Ethnic folktale-based materials development for secondary students’ learning

Despite scholarly literature’s attempts to promote cultural inclusiveness in education, school textbooks are being contextualized with globalization, rather than ethnicization, which is far beyond many ethnic students’ cultural backgrounds. In response to this exclusion, 15 folktales were collected from four ethnic groups in Chiang Rai province, Thailand to develop ethnic folktale-based multilingual materials. 30 secondary ethnic students were asked to respond to the importance of the materials for their learning using a set of questionnaires and open-ended questions. Data was analyzed by descriptive statistics and open and axial coding techniques. The results indicated that the students had highly positive attitudes towards the ethnic folktales. They expressed that they could learn multicultural knowledge from these folktales which related to their ways of life, ideologies, beliefs, identities, and moralities. Through the learning of these ethnic folktales, they felt that they were able to better improve their ways of thinking, attitudes about the real world, appreciation of their ethnic cultural values, and local wisdom, which lead to their better multicultural understanding and a stronger sense of belonging. These were reflected in their positive desire to sustain, revitalize, and to make these folktales accessible to others. Additionally, this study advocates developing multilingual cultural materials to benefit students’ learning in schools.