This paper is one of the outcomes of the study from interview of 30 entrepreneurs in Malaysia, investigating the business competencies needed for successful in their business.  In the paper, the training needs of entrepreneurs are identified and analysed with respect to a number of issues affecting business such as creativity and innovation, sources of business finance, accounting skills, financial management, areas in which the entrepreneurs find it difficult to acquire knowledge.  The study confirm the view of entrepreneurship education makes a significant different in the performance of entrepreneurs, with entrepreneurs expressing a need for further training and education in specific business issues.

The reduction of funding allocation for school operations occurs in the education administration yearly. It is a notable fact that schools around the world are facing challenges in school funding as it affects the school’s operation. As a result, the performance of school for the long term would not be a primary concern in the future. Schools in Malaysia are not exempted from this issue as it is one of the main concerns in the centralized schools of this country. Generally, as the number of schools is increasing and a corresponding decrease takes place in centralized funding, it is vital for school principals to find alternatives for fundraising. Following a growing pattern of decentralization of school policies, entrepreneurial leadership currently begins to make an appearance in the education system through the transformation it creates in schools. However, there is insufficient discussion regarding the practices of entrepreneurial leadership and the abilities of entrepreneurial leaders in centralized schools. This study aims to identify the practices performed by centralized school principals to implement entrepreneurial activities in two schools selected for this study, which consisted of two different demographic backgrounds, districts, and locations. It investigates the entrepreneurial leadership practices performed by the Malaysian school principals in fundraising activities. The roles of the school principals as entrepreneurial leaders were identified based on their peers and other school staff who gained the experience of working under those principals. The various fundraising practices of the entrepreneurial leaders of both of these schools are examined within this crucial and challenging environment, followed by a discussion of how the school administrations deal with the external parties to obtain school funding. This study contributes to the field of educational administration by analysing the current fundraising practices of entrepreneurial principals of centralized schools in Malaysia.

This study investigates the mediating effects of teacher organizational commitment on the relationship between principal's instructional leadership and students' academic performance. Principals' effective leadership performance is assumed to be responsible for students' academic performance. However, many findings from the literature indicate no significant direct effect between instructional leadership and students' academic performance. Therefore, the current study hypothesized that principals' instructional leadership indirectly enhances students' academic performances through teacher organizational commitment. Data obtained from 440 primary school teachers from the state of Azad Jammu & Kashmir of Pakistan and pre-existing school academic performance data obtained from each school participated. The data were analyzed using structural equation modeling, employing AMOS. The study's findings indicate that there is an indirect positive effect of principals' instructional leadership and students' academic performance through teacher's organizational commitment. Hence, schools with higher instructional leadership levels had better teachers, commitment to school, teaching work, teaching occupation, workgroup, and higher student's academic performances. Therefore, increasing the instructional leadership practices in schools through teacher organizational commitment contributes to Pakistan's overall student academic performances. Therefore, it is recommended to use instructional leadership components in the curriculum that effectively train new principals.

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This study aims to investigate the effectiveness of the cooperative learning module using Student Teams-Achievement Divisions (STAD) techniques in enhancing students' HOTS achievement in the topic of the digestive system and food absorption. A quasi-experimental design was used in this study to gauge the effectiveness of the module. Purposive sampling technique was used to choose the respondents. The study involved 182 students who represented the experimental group and the conventional group. Students were given an intervention by using Home Science STAD Module for five weeks. Descriptive statistics and paired sample t-test were used to determine the effectiveness of the Home Science STAD module on students' HOTS achievement. The findings show ©2020 The authors and IJLTER.ORG. All rights reserved.students' understanding increased for the digestive system and food absorption topics. There was a significant difference in students' HOTS achievement between the experimental learning and conventional learning group. The finding shows the students were actively engaged in teaching and learning. Post-test result shows that the students were able to answer the HOTS question correctly and they can deliver clear explanations and justifications compared to the answers in the pre-test. Findings from this study revealed that the Home Science STAD Module was appropriate to serve as a guideline for teachers who apply and integrate HOTS in the teaching process. Further studies can apply cooperative techniques in other educational contexts in promoting HOTS among students.

The main purpose of this study is to determine the relationship between work environment and organizational commitment among private school teachers in Klang Valley. Survey questionnaires were distributed to five private schools. 110 private school teachers participated in the survey. Data regarding organizational commitment and work environment were analyzed by using IBM SPSS Software version 22.0. Descriptive statistic was employed to identify level of teachers' work environment and organizational commitment. Pearson correlation was used to analyze the relationship between work environment and organizational commitment among private school teachers. T-test is to identify the difference of private school teachers' organizational commitment based on gender. The results demonstrated that there are moderate relationships between teachers' work environment and teacher's organizational commitment. The findings also revealed that there are no significant different between female and male private school teachers in organizational commitment.

Entrepreneurial knowledge is important and it has been adopted in numerous curriculum and subject matters. Even though the embedding of the entrepreneurship syllabus in the curriculum might be able to enhance the knowledge of the students and subsequently trigger their interests in business, very often students would forget about it once they graduated from the program and fail to put their entrepreneurial knowledge to use. One of the common postulations was the lack of effective teaching by the teachers. Based on this assumption, a case study was conducted to explore the competency requirement of teachers related to the teaching of entrepreneurial-based knowledge and to investigate the process of teaching and learning entrepreneurship curriculum in the classroom settings. A semi-structured interview was conducted to the 7 informants. The informants were chosen using purposive sampling from the selected vocational colleges (3 instructors, 3 students, and 1 director). In-depth and constant comparative analysis was utilized to validate the themes. We triangulated the narratives along with five other sources of data, including note-taking via observations, document analysis of lesson plan, curriculum content, policy, and guidelines. NVIVO software was used to organize the narratives and guide the thematic analysis findings. The findings demonstrated that entrepreneurial competency is important for the engineering TVET instructors to pass on the necessary entrepreneurial skills to students. In view of the latest trends in business and marketing strategies and wide application of gig economy, the range of competency in entrepreneurial skills identified in shaping the future orientation of entrepreneurial fields.

Purpose The involvement of parents in schools and their contribution towards their children’s academic learning have been a focal point in educational research. The purpose of this paper is to identify the factors that influence parental involvement in secondary schools and subsequently proposed a comprehensive parental involvement model. Design/methodology/approach Research articles, reports and dissertations on the factors that influence parental involvement were reviewed to obtain related empirical evidence for the development of a workable model. Findings A conceptual framework was proposed to understand the factors that influence parental involvement. The role of creativity in principals’ leadership practices and parental involvement in secondary schools were found to be related. Additionally, this relationship was found to be mediated by school practices and school climate. Research limitations/implications A framework on the factors that influence parental involvement guided by literature review and three main hypotheses for testing were proposed, which require further empirical assessment. Practical implications The school–parent partnership shares a common understanding of the educational needs and social development of the children. The school administrators, school community, stakeholders and related policymakers can effectively leverage the findings of this study in the effort to enhance parental involvement within the school context. Originality/value Only a handful of research-based studies probed into the factors that influence parental involvement in secondary schools within the Malaysian context. This study identified several significant factors that enhance parental involvement in secondary schools.