Model of Social Partnership of Early Child Development Centers Under the Department of Local Administrative Organization in Thailand

Abstract

The objective of this research was studying and developing the model of social partnership of early child development centers under local administrative organizations in Thailand by using mixed method research. The quantitative research was conducted with 495 samples and the qualitative data was collected from 8 excellent early child development centers. The key informants were chief of child development centers, teachers/caregivers, and parents/guardians. Likert scale questionnaires and in-depth interviews were used as the research instruments to collect the quantitative and qualitative data. The quantitative data was analyzed by using descriptive statistics of frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation while the content analysis was used to analyze the qualitative data.

The results revealed that the model of social partnership for early child development centers required the links between the government, the public and related agencies based on participation principles, mechanisms linking with the educational sector, and knowledge sharing of communities as well as network empowerment in order to enhance the standard operation and applicable model of social partnership of early child development centers.