranked first at the average highest level.