Education Systems In Malaysia

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

As stated in online Oxford dictionary, learner can be interpreted as a person who  who is learning a subject or skill through schooling, experience and studying. As indicated by Dr Sarah Elaine Eaton (2012), students today are referred as 21st century learners because of their exposure towards technology and have higher level of digital literacy compared to their parents and teachers. Thus, they know where to search for information and they learn by doing hands on experiences such as physical movement and activities connected to stimulate thinking and understanding through hands, eyes and ears. Moreover, they also have some sort of language awareness and readiness and capacity of indirect learning such as guessing. Thus, in order to create an active learner, teacher should recognize students learning styles and use different approach as a variety of teaching. There are three main types of learning styles which are visual, auditory and kinesthetic learner. According to the Ellis (1985), learning style is the way a learner preferred way to receive, store and retrieve material. So, if the students can identify their learning styles, they will detect their strengths and weaknesses and improve their quality of learning. Visual learning style is the style that best learn by looking at graphics, pictures or images. Auditory learners learn by listening and verbalizing. They like to listen things explained to them verbally rather than reading the materials. While kinesthetic learners learn best through ‘hands-on’ experience and hard to sitting still during lesson. Because of the different learning styles in a classroom, teacher can use differentiated instruction to approach teaching and learning for students of different abilities in the same classroom through content, process, product and learning environment. As a results, the principles of KBSR focuses on the implication towards teaching and learning to develop 21st century learners.

The first principle of KBSR is integrated approach. It combines several elements of JERIS such as knowledge, skills and values to integrate the physical, emotional, spiritual and intellectual aspect. The integration of these elements occurs through four ways which are skills cohesion, infusion, integration of two elements and intellectual aspect. According to Choong Lean Keow (2008), skill cohesion can be referred as four main skills for language such as speaking, listening, reading and writing are used in one subject or between subject. For one subject, during teaching and learning session, two out of these skills is emphasized such as listening and speaking or reading and speaking. For instance, in English subject, the teacher should focus within two skills during lesson. Firstly, ask students to listen when the teacher read a passage, then students can follow by reading the passage together with teacher. Teacher can uses three stages of reading such as pre-reading. Pre-reading is the first step before reading activity starts. It is very essential because teacher introduce the topic, to provide background knowledge or schema that can stimulate interest in the topic of the text. Secondly, is while-reading, happens during the lesson to enable pupils to achieve the lesson aims by handling the text in different ways. Lastly, is a post reading, after the reading activity is over. The purpose of post reading is to look out of the text to see its relevance to other related activities and the pupils may find interesting or useful include comprehension questions, using text for a group discussion. While, if it involves between two subjects, Music and Science can be combined together. For instance, teacher can use songs to make students memories scientific terms easily. Based on a research by experts, children can learn effectively through songs and rhythms. This skills of remembering involve the cognitive thinking by Jean Piaget which refers to the changes that occur in children’s mental skills and abilities over time.

The second integrated concept is infusion. Infusion can be divided into various knowledge areas and across subjects and moral values in subjects. For the various knowledge area and across subject, it consists several elements of several subject into other subject. For example, the arithmetic element is infused in the teaching of Art. Meanwhile, for the moral value in subject stressed on respect and co-operation during interaction of group work or project. For instance, during Living Skills subject, students can make interaction and teamwork to finish the project smoothly. In this situation, teacher can use experiental learning theory by Carl Rogers. The cycle in this theory are plan, do and review. The teacher will demonstrate the way of creating the project. Then, the students need to observe and take note based on the teacher guidance which involves visual learning style and listening style. After that, they will try to do by themselves which show kinesthetic learning style. Based on these procedures, students are able to gain new experiences from the project making. Besides, teachers also should play their role by evaluating the project in order to make improvement upon student. Moreover, beside Carl Roger, social learning theory introduced by Bandura also can be implement in this activity because children learn fast through observation. Same as the students, they observe and imitate the process of creating project showed by their teachers.

