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Radford University’s College of Education and Human Development dean Patricia Shoemaker recently hosted a visit by Santi Tisayakorn, provost of the Darunsikkhalai School for Innovative Learning (DSIL) in Bangkok, Thailand.
Shoemaker and Santi spent part of the time visiting area high schools to explore opportunities for student exchanges between American high schools and DSIL. At RU they met with faculty to discuss potential collaborations, including internships for RU teacher preparation students at the Bangkok school and a summer camp for DSIL students at RU. (IN THE PHOTO: Santi Tisayakorn, provost of Thailand's Darunsikkhalai School for Innovative Learning, describes learning activities during a visit with faculty in Radford University's College of Education and Human Development. Also pictured is RU School of Teacher Education and Leadership professor Barbara Foulks Boyd.) Shoemaker spent time in Bangkok last spring at DSIL, a student-centered, project-based school that applies the learning theories of Americans Seymour Papert and Peter Senge. Launched in 2000, the school is a collaboration among the Thaicom Foundation, Suksapattana Foundation, King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi (which houses the school) and the Future of Learning Group at the Media Laboratory of Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Twenty-five teachers, many of them from business and engineering backgrounds, facilitate the learning of 46 children, ages six to 15. According to Santi and the school’s Web site, the founders of DSIL see the school as a pilot project with the goals of developing a new approach to child learning in Thailand, becoming an educational prototype school for the new global citizen, and becoming a teacher training college for “a new breed of modern teachers.”
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