Designing Simulation for Assessing People Skills and Competencies of School Leaders in Thailand

Abstract

The purposes of this study were to design and develop a simulation for assessing People Skills and Competencies (PSCs) of school leaders in Thailand. The research approach using in this study was Research and Development (R&D). The first part aimed to identify a theme and content of simulation by discovering the priority needs of PSCs used by school leaders in managing stakeholders on their educational administration tasks. The second part was focused on the development of computer-based-simulation program (CBSP) to assess PSCs of school leader. The sample of this study were 346 from the population of 2,537 secondary school directors under Office of the Basic Education Commission (OBEC), Thailand. The research instrument used in this study was a five level rating scaled questionnaire. The research finding showed that in the first part, the simulation theme and content was related to “self & social awareness” of school administrator in managing “local/ community representatives” when working on the “curriculum development” tasks.  In the second part, the design and development of CBSP for assessing PSCs of school administrators was based on the five steps of simulation development framework. The simulation content and branching stories consisted of five actors, three decision trigger scenes and four choices in each scene. Thus, the accumulated branching alternatives in the simulation program were 420 choices totally.