The third integrated concept is integration of two elements. It can be defined as the combination of between different elements. For example is the combination between curriculum and co-curricular activities. Usually, in the Physical Education theory is taught in the classroom to enable students learn the correct techniques before applying it outside the classroom. Next, it also involved knowledge and practice. Knowledge that acquired in the classroom or school can be applied to the situation at home, society or nation. For example, students conduct a science experiment to determine the acidity and alkaline of food by litmus paper. If the blue litmus paper turn to red, it shows that the acidity level of the food is higher and if the red litmus paper is unchanged, the content of acidity is neutral. Thus, students can apply this knowledge at home and choose foods which contain less of acid.

Last concept of integrated is element across curriculum. Moreover, integration approach can be further explained by element-across-the-curriculum. There are many types of element-across-the-curriculum such as thinking skills, science, environment and language. For instance, language is one of the elements that across the curriculum as language are a medium of transferring the information and knowledge to the students besides as a medium of communication between human beings. The other example is environment across the curriculum. The students need a conducive environment to ensure that the learning process is carried out smoothly and comfortably. For example, the students should carry out the lesson in laboratory during science lesson so that the students will gain an interest of studying science and it indirectly causes them to pay attention to the lesson. The science laboratory is full of apparatus materials which enable the students to conduct an experiment easily effectively.

The second principle is holistic development. KBSR upholds the principle of holistic development of individual. Besides, it play important role in fulfilling the physical, emotional, spiritual and intellectual (JERI) needs of students. For example, a student who is wanted potential to a skilled footballer physically should undergo massive training to improve skills, speed and agility. Besides that, the students should follow the recommendation given from the coach in order to improve their performance . While in terms of spiritual, he must always believe in God as stated in National Philosophy of Education (NPE) .In terms of emotional, the student should learn to be self-discipline so that he can manage himself systematically, adhere to the game rules and nurture cooperation between his teams. In order to mange himself systematically, he should divide his timetable properly. In terms of intellectual, he can attend the physical education class or study a reference book in the library to improve his knowledge about the football techniques so that he can apply the knowledge during his training and tournament. Thus, if he applied all the stated aspect, he will become one of the best football player.

Moreover, the activities which are held and the subjects that are taught in school aims to holistic development of individual. To actualise this objectives, there are several types of activities that can be carried out during the teaching and learning process in the classroom. For instance, a group discussion activity can be carried out in the class. Group discussion activity is a cooperative learning activity which needs the interaction between the members of group to solve the task or problem given according to a situation. Throughout the group discussion activity, in terms of emotional and spiritual, the students learn how to communicate with others during the session. The students also learn to cope with problems, avoid to create problems and accept other opinions so that the discussion runs smoothly. Moreover, the students can share and compare the knowledge and information with each other. The theory involved in this activity is Vygotsky. According to Karpov& Haywood (1998), Vygotsky theory indicates that the students not only able to do on their own but also they learn under the guidance of others in the activities prepare by the teacher. Hence, teacher can make heterogeneous group of students. The heterogeneous group consist of different level of intelligence among students. Mentoring is referred to the students who are more intelligent and have to guide their friends during discussion . Hence, the intelligent students can guide the students who are less intelligent as a mentor during the discussion.

Besides that, life-long learning is another principle of KBSR. According to Choong Lean Keow (2008), life-long learning means the learning process is started from the time we are born until we died. This also means the learning process should be carried out continuously and it is not restricted by time. In other words, this principle also means education is an on-going effort to acquire knowledge, skills and values. Hence, school plays an important role in realizing this principle of KBSR. School is the important place because it is first institution where students seek for knowledge and basic skills. Thus, KBSR builds the basic for student’s acquisition of the necessary knowledge and skills to enable them to face challenge in the future. When they stop from schooling, this education is not stop. Meanwhile, each and everyone of us are encourage to continue with our own learning. In addition, the teacher can nurture every student’s interest to pursue knowledge to a higher education. Teacher can use Bloom’s Taxonomy model to nurture the interest of continuing knowledge among the learners. Bloom’s Taxonomy model is defined as how the learners learn and master the skill or competency. There are six processes of bloom taxonomy such as understanding, remembering, analyzing, applying, evaluation and creating. For instance, during science lesson, the teacher can prepare a video about our Mother Earth is getting polluted due to the human activities . Firstly, the teacher should allow the students to remember the information and knowledge gaining from this video. This style of learning is visual learning because, teacher ask students to learn through images and visual. Then, the students need to understand how human activities can affect the earth. Next, the students need to choose the suitable ways to protect our environment from climate change and overcome this problem. After that, the students can make an evaluation to identify the ways to protect the environment. Finally, the students can come with the new solutions or ways to protect our Mother Earth from getting affected by human activities. Thus, the students have the interest to continue to pursue the knowledge to higher education and carry out more research to find out the most suitable ways to protect the environment from getting more affected in the future.

