Educational Transformation in
Malaysia
In
this post, I will discuss and analyse issues regarding school-based student
assessment (in my country known as PBS). This system has created hype in my country and I
will try to analyse some of the problem and how they try to overcome the
problem. I also will include some suggestions, references and comparisons with other country that have been successfully implement this
system. Then, I will explore how to change the curriculum and pedagogic design
to suit with the new assessment. Here I will also emphasize on the role of
technology and blended learning to support the new curriculum.
School Based Assessment as a
Transformation in Educational Assessment in Malaysia
There
are difference contexts between evaluation and assessment. Evaluation can be
relate with a final product where grades play a big role to determine the
performance of students, schools or programs. It is an identification to
determine an evaluation object’s value (Fitzpatrick et al. 2004). While assessment is a
systematic and ongoing process for the purpose of improving learning and
development based on the feedback (Palomba & Banta, 1999 cited in
Innovation Insight). There is no grading system but more on analyse and
diagnose.
School
– based Assessment (or in Malaysia known as PBS) is a holistic and integrated,
standard-referenced assessment of students, including physical activities and
psychometric test. It has been introduced for the past three years by the
Ministry of Education to replace the existing examination system which are too
examination oriented. PBS will emphasize more on the learning experience
instead of grading. But there are still a demand by the National Educational
Assessment System to retain the examination but at a low stake at the primary
and secondary school.
Student
appreciated the opportunity to be assessed as they went along and to try the
assessment for a particular competency again if they did not achieve it at the
first attempt (Carroll,1995). Deputy Prime Minister, Hj Muhyiddin Hj Mohd
Yassin, who is also the Minister of Education stressed that PBS would provide
opportunity for pupils to improve their overall self-potential and become more
creative and innovative with continuous assistance from teachers (Ministry of
Education Malaysia, 2012). Teachers play a big role on this agenda. That is the
reason of why teachers’ acceptance is very important in ensuring the implementation
to successfully achieve the desired objectives towards producing excellent
human capital. The important parts to be focused to overcome all the issues
regarding PBS should be start from this element ; teachers, students and parents. These are the key person who will be totally involved in the success of this system. Once people start to make meaning of the change and it
has coherence, new patterns may emerge. When the
changes are perceived positively it creates energy, enthusiasm and generates
other positive changes (Fullan, 2009).
Concept
of PBS
Issues and challenges
There
are many issues arise since PBS had been introduced. But through my observation
and survey among the teachers, we can summarise it in four domain as shown in
the figure 6 below.
One of the main reason of these issues is the implementation of
PBS requires the teachers to key in student achievement assessment and other
complicated information through the online system. However, the system itself
is not stable and have been ruined by technical problem. This increase teacher’s
burden and decreasing their commitment towards the classroom which is supposed
to be teacher’s first priority. Some people claim that it is just a technical
issue that can be solve by better IT tools or provide an assistant teacher to do
all the administrative work. But is it true?
The issue became worse when teacher started claimed that the
School Based Assessment (PBS) had killing their passion for their profession
and give impact to their personal lives. Student achievement is also found to
have decreased compared to the previous years. These has make government put
the system on hold since November 2013 to give a chance for Education Ministry
to analyse and diagnose all the issues and possibilities to improve the system.
Every problem must be tackled at the roots to avoid the same problem repeated
or may be worse towards the implementation in the future. Another big issue is
the acceptance and understanding from the parents about the PBS that should be
taken in account. Parents still stick with the ‘power’ of good grades. Good
grades should not be the focus of a good education system.
How to overcome the
issues and challenges?
On the 1st
April 2014, Ministry of Education has announced the new version of PBS.
Muhyiddin, The Minister of Education said, through the improved system, the
teacher could keep the data offline, thus their workload will be reduced by
between 70 to 80 per cent.Although these brought a relief to most of the
teachers, but the main problem have not been solved yet. More research should
be done to analyse the implication of these system towards student outcome. Making and documenting student
improvements, enhancements, revisions on the assessment results and findings is
very important to improve their learning. It also needed as a feedback to
identify the best learning method teacher should use. But it should not be a
burden to teachers.
