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66 The Journal of the Royal Institute of Thailand Volume III - 2011 66 Redefining çThainessé: Embracing Diversity, Preserving Unity A Patani Malay-Thai mother tongue-based bilingual education has been conducted as an action participatory research project in 4 schools in the southernmost provinces of Thailand. To address the problems of these learners, Mahidol University started a Mother Tongue-Based Education Bilingual Project in a selected Patani Malay community in Southern Thailand, after conducting preliminary research such as the language situation survey. The goals are to facilitate Patani Malay speaking children to speak, read and write well in both Patani Malay and Thai, to retain their Malay identity at the local level and Thai identity at the national level, and to be able to live with dignity in the wider Thai society to foster true and lasting national reconciliation. The project was designed to develop the cognitive skills of the learners as well as their ability to use Thai as a language of learning in the later years of their primary education. The project adheres to the following principles of curriculum design: 1) Academic development based on Ministry of Education standards coupled with the communityûs values and goals 2) Language development in a step-by-step process, starting with their mother tongue (Patani Malay) and gradually bridging to the official language (Thai), developing the four skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing in both languages simultaneously and 3) socio-cultural development that helps the students preserve their local cultural identity as well as develop a national Thai identity. Figure 7: Language learning and literacy process 54-75_mac9 5/3/12, 10:42 PM 66