Guidelines for Student Development Activities Management Using Local Wisdom Sources: A Case Study of Temples in Buddhism in Mueang District, Chonburi Province

Abstract

This research’s purposes were first to group temples’ name in Buddhism as local wisdom sources in Mueang District, Chonburi Province, Thailand and second to study guidelines for organising the student development activities by using those local wisdom sources. The data were collected by the primary and secondary documents from 58 Buddhist temples, surveying the areas, and interviewing 10 experts. The collected documents and interview data were analysed and transcribed. Then, the data were presented in percentage and description. The results of the research were as follows. The result of the first research objective is grouping the temples’ name which was divided into 5 categories according to toponym: firstly, 27 temples (46.55%) were named from the surrounding environment such as name of plants and trees, hills and mountains, old and new ages, water sources: marshes and riverbed, rice fields, forests, and fields by size.  Secondly, 13 temples (22.41%) were named by locations or sub-districts, for example, name of villages, sub-districts, and places where temples were located inside, outside, and in the center. Thirdly, 11 temples (18.97%) were named from the situations that took place. Fourthly, 4 temples (6.90%) were named after a person involved in the building of the temple, and finally 3 temples (5.17%) were unidentified history and origin of naming. The second research objective’s result is the guidelines to arrange development activities for students in the middle schools, a case study by using temples as the local wisdom sources. Firstly, the guidance activities are story telling about students’ way of life related to the temple near the residence, drawing according to the temple’s name in the community and presenting those pictures by imagination, sightseeing the temples based on the favorite name and writing the self-learning story to analyse the individual aesthetics. Secondly, activities for students are tracing the importance people by the temples’ name used as an activity for boy and girl scouts, and helpers to identify key community leadership characteristics, playing games for learning in the community activity to design learning games in groups from the temple’s name, including setting the photo exhibition for learning as a part of the photo club activities. Finally, the activities for society and public benefit are analysis of auspicious temple names to promote the community tourism, learning way of life by attending activities in the temples and communities as well as doing volunteer activities, creating a web page to publicize the knowledge, and inviting others to share and learn about preserving the local wisdom on social media.