Abstract: This research aims to study the causal factors influencing teachers’ anxiety on transferring the schools to the local government authorities. Three thousond and five hundred school teachers under the office of education commission region in 19 provinces of the Northeastern region, Thailand was sampled by multi- stage random sampling techniques. The model consisted of four external latent variables: self-confidence, social participatory, attitudes towards local government authority and Internal working relationship. The internal latent variable was the anxiety on transferring the schools to the local government authority. The instruments used for collecting data were: a test on self-confidence, a test on social participatory, a test on attitude towards local government authority and a test on the anxiety on transferring the schools to the local government authority. The data were analyzed by descriptive statistics and validity test of the causal relationship model, a test on internal working relationship. Results indicated that the model fit the empirical data. Goodness of fit measures included chi-square (χ²) value = 300.89 at degree of freedom = 263, probability = 0.053, Goodness of Fit Index (GFI) = 0.99, Adjusted Goodness of Fit Index = 0.98, Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR) = 0.01 and Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) = 0.00. The variables in the model were found to account for 72% of the dependent variable’ s cvariance. All variables were statistically significant, having a direct effect on transfer the schools to the local government organization.

INTRODUCTION

Thai National Education Act, Buddhist area 2542, the leading role in directing the management of the national education emphasizes on administrative system and national education management, decentralization to educational area institutions and local organizations. The local organization reform based on decentralization to a local area in order that it can realy on itself and decide to gain a local benefit, leads the organization to manage in order to improve its organization. The reform is also, influent on adjusting of local administration law to fit the constitution regulation and new enacting based on the constitution’s intention.

The law of personnel improvement-local administration act, 2542 has specified an independence of local administration in terms of the personnel administration by empowering it in its order of personnel administration, including appointing order, movement, transfer, getting a promotion, salary upgrade, discipline, complain and management. In addition, the appointment and the relieving should meet the need and suitability of each local status.

This principle aims to provide, a local administration opportunity to select the personel by itself; on the other hand, there are lots of problems effecting the personnel local administration. Now-a-days, Thailand uses the educational decentralization as a transfer form-authority, function and responsibility are being transferred to manage the educational organization for the local administration, specified clearly in the act of specification and step of decentralization for local administration, 2542. It is expected that the transfer of educational mission will have both advantage and disadvantage for one, who relates to it such as status alteration, having no stability, uncertainty and ambiguity of any detail. Because of these, it will lead to doubtfulness since, the information is unclear, he will anticipate what is going to happen. Then, they get a conflict within himself and it will develop to an anxiety at the result. It is a temper status caused by the disturbed situation or event thus, the anxiety, being fidgety, being uneasy, having no confidence will happen. The frustration that happened is caused by the scare, but there is no clue what causes the anxiety. The anxiety relates to the arousal because, while having a high anxiety, human will have more being awakened than having a medium or a low one (Isaraprida, 2004).

Having known, analyzed the documents and studied related research, the researcher is interested in study the factors that influence on an anxiety of transferring the school to a local administration. The Ministry of Education has set the goal to transfer the foundation school so as to be an under control of a local administration, which should be done during 2010. The analysis to find out what factors that cause a teacher’s anxiety aim to help the teachers, educational administrators or the school director decide what to do.

The objectives of this research are, to study the causal factors that influence on the teacher’s anxiety in Northeastern region from a transfer of the schools to be under the jurisdiction of a local government administration. To develop the research model that influences on transferring the school under the jurisdiction of The Basic Education Commission to a local government authority in Northeastern provinces of Thailand.

Hypothesis: The researcher has found out according to his reconsidering of the documents and the related research that an independent variable and an anxiety relate to each other. This leads to the supposition of the research, including, social participatory, confidence, attitude toward the local administration and relationship in the organization. All of these influence on teachers’ anxiety in Northeastern provinces, who work for Office of the Basic Education Commission both direct and indirect way if a school is controlled by the Local Government Organization.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

The populations of this research are the teachers who work for Office of the Basic Education Commission in Northeast of Thailand, including 19 provinces.

