Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Rajendran Nagappan
Nagendralingan Ratnavadivel, Othman Lebar
Maria Salih, Mohd Hassan Abdullah
Mohd Nasir Masran, Mohd Nazri Md Saad, Nor Azmi Mostafa
E-mail: nsrajendran@hotmail.com
Abstract
Teacher Education programs are often put under test and are
scrutinized to further enhance their effectiveness. The purpose of this
study was to investigate the current situation with regards to the
models, programs and curricula used in teacher education in Malaysia,
the quality of current teachers, and the relationships between teacher
quality and the models, programs and curricula used in teacher
education. This study utilized a mix of qualitative and quantitative
methods. Data for this research were collected through interviews,
analysis of documents, and administration of survey questionnaires.
Critical informants and supervising teachers were interviewed.
Documents that contain information pertaining to Teacher Education
models, programs and curriculum from various establishments were
analyzed. A total of 1525 respondents from four different target
groups consisting of school administrators, supervising teachers,
trainee teachers and students were selected at random as respondents
for this study. Survey questionnaires were used as instruments to
collect data for this study. Qualitative data were analyzed using
qualitative methods, while quantitative data were analyzed using SPSS
version 12.0 and presented using descriptive and inferential statistics.
The main findings of this study suggest that prospective teachers, their
students, school administrators and supervising teachers on the whole
seem to agree that the teacher education programs are effective in
producing quality teachers. However, there seems to be a concern in
teachers‟ readiness to manage co-curriculum activities and to motivate
students to learn. Qualitative data also revealed a number of
challenges faced by teacher education in Malaysia. This paper will offer
recommendations to address these challenges in teacher education in
Malaysia.
This paper was presented at the International Council on Education for
Teaching (ICET) World Assembly, Braga, Portugal, 14 – 17 Jluy 2008.
Send comments to nsrajendran@hotmail.com
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Introduction
Background
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2005). Education is increasingly important to the success of both
individuals and nations, and growing evidence demonstrates that –
among all educational resources – teachers‟ abilities are especially
crucial contributors to students‟ learning (Rivkin, Hanushek, and Kain,
2000).
Not only do teachers need to be able to keep order and provide
useful information to students, they also need to be increasingly
effective in enabling a diverse group of students to learn ever more
complex material and to develop a wider range of skills. Whereas in
previous decades teachers were expected to prepare only a small
minority for the most ambitious intellectual work, they are now
expected to prepare virtually all students for higher-order thinking and
performance skills which used to be reserved for only a few.
To meet the expectations they now face, teachers need a new
kind of preparation – one that enables them to go beyond “covering
the curriculum” to actually enable learning for students who learn in
very different ways. Programs that prepare teachers need to consider
the demands of today‟s schools in concert with the growing knowledge
base about learning and teaching if they are to support teachers in
meeting these expectations (Darling-Hammond & Bransford, 2005).
The question is whether teacher education models and
curriculum in Malaysia have responded adequately to the changing
demands on teachers brought about by the changing nature of
schooling and acquisition of knowledge and skills. The answers for
these questions maybe both yes and no. For example, Ratnavadivel
(1999) found that teacher education curriculum in Malaysia has
consistently responded and kept at breast with the global demands.
On the other hand, teacher education has not responded adequately to
incorporate the teaching of new knowledge and skills to prospective
teachers, as in the case of preparing prospective teachers to teach
higher-order thinking skills (Rajendran, 2004) and teaching students
from multicultural backgrounds (Nagappan, Rajendran, 2005).
Methodology
Data for this study were collected using both quantitative and
qualitative methods. A total of four types of survey questionnaires
were used to gather data from prospective teachers who are currently
enrolled in teacher education programs in 8 different institutions,
mentor teachers, students in schools, and school administrators. The
number of survey questionnaires sent out and received are shown in
Table 1 below.
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Table 1:
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theories of teaching and learning (4.26), and opportunities to
understand the National Philosophy of Education (4.16).
.
Table 2 :
Prospective Teachers‟ Perceptions of Their Acquisition of Knowledge
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Table 3
Prospective Teachers‟ Perceptions of Their Acquisition of Skills
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c. Teachers‟ Attitude
Table 4
Prospective Teachers‟ Attitude and Beliefs
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aspects discussed above include, subject matter knowledge, skills and
their attitude. There were also, except for one aspect, no significant
differences between the perceptions of prospective teachers and
mentor teachers in these aspects.
However, qualitative data collected and analyzed in this study
seem to raise a number of issues in teacher education in Malaysia.
These issues have been raised by critical informants and mentor
teachers. Some of the issues raised by these informants include
curriculum of teacher education, quality of teaching, teaching
practicum, gender issue, and knowledge, skills and attitude of
teachers.
A experienced teacher educator is concerned about the
curriculum of teacher education. He emphasizes the need to produce
teachers with a broad understanding of education and teaching.
Besides, knowledge and skills, he suggests that, philosophy of
education, comparative education, methodology and education in
Malaysia need to be taught to prospective teachers. However, he is
disappointed that some teacher education institutions have removed
sociology of education form the teacher education curriculum.
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Of course the main issue here is the curriculum …. I think it‟ll
take quite a few years to get the kind of curriculum that is a
balance basically between theory and practice, you cannot go
very far from two or three things ….one is people you have took
into teacher education, they must be of sufficient caliber,
sufficient motivation for you to appear on them to have entry
behavior secondly. You need people who are well-versed in the
body of knowledge and expect them to have when they come in
and they go out. The third one is .. how do you integrate the
practice of teaching into an academic course. so I think
curriculum needs to address the issue…the other thing that we
find again throughout the years is a perception that what
happen in training program is not always guaranteed that
teachers can put into practice so this question of the practicum.
I think that we have tried to modify this and put in safeguard so
that we don‟t get somebody who is…inclined and not able to
deal with the day to day problems. These kind of things are
what a teacher finds when he or she goes to school, the
problems of moment that are sometimes not emphasized during
the training period …(CI03)
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time to get feedback .. to see lecturer and improve but if you
have one short … what happened? (CI02)
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times)… compare to the teacher training
program now kan… dari segi halatuju tu
(from the aspect of focus) I mean…..
CI02 :Teacher yang serba bolehlah…(Teachers
who are all-capable) tahan lasak…(strong)
Researcher :Yang previous one lah……
CI02 : Aha…..
Researcher :But now is it…?
CI02 :Lembik (soft)…. because more feminine
….more female….?
Conclusion
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education. As has been discussed earlier, they finally talk about the
quality of teachers and teaching. The obvious connection they all make
is to the quality of teacher education.
What seems interesting and also puzzling is that, prospective
teachers and mentor teachers seem to agree that the various models
of teacher education through which these prospective teachers are
being trained are effective in providing the necessary knowledge, skills
and attitude. They seem to suggest that the teacher education models
are good and are effective and responding to the changing societal and
national demands.
However, critical informants seem to raise a number of pertinent
issues on teacher education. They are concerned about the curriculum
model of teacher education, the practicum component, gender issue in
teacher education, and preparedness of teachers. They, being
important stake-holders, have specific concerns and also suggestions.
There is certainly a cognitive dissonance between perceptions of
prospective teachers, and mentor teachers, and critical informants
involved in this study. There is obviously a need to address this
dissonance, to identify why such dissonance does indeed exist, and
also to identify the various factors which make up such a situation.
Since this paper‟s focus is only based on some of the challenges
and prospects drawn from the study, the hope is that a comprehensive
analysis of the data collected and efforts to make meaningful
conjectures made may shed light on this and various other issues on
teacher education in Malaysia.
References
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