The Malaysian Teacher Standards: a look at the challenges and implications for teacher educators

Abstract

Talks of education transformation to improve the quality and outcomes of education in Malaysia culminated in the articulation of standards for teachers. The all new Malaysian Teacher Standards (MTS) launched in 2009 is to establish 'high competency' standards for the teaching profession and to increase the status of teachers in Malaysia. This article briefly describes the standards that concern teachers and teacher educators alike. It is proposed that there are three challenges to the standards system that teacher educators may face. First, on transforming ingrained beliefs, values and biased perceptions of teaching that student teachers bring to the teaching institution. The second centers on the rhetoric-reality gap of the MTS itself, while the third challenge involves the actual training of teachers. Given these three challenges, this article also outlines several avenues for teacher educators to consider as they set out to better understand and re-design teacher education programs in this standards-based era of educational transformation. The discussion of the challenges and the proposed resources to meet the challenges are by no means exhaustive or acts as a conclusion but rather to create awareness for further discussion and analysis of the implications proposed in this article.

The Approaches to Teaching Inventory: A Preliminary Validation of the Malaysian Translation

“…Teachers might have interpreted that "covering the information that might be available from key texts and readings" (item 6) and "to give students a good set of notes" (item 10) were expected of the teachers rather than a teaching approach. These could be due to the fact that teachers in Malaysia have been accustomed to a 'spoon feeding' type of teaching that embraced photocopying notes for students and a drill and practice approach for examination (Raja Musa & Nik Yusoff, 2000;"UPSR and PMR may be abolished", 2010;Goh, 2012). Item 15 (a lot of teaching time in this subject should be used to question students' ideas), item 18 (it is important for me to monitor students' changed understanding of the subject matter) and item 20 (teaching in this subject should help students question their own understanding of the subject matter) represented teaching approaches that geared towards students' concept development, conceptual change, and concept acquisition.…”

Prevalence and factors associated with poor sleep quality among secondary school teachers in a developing country

“…Teachers are burden with high load of administrative duties in addition to teaching, as well as increasing academic demands from both students and parents. Teachers also face constant challenges of having to update their teaching methodologies, and some may seek to upgrade their qualifications through specialization courses 2 , 3 ) . Some teachers may attempt to increase income by teaching extra classes after school.…”

Issue of Fairness in Benchmarking Teacher Quality in Malaysia Teaching Standard: Lessons for Other Countries

“…Based on several relevant studies specifically Goh (2011Goh ( , 2012 that have looked specifically into the issue of teacher quality, performance and standards in MTS, several concerns can be raised directly and indirectly about the implementation of teaching standards. The issues examined were as a result of concerns with the idea of standards in measuring teacher quality, and the move to benchmark teacher quality through achievement of standards.…”