The practical problem when there are different concept and
understanding among teachers, even from the facilitators have to be solved
first. A standardized guidelines should be set but the implementation of it should
be decided at the state, district and school levels.
These
can be solved by providing a strong and concrete long term plan. A feedback
team is very important to evaluate the plan every year. On the parents side , by providing clear and sufficient
information about PBS would be the best way to make them understand and support
the new system in order to enhance the quality of student outcome. Maybe
government can promote PBS through advertisement in a social media. Government
should give the community more exposure on PBS by providing relevant and
sufficient knowledge about this system.
The
objective in decentralising education is a good approach. Decentralisation has been recognized as one of the best
approaches to take on the challenge to improve learning outcomes and administrative
efficiency. Finland has proven that school-based and teacher-centric model is a
well-known as international best practices. Education system in Malaysia is
moving to a similar system as Finland (decentralisation). But, the reality is
we are not implementing it in the same spirit. Education system in
Malaysia actually does not ready to change especially on the structure of the
system. The first problem is, we are still
sticking to exam- centred system. For teachers, the career promotion and
quality depends on the result from this exam-centred system. If that is the
case, having PBS makes it worse as teachers and principals will misused their
authority by reporting good results to please
the higher officials for the sake of their career interest. This situation is contradicting
to the fact that learning outcomes
should never be based solely on assessments.
There are no external standardized tests used to rank
students or schools in Finland, and most teacher gave feedback to students in
narrative form, emphasizing descriptions of their learning progress and areas
for growth. Finland maintains one exam prior to attending university: the
matriculation exam, organized and evaluated by a matriculation exam board
appointed by the Finnish Ministry of Education (Hammond, 2010).This is what
Malaysian Education System try to implement through PBS. However, the ‘top down’ policy adopted by the
Malaysian government has becoming one of the biggest challenges for this new
system. In Finland, schools were invited to design their own development plans
and implementation strategies based on the national curriculum , policy
frameworks and oversight systems. This provided more authority to the schools to
establish optimal teaching methods and learning environments and give the
principal an authentic leadership and responsibility in education development
and school improvement. (Hammond, 2010)
Smart School Project : Issues and challenges
Besides introduced a new assessment (PBS) to satisfy student’s
needs and ability, government also realise in this 21st century
education, technology is
very important in meeting the needs of the present generation to learn. They are an ICT literate generation which has been
exposed with technology since they were born. They learn very fast and
we have to use this ability to expand their potential, sharing their ideas and
encourage learning process at any time. Therefore, the curriculum and pedagogy
had to be refined and go through some modification to suit with their learning
environment, as well as preparing student in the future as a global competitor.
In Malaysia Blueprint of
Education 2013-2025, Ministry of Education had outlined 11 new shifts for the
educational transformation. One of the shifts is to transform the education
system towards leverage ICT to scale up quality learning across Malaysia.
Source: Malaysia
Education Blueprint 2013-2025
Malaysia had started
using technology in education by introducing The Smart School project. The project
was developed in early 1999, and until now has remain as a major concerns among
educationists and within the Ministry of Education itself regarding the overall
success and effectiveness of this expensive initiative. The technology employed
within the Smart School infrastructure involves the integration of hardware,
software, system software and non-IT related equipment running in both local
and wide area network. The e-learning
system had already been implemented in this project. Teachers involved were
sent on training courses aimed to equip themselves with the appropriate skill
sets required to bring about the changes in learning and teaching underpinned
by the use of new technologies since 1998.These teachers were supposedly to
learn not only to become competent in teaching and learning approaches which
were best suited by being able to use
the technologies themselves, but also need to coach other colleagues (Ministry
of Education 1997).ICT has great potential to
accelerate the learning of a wide range of knowledge and thinking skills.
However, this potential has not yet been achieved. This happened when research
found that, even though teachers have positive beliefs about ICTs in
education, it does not being translated into their practices (Hamid, 2011).
This situation had led to students expressing their frustration on teachers not
being ICT savvy enough and did not create opportunities for them to engage in
the use of ICT in their learning process.
From Ming (2010), two
feedbacks from the report on the utilisation and application of Smart school
teaching and learning materials by teachers in the pilot smart schools shows
that:
1. Teachers were not keen on using the
smart school courseware as they found usage of materials directly related to
exam preparation saved them preparation time. Furthermore the lessons could not
adequately cater to the students’ needs and did not reflect the complete
curriculum.
