Malaysia undertook a comprehensive reform of the primary education by introducing KSSR or the Primary School Standards-Based Curriculum in 2011. The curriculum change has largely driven by the setting of national standards for KSSR subjects. Accordingly, the Standards-Based English Language Curriculum (SBELC) was designed with significant changes in curriculum documents and organization. SBELC not only demands changes in teacher knowledge, attitudes, and instructional practices but also seeks teachers to design such activities and assessments that require pupils to comprehend the language input and answer questions with high levels of cognitive skills that emphasize on conceptual understanding and integration of many language skills and language focus rather than traditional rote learning skills. The purpose of this paper is to review curriculum change in the new English language curriculum in which higher order thinking skills and standards-based assessments are given due attention in Malaysian primary schools.

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Presents problem/focus of study The Covid-19 outbreak has had a staggering impact on the global economy, public health and safety, trade and education. In Malaysia, the government implemented the Movement Control Order (MCO) as a preventive measure against Covid-19. In education, the learning process has been transferred to online teaching. However, pandemic pedagogy is making learning into completely online either synchronous or asynchronous. Therefore, the current research aims to determine the secondary school teachers’ psychological status, competencies in e-teaching and teachers work motivation as well as determine the relationship between secondary school teachers’ psychological status and competencies in e-teaching during the Covid-19 outbreak. Design/methodology/approach Current research is a descriptive-correlational quantitative survey to determine teachers’ psychological status, e-teaching competencies and working motivation during Movement Control Order (MCO) to contain the Covid-19 pandemic. The study sample consists of 595 secondary school teachers selected via convenient sampling. Quantitative data are collected from an online survey through the questionnaires with demographic, psychological status (stress, anxiety and depression), e-teaching competencies (teaching, monitoring and evaluation) and teaching motivation developed by the researchers were distributed during the MCO period. SPSS 25 is applied, Statistical measures such as Cronbach's alpha, means, percentage and standard deviation were employed to analyze the data to obtain the value of the school teachers’ psychological status, e-teaching competencies and teaching motivation. Consequently, a Pearson correlation table was created to show the analysis of the school teachers’ psychological status and competencies in e-teaching. Findings This finding indicated that the teachers’ psychological factors in stress, anxiety and depressed are moderate, the teachers’ competencies in e-teaching is moderate as well as teachers’ working motivations is also the moderate level. However, the highest mean value was found among the variables, this is revealed that despite the challenges during the Covid-19 outbreak, teachers showed positive and strong motivation in conducting e-teaching. Additionally, the result showed a negative relationship between psychological status and e-teaching competencies (-0.286, p<0.01), as well as reported a negative relationship between dimension of psychological status and competencies in e-teaching. Limitation & recommendations This study has its limitations. This study is included only Selangor teachers and given that the information obtained from the study was gather from secondary schools, the generalizability might be limited. future research may consider expanding the scope from secondary schools to primary schools’ teachers and then to university lecturers. Perhaps the scope is expanding, so more information could b...

The purpose of this study was to explore secondary school students' mathematics engagement focusing on the cognitive, affective and behavioural engagement domains. A total of 387 students (186 male and 201 female) from the urban and rural secondary schools in Pahang, Malaysia, were randomly selected. There were 158 students from the urban schools and 229 students from the rural schools. Descriptive analyses for mathematics engagement domains revealed behavioural engagement had the highest mean (M = 3.74, SD = .63), followed by cognitive engagement (M = 3.56, SD = .43) and affective engagement (M = 3.48, SD = .47). The mean for students' overall mathematics engagement was 3.56 (SD = .46). Further analyses showed there were significant differences in each of the engagement domains in mathematics learning (affective, cognitive and behavioural), where students in the urban schools showed significantly better in the mean scores for affective, cognitive, behavioural domains and the overall mathematics engagement as compared to the students in the rural schools. Similar findings also showed there were significant differences in the overall mathematics engagement mean between the genders. The findings indicated girls were significantly better than boys in all (affective, cognitive and behavioural) of the engagement domains in mathematics learning. It was also shown girls had higher overall mathematics engagement mean as compared to boys. However, the study also indicated the overall students' mathematics engagement was at a moderate level. Besides, the rural school students did not show high mathematics engagement as compared to the urban school students. Further analyses showed girls significantly had better mathematics engagement as compared to boys. Hence, it is recommended that in order to optimize students' mathematics engagement, they should be actively engaged in more participative learning activities in mathematics classrooms. Focus should be given to rural schools and also among the boys.

