Adaptation of Primary School Teachers (Grades 1-3) in Schools under Nakhon Sawan City Municipality to the Implementation of the 2025 Early Primary Education Curriculum during a Transitional Period

Abstract

This research article aims to study the adaptation of primary school teachers (grades 1–3) in schools under the Nakhon Sawan City Municipality to the implementation of the 2025 Early Primary Education Curriculum. It also seeks to investigate the problems, obstacles, and challenges teachers face during this transition period. The study employs a mixed-methods research approach with a concurrent design. For the quantitative part, an online questionnaire was administered to a census sample of 50 teachers. For the qualitative part, in-depth interviews were conducted with nine key informants selected through purposive sampling.

The quantitative findings reveal that the overall level of teacher adaptation to curriculum implementation is high. A closer look at the different aspects shows interesting variations: understanding of the curriculum and confidence in its implementation are high, whereas the level of practical implementation and curriculum enactment is moderate. The obstacles to curriculum implementation were rated as high, indicating structural problems that teachers face.

The qualitative findings clearly reflect the problems and obstacles teachers encounter, which can be summarized into three main issues: (1) the challenge of measuring and assessing competency-based learning due to a lack of clear practical guidelines; (2) non-teaching workloads that drain teachers' time and energy; and
(3) the scarcity of concrete and practically applicable models and learning materials.