2. There is a need to intensify change
management programs and pedagogy training for all teachers on how to integrate
ICT in teaching and learning.
(Multimedia Development Corporation
2005)
From these feedback, the
Teacher Education Division (TED) of the Ministry of Education had set up a
series of training courses for teachers in order to continuously upgrade and
update the professional knowledge, competence and effectiveness of teachers.
In the Smart School
Project, teachers will prepare some information from subjects by using slide
shows. They can share e-contents for courses with another schools and some
group discussion. They contribute on customizing the syllabus based on MOE
program (CD courseware). But based on research by Ominidiaer
al. (2012), not all teachers are able to give their contribution. Some of teachers especially
experienced teacher who are not ICT literate were more comfortable with the old
fashion teaching and learning method as it is more focus on the examination. Their
focus on preparing students for national examinations resulted in them viewing
ICTs as tools that could help speed up or simplify the delivery of their
teaching content (Hamid, 2011). This is due to the fact that, at the end of the
secondary school, student will be evaluated by National Examination which will
determine their future. For teachers, the grades will determine their
performance and career promotion. (As mention in the issues on PBS). This led
to the significant use of ICTs as presentation tools.
I am positive to say
that, PBS will able to overcome this problem. PBS does not focusing on the
grading and examination. This will allow more flexible time for the teachers
and they will be able to concentrate on the learning outcome rather than the
grades and examination.
Blended learning: Changing the pedagogy and
curriculum
Smart
school project is a good start but there are some other things that should be
taken in to account to make sure the successful in the implementation of this
method. It is not easy to ask teachers to move on from their traditional classroom
learning method towards the usage of technology. We need to change the mindset
of teachers themselves so that they would use the courseware effectively and
creatively. Teachers need to be equipped with the necessary skills and they
themselves should be active, enthusiastic, innovative and fully committed to
embrace the new technologies (mind set).
However, Hokanson and
Hooper (cited in Hamid, 2011) suggested that the real challenges to teachers’
uses of ICTs are pedagogical, curricular, and methodological. The
important thing is how the lesson is constructed
by the structuring of the learning context and outcomes.
New curriculum should be
more focus on student-centred and enhance student engagement in the learning
process. More practical, evidenced-based learning design model with
applications of technology can improve student learning outcomes and
satisfaction. Churchill, King, Webster & Fox, (2013) had propose a new
model which concentrate on the pedagogical student-centred learning model
called RASE. The model has four components: Resources, Activity, Support and
Evaluation (RASE).
Malaysia
Education had implement some of the element from this model. But, another two quadrants;
Support and Evaluation are not taken seriously yet. Government can embed these
two quadrants with the role of technology in order to enhance the PBS system.
It will create more excitement in the teaching and learning process and
encourage outcome-based learning. But using technology or e-learning is not
just limited to the used of slide shows, videos or even printers and scanner in
teaching and learning anymore. It is beyond that practice. That is where the
first generation of
e-learning or Web-based learning programs focused on presenting physical
classroom-based instructional content over the Internet. Now we are moving to
the second wave of e-learning which refers to a combination of various delivery
modes called ‘blended learning’. The concept of blended learning is
embedded in the idea that learning is a continuous process (Singh, 2003).
As far as I can see through my experience
teaching in a school that practice blended learning (even at the 1st
phase), students demonstrate positive perceptions towards learning. They are being more attracted, motivated
and had increased their engagement in the learning process. Sometimes we will
get surprise with what our student had found through the internet. They
generate more new ideas and enhance communication among teacher and students
and among themselves as well. There are some students that are passive in the
class but actively communicate with teacher via virtual learning. This will
help to overcome the issue and challenge on the participation of student in PBS
system. As mentioned before, teachers claim that PBS had make student less
motivated and not focused in the class. Through blended learning; the usage of
blogs, e-mails, online groups, online teaching, YouTube, Skype and movies will
provide a new environment and experience of learning process to our student and
encourage them to participate in the activity.
