My research is an evaluation of the steps taken to pioneer the establishment of a community bank in Baan Rienru village in Lampang, Thailand. The program was initiated through the cooperation of a commercial bank, social\ud
development agencies, and the community, all of whom agreed to participate in an ongoing action learning project to co-develop a community bank in the village. My aim in this research was to evaluate the effectiveness of the\ud
development of the community bank pilot program. I sought to describe what had happened during the development and the implementation of the program as well as the factors that supported and hindered the development and implementation; and then to provide recommendations designed to improve the program. I utilised an Interactive Form of Evaluation, using a Responsive Evaluation approach, as a basis for evaluating the development of this program in order to improve it. I engaged in an ethnographic study, in which I acted as both an evaluator and a participant observer in the program. I used qualitative research methods to collect and analyse the data. I reported the\ud
findings by writing an extensive ethnographic case study consisting of a series of four narratives representing the perspectives of the four groups of participants on various issues about the program and their participation in the\ud
program. I used an inductive coding method to reduce and analyse the data and I synthesized and interpreted the emerging themes from the case study by applying Bloom’s taxonomy, using vignettes to elucidate key themes.\ud
Finally, I applied the force field concept and diffusion of innovations theory to provide a basis for formulating recommendations to improve the program. My findings reveal both supporting and hindering factors that I classified using the three Bloom behavioural domains: cognitive, affective, and psychomotor. The supporting factors enabled groups to successfully establish and operate the community bank. On the other hand, there were several emerging problems that hindered the development and implementation of the program. Some of them were handled well; some\ud
remain and need to be addressed. Most of the critical problems relate to affective issues. The emerging problems were categorized into three areas: (1) factors that impede the operation; (2) factors that caused poor community\ud
bank performance; (3) factors that might lead to the discontinuation of the community bank pilot program. In conclusion, I have provided ten recommendations that I believe would assist the group in reflecting on and\ud
making further plans to improve the community bank