Lesson learned of building up community of practice for STEM education in Thailand

The paper aimed to clarify what I learned some issues of building up community of practice for STEM education in Thailand when I was organizing profession development of STEM education program across Thailand. Methodology regarded interpretive paradigm. I participated in the OBEC STEM in-service teacher professional development project called STEM smart trainer team as a trainer who organized the workshop across the nation in order to enhance teachers to understand the concept of STEM education and fundamental ideas of utilizing STEM instructional approaches in their classroom. The learned issues were interpreted through informal conversation with the OBEC STEM education workshop participants, reflection meeting, participants’ tasks and reflection. These issues were interpreted from the ten workshops across the nation which the author have chance to participated in. The findings revealed that, because of the movement, teachers and educators have shared and learned some concepts of STEM education. The concepts of organizing STEM education in school setting focus on enhancing students to not only learn content of science and mathematics but also practice them in contexts. Regarding the conception of STEM education, it seems that there are some challenging and issues of organizing in STEM education in Thailand school setting. These include objectivist conception of STEM education, reforming curriculum for STEM education, perception of parents about schooling and cooperation among parents and teachers, building up school partnership and cooperation among teachers, conceptualizing assessment for STEM education, and school administration for STEM education in Thailand context This paper may have implication of education reform for STEM education.