Conclusion/reflection
PBS
just being implemented in three years in Malaysia. We still need more time to
be like Finland. This system is a good start and approach, through evaluation,
analysis and research this system can bring Malaysia education system to
greater height. This improvements proved that
government was serious in uplifting the status of National education. It also
believed that, the implementation of the all-improved system would enhance
teachers’ credibility and professionalism.
If we want to make a new
project that involve changes, we should have well planned and try to studied it
more, assess the strengths and weaknesses and the implementation is not too
drastic, people need time to accept some changes. I believe people are not
totally rejected a changes that made but the circumstances and the time is not
right to build them as a silent protest. Maybe they will keep criticise it but
that is a normal situation at the beginning, As long as they have clear vision
and know where to go and given enough time, should be no problem. But if we did
not treated this problem properly, it will be a major obstacle to the
successful of the project (changes) that been planned.
There are some factors
that should be taken in charge before a changes can be made.
a) Readiness – teachers, students,
administration
b) Facilities
c) Training
d) Time constrain
e) Budget
f) Impact to the others
The experience and knowledge that educators acquire
enhances their confidence to implement ICT as the medium of their teaching.
Some tools needed to identify the level of engagement with blended learning to
help us to focus and give appropriate training or guide to the right person at
the right time.
Malaysia have put a huge effort (in terms
of money, time and energy) to invest in new assessment (PBS) and
to leverage ICT to scale up quality learning across Malaysia. At
the same time, it is believed that through these two agenda will also enhancing teachers’ competencies so that they will
become professionally competent. The implementation of this system will restore
the true spirit of education and knowledge and will also become the catalyst
for excellence, thus bring Malaysia to greater heights.
References:
1.
Carroll, Michael (1995) in Burns, Anne
& Hood,Susan. Developing integrated approaches to assessment. Teachers’
Voices; Exploring course design in a changing curriculum. Sydney. Macquarie
University.
2.
Churchill, D., King, M., Webster, B.,
& Fox, B. (2013). Integrating Learning Design, Interactivity, and
Technology. In H. Carter, M. Gosper, J. Hedberg (Eds.), Electric Dreams.
Proceedings ascilite 2013 Sydney. (pp. 139-143). http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/sydney13/procs/filename.pdf
3. Fitzpatrick,
J., Sanders, J., & Worthen, B. (2004). Program evaluation: Alternative
approaches and practical guidelines.
(pp.3-44). Boston, MA: Pearson Education.
4.
Fullan, Michael, The Change Leader. Retrieved on 10 June 2014 from http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/may02/vol59/num08/The-Change-Leader.aspx
5.
Hamid, Seri Rahayu (2011). Teachers’ Beliefs and Use of ICTs in Malaysian
Smart Schools: a case study, Proceedings
ascilite 2011 Hobart: Tasmania. Retrieved on 12 June 2014 from http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/hobart11/downloads/papers/Hamid-poster.pdf
6.
Hammond, Linda Darling (2010). What we can learn from Finland’s
Successful School Reform. Retrieved on 10 June 2014 from http://www.nea.org/home/40991.htm
7.
Innovation Insight. Assessing for
improvement. http://www.psu.edu/president/pia/innovation/insights011.pdf
8. Malaysian Education Blue Print
2013-2025
9. Ming, Thang Siew (2010). Supporting
Smart School Teachers’ Continuing Professional Development in and through ICT:
A model for change. International Journal
of Education and Development using Information and Communication Technology
(IJEDICT), Vol. 6, Issue 2, pp. 5-20
10.
Ministry of education Malaysia, PBS documentation.
11. Ministry of Education Malaysia, THE
SMART SCHOOL ROADMAP 2005-2020: AN EDUCATIONAL ODYSSEY. A consultative paper on the expansion of the Smart School
initiative to all schools in Malaysia.
12. Omidinia, Siavash, Masrom, Maslin,
Selamat, Harihodin (2012), Smart School System Issues and Challenges (Primary
Finding of Interviews). Retrieved on 12 June 2014 from https://www.academia.edu/3158453/SMART_SCHOOL_SYSTEM_ISSUES_AND_CHALLENGES
13. Ryan, Katherine E.,Cousin, J.Bradley
(2009).The SAGE International Handbook of
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