Abstract:
Purposes : The purpose of this research was to study both the organi¬zation, allocation and proportion of courses and the opinions of education students and graduates regarding pre-service programs for bachelor degree social studies teachers in three Greater Bangkok teacher training institutions 1 namely5 the Faculty of : Education, Chulalongkorn University the Faculty of Education, Ramkhamhaeng University; and College of Education (Sri Nakharinwirot University) Procedures: The data for this research were collected by means of 292 questionnaires using three different types of items; i.e., multiple choice, rating scale and open-end. The obtained data were first analyzed statistically by percentage, arithmetic mean and standard deviation, then tabulated and finally explained descriptively. Findings: 1. The major findings about the organization of pre-service programs for bachelor degree social studies teacher were: the proportion of general education in each pre-service program was forty percent at each of three universities. This was higher than the proportion of specialized education and professional education, which were thirty percent and twenty-two percent respectively. The amount of humanities subjects offered in the field of general education was double that of social science subjects* Most of the subjects offered in the field of specialized education dealt with history, so that these three programs were history-core programs. 2. The major findings regarding the opinions of the sample group were: 2.1 Most of students and graduates thought that the major instructional technique was lecture. They seldom used modern teaching techniques including learning-center, micro-teaching, or audio-visual aids. Knowledge and comprehension were much emphasized. The degree of relevancy between theory and practice was moderately rated. 2.2 Both students and graduates felt they had not enough time observing classroom situation and had received insufficient supervision during their practice teaching. In supervision, they needed more suggestions about teaching techniques. They suggested that the most appropriate one to be a supervisor should have the knowledge background both in subject matter and professional areas. 2.3 Insufficient laboratory-teaching experiences and amount of textbooks provided for further study was the major problem that most students and graduates encountered.