The Development of Bann Thawai’s Mediated Economics Curriculum for Sustainable Wood-Carved Business

Abstract

This article outlines the implementation of a new concept of economics
knowledge in a local economics curriculum for the elementary school students in Bann Thawai, a medium-sized woodcarving village in Thailand, locally and internationally renowned for its handicrafts. Such a Local Economics Curriculum is the result of studies conducted by Thongthew (1998) and Wattanatorn (2004) on the community’s situation of production and trading transactions during 1994-1998 and 1999-2004. The
curriculum emphasizes on the curriculum concept of Mediated Economics resulting from a balancing of an economic principle related to ‘modern capitalism’ and the economic principle that focuses on the economic ideas in the existing local culture and wisdom on which the villagers based their wood carving occupation. The detailed ethnographic information on the local economic way of living described in Bann Thawai village and other local villages was integrated as part of the content of the curriculum for elementary schools within the curriculum subject groups that includes
Social Studies, Religions and Culture and Science in the Core Curriculum. The new Local Economics Curriculum was developed in response to the villagers’ need for necessary insights regarding their wood carving occupation. The curriculum is designed to be consistent with National Education Act of 1999 in Thailand, and incorporates the learning reform and management as well as the students’ actual lifestyles in the
classroom pedagogical contents. This paper describes the original ethnographic study, and culminates in describing the Local Economic Curriculum.