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12 Monaliza Hernandez Mamac

that student cultural interactions and parent-student communication greatly affect children’s
reading and literacy as well as their sense of belongingness. Parents’ socio-economic status

affects their children’s school placement as ‘wealthier families can afford private schools’ or
‘there are special programs attractive to families of high socio-economic status’ (Tramonte
& Willms, 2010, p. 211). Bosio and Origo (2020) examined the relation of teaching styles to
students’ academic achievement in a public university in Italy. They compared traditional and
active learning teaching styles. They discovered that only the high achieving students gain from
active learning. Altinyelken (2015) explores the implementation of student-centred curriculum
in 8 public primary schools in Ankara, Turkey. In her study, teachers observe that students’

financial, social, and linguistic resources impact the performance of students.

What is more, these teachers pointed to differential outcomes of such practices for
students from diverse backgrounds. They noted that students who had access to
computers, the internet, and educational materials at home, and whose parents
were well-educated and invested more time in supporting their children’s education
benefited much more from such pedagogical practices. In other words, students
with more material, cultural and linguistic resources learnt more, developed higher
critical thinking skills and participated more in the classroom.

(Altinyelken, 2015, p. 494)

Teachers should be conscious on the students’ unequal cultural capital when implementing
active learning in Thai classrooms. Classroom active learning activities should, therefore, be
designed to neutralise these inequalities, not to perpetuate them. Let us take the characters
Del and May as possible representations of diverse Thai learners. Del and May both study in a
university in Southern Thailand under a Biology program. Del’s parents are farmers who own

a small land in Thailand’s Southern region. Her family belongs to low-income group. In the
afternoon and weekends, she helps her parents in their farm. She is able to afford university
through government subsidy for students of low-income background. On the other hand, May
comes from a highly educated family. She takes advanced classes with a highly skilled tutor.
When she was in secondary school, she was always a member of the hong king group. Below
are two classroom situations, which Del and May involvement is possible:

Situation 1
The professor gave a research homework on gymnosperm and an academic article the

students need to read before the start of the class. In the class, the professor conducted the
Think-Pair-Share – an active learning activity. The students are asked to share what they have
understood from their research and the academic article. Del and May partnered up and talked
about what they have read about. After synthesizing the activity, the professor then proceeded
to the discussion.