As a teacher, before nurturing the interest of pursuing knowledge among the students, the basic knowledge is required and it can be implanted through the activities in the class. For example, during science lesson, a simple experiment can be conducted such as to investigate the magnetic pole. The students can be divided into several groups to carry out this experiment. The students need to prepare iron filling and put it on the plain paper. When the magnet is put under the paper, it will form magnetic field. Thus, based from the experiments, the student will be more eagerly to know how the magnetic field was formed from this experiment, the students also learn the importance of some learning theories such as experiential learning theory by Carl Roger. Before the experiment is conducted, students need to plan how the experiment is carried out and prepare the apparatus and materials for the experiment. After going through the process of conducting the experiment, the evaluation is needed to testify whether the hypothesis that was made is accepted. If the hypothesis is not accepted, the experiment is repeated again. This theory is important to students as the students can apply this theory in their future . Moreover, the students also gain the experience during their studies. The more they gain more experiences, they will gain more knowledge until the end of the life.

Last but not least, one education for all is one of the important principles of KBSR. According to Choong Lean Keow (2008), one education for all is defined to the same schooling level for all students in school include of three types of schools which are Malay school, Chinese school and Indian school. This also means that all the students from all different types of school use different medium of instruction and follow the same curriculum and same schooling level. For instance, Bahasa Malaysia (Malay language) becomes the main medium of instruction in all national-type school which means that all the students regardless of races are compulsory to learn and study Malay language. The main objective of this instruction is to foster the bonds between the students among different races. As a result, the unity among the students of different races can be strengthened In addition to that, under this principle of one education for all, all the students are allowed to study without paying any fees from standard one until standard six. Thus, all the students from the poor or rich family background have the equal chance to get the knowledge, skill and values from the school which nurtures them to become an active learner.

In addition, the examination or evaluation is also same in all primary schools. The main objectives of examination to test the level understanding students. There are two types of examination in KBSR which was School-based Progress Evaluation (PKBS) and Primary School Achievement Test (UPSR). PKBS is a formative evaluation or on- going assessment which evaluates holistic development and achievement of students from Year one to Year six while UPSR is a summative assessment or done at the end of syllabus which evaluates the achievement of students at the end of learning period. Through this examination, the grade of the students in certain subject can be identified between high grade or low grade. Thus, the teachers in the school need to come out better teaching methods and teaching aids to increase the achievement of students in UPSR and PKBS.

In conclusion, based on the implementation of KBSR, it is a proof that KBSR will lead to the realization of the aspirations of National Philosophy of Education (NPE) to produce individuals which have stability of physical, emotional, spiritual and intellectuality. The KBSR is rooted in sound educational theories, but it depends for its success to a very large extent, on a trained, dedicated and hard working teaching-force which needs massive support from the administrative and teachers that surrounds it. Teachers should be trained to create materials and activities that exploit the KBSR methodology. Also, the authorities concerned should come up with measures that would act as qualities teaching. Thus, it can be concluded that four principles of KBSR are able to create quality 21st century learners through the different teaching methods and learning theories during the teaching and learning process. Nowadays, the world is changing too fast with the advance technology and the thinker, children of 21st centuries. Thus, as a future teacher, it is essential for us to used different approach to the students as they have different learning style or use differentiated instruction which is suitable use to recognize the learning style.

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