Abstract

School culture (SC) and school climate are terms frequently used interchangeably. However, both are intangible but essential elements within a school’s environment and personality. Therefore, the study set out to first determine what elements made up a Thai school’s culture. From this analysis, eight indicators were identified including values (VA), image (IM), administrative skills (AS), communications environment (CE), policies and planning (PP), participation (PA), equality (EQ), and flexibility (FL). Having identified the study’s assessment indicators, multistage random sampling was used in the 2020 academic year to select 324 teachers and 100 school administrators (n=424) from six areas in the Bangkok metropolitan area operating under the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration Department of education (BMA-DOE). The research instrument used for the survey was a questionnaire utilizing a five-level opinion scale. Descriptive statistics analysis for each educator’s opinions used SPSS for Windows 21, which included analysis of the mean (𝑥), standard deviation (σ), skewness, and kurtosis, along with the final second-order CFA using LISREL 9.1. Results revealed that Thai educators and administrators viewed administrative skills (AS=0.90) as most important. This was followed by the school’s culture equality (EQ=0.89), flexibility (FL-0.86), communications environment (CE=0.84), image (IM=0.80), participation (PA=0.79), policies and planning (PP=0.72), and finally, values (VA=0.67). Finally, all elements were determined to be consistent with the modeling with Chi-Square490.31 = , df = 523, p =0.84, 2/ df = 0.94, RMR =0.03,SRMR =0.03,RMSEA = 0.00, GIF =0.94, and AGIF =0.92.

Key words: Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA), Bangkok Schools, School Culture Equality, School Culture Flexibility, Thailand