Abstract-It was noted that one of the most distressing challenges faced by the L2 college students was the poor presentation of their journal writing skills. The researcher noticed a prevailing pattern in their journal writing, where most of them were unable to construct proper sentences, making too many grammatical errors and also lacking in vocabulary. These factors have eventually restricted them from expressing their ideas clearly and effectively in their journal writing. Therefore, this study is primarily designed to look at how second language learners have acquired the use of English language through journal writing and how they have improved within a short time frame. The researcher scaffold a number of 3 undergraduate university college students by using several interactive writing techniques and instructions in writing a journal which showed their progress, daily activities and new experiences. The writing errors from the samples of written journals during week 1 were as it was written before and during the scaffolding period. Data were collected and the results of the progression were obtained based on the observation and comparison of written journals on week 1 and 5. The scaffolding technique presented in this study has helped remedy the challenges faced by the target students by further developing their effectiveness in journal writing.Index Terms-scaffolding, second language learners, journal writing skills, interactive writing skills, English language learner

Standardized testing is viewed as particularly incompatible to the process of learning due to its summative nature as it measures what students are able to recall and produce. Because of the discrepancy between the process of learning and products of learning, educators today have come to recognize that an alternative form of assessment is required to complement the existing form of assessment. This study intends to determine the techniques ESL teachers use in implementing portfolio as an assessment tool. The techniques ESL teachers employed while implementing the assessment process in the classroom enabled the researchers to propose a model for portfolio assessment. Currently, ESL teachers in Malaysia do not have a specific model or technique to conduct the portfolio assessment process because portfolio is heard of but not widely used. Therefore, this study was carried to scrutinize procedures ESL teachers use as a guide in instructional planning and student evaluation based on their teaching in the L2 classroom. The participants were nine ESL secondary school teachers in Malaysia. Semi-structured interviews, classroom observations and teachers' individual portfolios were utilized to explore the techniques which served as a guideline for ESL teachers employed for the teaching and learning in the classroom. Findings indicate that the portfolio assessment model developed has provided ESL teachers the opportunity to document individual student's growth. Furthermore, the teachers divulged that teaching is sustained when teaching materials, teaching techniques and assessment techniques were upgraded to help students in achieving the learning outcomes. The results of the study have implications for assessment, teaching and learning of English as a second language.

Problem statement: Since emotional intelligence is still not wholly-accepted despite evidences of its powerful influence in general setting, this study is therefore conducted to identify the emotional intelligence level among school students in rural areas, relationships between emotional intelligence and anxiety, as well as relationships between emotional intelligence and academic achievement. Approach: It involved a sample of 223 form 1 and form 4 students. Process of data collection was administered by using a set of questionnaire which includes a self report measure of emotional intelligence adapted from Schutte Self-Report of Emotional Intelligence (SSRI) and Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI). T-test analysis showed that there were no significant differences for the emotional intelligence level within all students between ages 13 and 16. However, there were significant differences for the emotional intelligence level among female students in accordance to age. Results: The results showed that there were significant differences for emotional intelligence level among all students between both genders. Mean score of emotional intelligence within female students appeared to be higher than male students. Pearson correlation analysis showed that emotional intelligence levels of all students were significant negatively in relation to anxiety level. Emotional intelligence was also significant positively in correlation with academic achievement of all variables including students’ age and gender. Conclusion: Besides emotional intelligence, the study revealed that anxiety was also significantly correlated in a negative manner with academic achievement among all students