The Development of Local Curriculum : Music and Ancient Remains in Lopburi : A Case of The Sacred Performance for Relics Worship

Abstract

     The objectives of the research were to study basic data on curriculum development, to experiment a local curriculum, to evaluate and improve the curriculum in terms of the learning outcomes and the potential in conducting relevant creative coursework projects, and to study the attitudes of 29 undergraduate freshmen students in Music Education major in the first semester of academic year 2023 towards the curriculum. The instruments used in this research were the local curriculum, the questionnaire, the group interview topics, the learning achievement test, the potential assessment form on creative coursework projects, and a questionnaire on students’ attitudes towards the curriculum. The data were analyzed using percentage, mean, standard deviation, and dependent sample t-test. The findings were as followed: 1) The result of the basic data study showed that the students and the involved people required the curriculum focusing on collaborations from educational institutes, organizations, and communities to create the local identity of Lopburi, and the local experts were required to take part in learning management. 2) The result of developing the curriculum found that the components of the current curriculum consisted of principles, objectives, structures, course descriptions, scopes of course content, learning periods, teaching guidelines, medias, evaluations, and 5 learning modules. The result of the experts evaluating found that the curriculum components were relevant and suitable for teaching. 3) The result of the curriculum experiment with students using the leaning activities such as group activities, action learning activities, using learning resources for cultural heritage and ancient sites in Lopburi, learning from the officials of the 4^th Regional Office of Fine Arts Department and the local community scholars who were the lecturers with the researchers. 4) The result of the curriculum evaluation and improvement indicated that there was a significant difference at .05 level in learning about the contents in the developed curriculum. The students were able to conduct relevant creative coursework projects and also expressed positive attitudes. Both instructors and students suggested that the curriculum should be improved in terms of learning time periods to be flexible and suitable to the contents.