The samplers of the research are 3,500 teachers of Office of the National Education Commission in Northeast, chosen through Stage Random Sampling.

There are two evaluation forms used for this research. First, the evaluation of four causal factors influencing a teacher’s anxiety on Transferring the Schools under the jurisdiction of the Office of the Basic Education Commission in the Northeastern Region to the local government authority. The reliability ranged from 0.80-0.95. sec, the evaluation of teachers’ anxiety of transferring the school to the local government authority. The reliability of this evaluation was 0.99.

Data collection: The researcher and his assistant had collected the data by themselves. They gave the evaluation forms to sample teachers in many schools. The schools also, sent them back 100% of their evaluation forms they had given.

Data analysis: It can be divided into 3 parts, including the analysis of basic statistic to understand the characteristic of the samplers, enumerating compilers, means and deviations, the analysis of the relationship between two variables noticed from calculating to find out the multi-relation coefficient of Pearson and the inspecting of model accordance of the causal relationship following the hypothesis and evidence by using LISREL 8.30.

RESULTS

The result of the causal factors influencing teachers’ anxiety on transferring the schools under the jurisdiction of the Office of the Basic Education Commission in the Northeastern region to the local government authority indicated that the model and the evidence related to each other as an optimum with chi-square (χ²) value 300.89, independent degree 263, possibility 0.053, GFI 0.99, AGFI 0.98, SRMR 0.01, RMSEA 0.00 and the coefficient of variables prediction following the teachers’ anxiety in Northeastern parts of Thailand on transferring the basic education commission to the local government authority was 0.72 (Fig. 1). It indicated that a variability of the anxiety could be explained 72% by all of the variables in this transferring and it followed the hypothesis in Fig. 1.

The variable coefficient of the causal factors influencing teachers’ anxiety on transferring schools under the jurisdiction of The Basic Education Commission in the Northeastern region to the local government authority were shown in Table 1.

Fig. 1:	Causal modeling of the study

Table 1:	Showing total effect, direct effect and indirect effect between dependent and independent variables
χ2 = 300.89, p = 0.053, df = 263, GFI = 0.995, AGFI = 0.988, SRMR = 0.015, RMRSEA = 0.006. TE = Total Effect; IE = Indirect Effect; DE = Direct Effect; numbers in the parentheses = standard error value. According the tables above, it can be concluded that: Teachers’ confidence and their attitude toward The Local Government Organization’s duty were the direct effect to their anxiety. Teachers’ social participatory and their relations in the organization were the direct effect to their anxiety. The casual factors influencing on the teachers’ anxiety related to the information as an optimum

DISCUSSION

The researcher has found out from the research results that teachers’ confidence and their attitude toward the Local Government Organization’s work were the direct effects to their anxiety. Owing to teachers’ high confidence and their decision authority, it led to their decision, when they were forced to do something they disliked. This relates to idea of Yensabai (1989). She said that self confidence is a feeling or belief that he can do anything successfully as he expects even though, there will be an obstacle. The person who has a self confidence will dare to make his decision if he faces the problem. He will succeed in his research because of his responsibility. He can also, adjust himself for the new situation and new environment. On the other hand, the attitude is a satisfaction, dissatisfaction, bias, opinion, feeling, belief. It will happen, when having acknowledgement or when you evaluate someone or even evaluate a social event. It will affect your mind and your thought; therefore, the attitude is both internal and external behavior but it tends to be the internal behavior, which relates to the research of Pongsupranee (2001), studied the causal factors that influence on the public health’s service under the command of Ministry of Public Health to the local government authority. It was a case study at Mueng District, Chacherngsao Province. The result indicated that the decentralization was unclear to take an action. The people who got a direct effect, especially health station’s officials were worrying about their future lives, including their discharge and social welfare. Moreover, The District Organization and The Health Station didn’t understand the objective of this problem, so they prepared to transfer the authority, then there were many factors affecting the success of bringing this policy to practice, including economic, political, social factor and also attitude of the government officers.

