Curriculum beyond borders

This PhD by project used action research to design, evaluate, and refine a social studies curriculum fostering the development of critical thinking strategies in young adults in the refugee camps along the Thai-Burma border in 2004 - 2005. The broader focus of this action research project is to develop an innovative, collaborative, culturally relevant, community focused curriculum model for young adult refugees in places of temporary asylum. Action research is realized in this project through a constructivist approach to curriculum development where an improved curriculum is being built up from the values and worldviews of the students, teachers, and their community. The exegesis starts by providing a brief political background to the refugee situation and exploring where the participant community stands as far as education is concerned, while providing a concise review of literature on refugee education. The research draws its data from a detailed curriculum evaluation project that has been undertaken by the researcher and the participant teachers in 2004-2005. An integral part of this research project constitutes a set of study modules that have been reworked as a result of this evaluation. The findings and recommendations of this action research stress the importance of a curriculum contextualized to the situation of the learners as this has been found to have a an extremely strong influence on motivation and the development of critical thinking skills.