Having made the choice to move from a teacher-centered style of teaching to a learner-centered approach of communicative language learning, Thailand expected that the passing of the 1999 Education Act would be the start of a new era of education reform. Fifteen years have passed and rural areas are still experiencing difficulty in implementing learner-centeredness in the classroom. This research reports on an investigation at one rural school to observe the amount of learner-centeredness that takes place in a typical English language learning classroom. Teachers were observed and questions formulated for use in a later interview. The observed teachers were subsequently interviewed, as were some of their students in small groups and the data scrutinized against the background of a critical analysis of Thai culture to demonstrate the role culture plays in the amount of learner-centeredness in the English language classroom.

Paper will be available in April 2015.