The research result indicated that teachers’ social participatory and their relationship inside the organization were the causal factors of their anxiety. Due to this, teacher is the person that the society admires and accepts. The teacher also plays an important role on operating lots of activities. All of these relate to the research of Wuttinanon (1978). He studied the decentralization problems and he himself found out that the centralization in the local area depending on these three factors. The authority of The Central Government in decentralizing to the Local Government Organization. The populations’ having no readiness to administrate by themselves. Populations’ participation in the administration.

The problems can be solved by improving the Sub-district Council’s status and by developing its organization to be more effective. This solution related to the research of Jittipattanapong (1995). She studied about educational decentralization structure in Japan and she has found out that: the educational organization structure in Japan is divided into three levels, national, provincial and local level. The missions are divided clearly. The educational administrative management is a province’s duty, while the educational management is the local organization one. The budget’s proportion between the centre: province: local organization is 5: 3: 3. The variables that helps the decentralization successful is the population’s participation and the local budget.

The result of the research indicated that the causal factors influencing the teachers’ anxiety related to the evident information as an optimum. Because of this, it could be concluded that the variables that the researcher inspected from the documents and related studies followed the theory and related to the evident information, which was fact. The reason was that the teachers weren’t sure about the administration of The Local Government Organization including, its visions, leader’s ability or even the income of The Local Government Organization (Puangngam, 1996; Satong, 1999). Sub-District Organization lacks in an understanding of its rules. The workers there don’t understand about the roles of their research. Furthermore, the deputy of the organization doesn’t realize about how the rules are important for a government service and also, they believed that educational management is not an important problem to solve hastily. This relates to the research of Panochit (2003), studied the transfer of the school to the local government authority at Viengpapao District, Chiengrai Province. He found that the administrator, who was responsible to this policy had an attitude in this transfer the school as a medium level of the following terms including, following the policy, command, communication, state of economy and society, political environment, standard, resources. Therefore, hypothesis is a model related to the evident information.

CONCLUSION

The results of this research indicate that the anxiety affects the relationship in the organization as a negative way, but it is positive for the Local Government Organization’s working attitude, self-confidence and social participatory. Thus, The Educational Area and The Office of the Basic Education Commission should cooperate The Local Government Organization to create a good attitude by making the documents or arranging for the seminar of teachers in order that they will understand the need, intention and government’s policy in decentralizing an education to the local government authority.

The information of this research indicates that the operation in The Local Government Organization affects the teachers’ anxiety in a negative way. Therefore, The Office of Basic Education Committee Commission should suggest The Local Government Organization to prepare every term to support transferring the school and to make a good attitude and confidence for the person who relates to the transfer. Moreover, The Local Government Organization should create the credit for its quality and latency to support this situation as well.

Suggestions: From the research results, we know how the teachers are anxiety from the transfer. Therefore, the research should be focused on the what teachers need. The Local Government Organization to improve so that it will be ready to support the transfer or the researcher should study the way to develop the teachers’ good attitude toward the Local Government Organization.

The researcher should study other factors to find out if they contribute to make the teacher anxiety in transferring the school to the local government authority since, many schools were going to be transferred but it was still unclear about what the teachers’ opinions are. Therefore, the researcher should study again to confirm the information after an act of legislation is accepted.

The researcher should study this case with the teachers from other regions and he should study the way to relieve the teachers’ anxiety of The Office of Basic Education Commission in Northern parts of Thailand based on the experts such as psychiatrist, counseling psychologist, etc.

The researcher should study about teacher’s anxiety after transferring the schools under the jurisdiction of the Office of the Basic Education Commission in the Northeastern Region to the local government authority.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This research was supported by the budget of academic year 2006, Faculty of Education, Mahasarakham University and the budget of academic year 2006 from the Research Permit and Development Organization, Mahasarakham University.