GUIDELINES FOR DRIVING THE OBEC MORAL SCHOOLS WITH THE ITTHIPADA IV PRINCIPLES

Abstract

The development of moral schools is a project of the Office of the Basic Education Commission (OBEC) in accordance with the educational policy of His Majesty King Maha Vajiralongkorn Bodindradebayavarangkun. This project aims to instill the five virtues in administrators, teachers, students, and educational personnel: sufficiency, gratitude, honesty, responsibility, and moral ideology. The development process of moral schools consists of six steps according to the process of the Yuwasathirakun Foundation: Step 1: Creating awareness and acceptance; Step 2: Creating core teachers and student leaders; Step 3: Defining the school’s moral identity; Step 4: Defining the school’s moral identity; Step 5: Taking action to achieve change goals; and Step 6: Creating a mechanism to drive moral schools to success. This involves applying the Itthipada IV Principles, a Buddhist principle that promotes success and happiness, to drive OBEC’s moral schools to success. The Itthipada IV Principles has five important components: 1) principles; 2) objectives; 3) methods of operation; 4) evaluation guidelines; and 5) conditions for success. This will apply the Four Bases of Influence to the third component of the OBEC's six-step moral school implementation process. Therefore, it is an important tool for driving moral schools to success. It begins with participatory planning, promotion, support, and reinforcement for effective implementation. Importantly, there must be supervision, monitoring, and knowledge exchange to evaluate performance, as well as lessons learned and publicize the results of the moral school project with participation for the sustainable development of student morality and ethics.