English Teachers’ Voices on the Challenges of the School-Based Assessment (original) (raw)
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Pertanika Journal of Social Science & Humanities, 2020
Malaysia has followed other countries such as Australia, Finland, and the United Kingdom in adopting school-based assessment (SBA). SBA was introduced to the Malaysian education system in 2011 with the rationale of reducing examination-oriented learning among students; effectively evaluate students’ learning; and provide a systematic way of assessing, recording and reporting students’ learning. Numerous studies have highlighted various complaints, issues, and challenges in the implementation of SBA among English language teachers in West Malaysia but only a few studies have been conducted in East Malaysia. This paper thus seeks to shed light on and provide a comparative qualitative study of, perspectives, implementation, issues, and problems faced by English language teachers in East Malaysia. In-depth semistructured interviews were conducted with twelve English teachers (N = 12) teaching in the lower secondary forms of public national schools in the Kuching and Samarahan area of Sarawak. Interview questions were designed based on Stake’s Countenance Model of Evaluation (1967) and encompassed three key criteria of evaluation, which were antecedents prior to implementation, transactions during, and outcomes of the program. All interviews were coded and clustered according to themes. The findings suggest that a lack of training and clear policy direction hampered the initial implementation of SBA. However, most teachers reported that since its implementation, the policy had gained greater clarity with greater support now provided by the Ministry of Education through the provision of further training opportunities.
School-based Assessment in Malaysian Schools: The Concerns of the English Teachers
The Malaysian government has proposed to implement school-based assessment in public schools in the attempt to replace the current public examinations. However, as school-based assessment has yet to be in full swing, relatively little is known about the concerns of the teachers who would directly be involved in the implementation system. This paper presents the findings from a survey on 40 English teachers who are currently teaching in Malaysian public schools. The items in the questionnaire elicited information on the stages of concerns of the respondents' concern regarding the adoption or implementation of any educational innovation. The constructs are; Indifference, Informational-Personal, Management, Consequence-Collaboration, and Refocusing. It is from these identified constructs that the categories for the questions were built. Findings from the study indicated that the respondents were concern about the innovation and that their concerns were multidimensional regardless of their experience in the innovation. The findings are not only enlightening to the Malaysian English themselves, but also to the professional development trainers in monitoring teachers' concerns during the process of educational change such as the school-based assessment. Thus, informed decisions could be made while planning for the in-service teacher trainings on school-based assessment. Several implications on the inservice trainings were drawn in order to ensure the smooth-running of the school-based assessment. Future works are suggested on expanding similar research on other educational innovations be carried out.
2013
School-based Assessment (SBA) system or better known by its Malay acronym as PBS (Pentaksiran Berasaskan Sekolah), being part of the Malaysia educational reform, was officially introduced by the Ministry of Education in 2011 with the aim to improve the effectiveness of the system in evaluating students’ academic progress and personal development. Under the system, students’ learning outcomes will be evaluated based on their competencies and readiness and teachers are encouraged to use various evaluation methods such as question and answer sessions, quizzes, presentation, short writing, dramas, and role-playing (Dietel, Herman & Knuth, 1991; Davison, 2007). However, the system received many negative feedbacks and claimed to pose great pressures on the part of the teachers, students and their parents as well. This study aspires to investigate the issue of SBA based on evidences revealed by senior teachers from five secondary schools who were involved in the implementation of the syste...
Implementation of school-based assessment: the experienced teachers’ thoughts
2015
Background: In School-Based Assessment (SBA), teachers have the autonomy to carry out formative and summative assessment.In a sense, teachers’ integrity and credibility is recognized and enhanced.Teachers are indeed suitable to continuously monitor their students’ performance in schools. SBA was officially introduced by the Ministry of Education Malaysia, and implemented in stages, in-line with the Standards based Primary School Curriculum, starting in the year 2011 as part of Malaysia’s educational reform.Literature has shown that teachers still have difficulty in accepting the changes made in the school assessment policy, they do not get sufficient information on SBA and as well as relevant trainings.Objective: This paper deals with the implementation of SBA in Malaysia and the issues related to its early years of implementation, which include teachers understanding of SBA and their readiness to implement SBA in their respective schools.This paper sets out to provide a glimpse of ...
School-based Assessment (SBA) system or better known by its Malay acronym as PBS (Pentaksiran Berasaskan Sekolah), being part of the Malaysia educational reform, was officially introduced by the Ministry of Education in 2011 with the aim to improve the effectiveness of the system in evaluating students’ academic progress and personal development. Under the system, students’ learning outcomes will be evaluated based on their competencies and readiness and teachers are encouraged to use various evaluation methods such as question and answer sessions, quizzes, presentation, short writing, dramas, and role-playing (Dietel, Herman & Knuth, 1991; Davison, 2007). However, the system received many negative feedbacks and claimed to pose great pressures on the part of the teachers, students and their parents as well. This study aspires to investigate the issue of SBA based on evidences revealed by senior teachers from five secondary schools who were involved in the implementation of the system. The qualitative case study aimed at identifying some perceptions, expectations, challenges and suggestions to improve the implementation of the SBA. Respondents perceived that teachers had been imposed with additional workloads in terms of paper work on top of their teaching responsibilities. Furthermore, large class size and lack of supporting resources (e.g. internet facilities) had further aggravated their negative perceptions on the SBA system. Overall they strongly admitted that both students and teachers did not receive much benefit from the system. The findings indicate that to ensure the effectiveness of the system’s implementation, teachers must be equipped with sufficient and detailed information on the evaluation process for a specified students’ competency meant to be evaluated. In doing so, fears and negative attitudes among teachers on the SBA shall be allied. Besides that, a more effective mechanism needs to be developed to reduce the burden of teachers in preparing and completing documentation as required by the SBA, while issues such as heavy teaching hours and large class size be promptly addressed
2016
School Based Assessment (SBA) was introduced in Malaysian Primary Schools in 2011 with the intention to integrate assessment into teaching and learning process. Past studies have indicate that teachers often face difficulties in applying new ideas into classroom practices due to unclear understandings about what the new curriculum entails.This qualitative case study examined five teachers’ understanding of SBA and how they integrated SBA into the teaching and learning process.Data were collected via semi-structured interviews and classroom observations.Data analysis revealed differing understanding of SBA, namely SBA as a new way of assessing students learning and SBA as a new teaching methodology. Additionally, it was found that the teachers’ application of SBA in the classroom matched with their professed understanding of SBA.Findings suggest that the teachers are in need of continuous support to apply SBA in the classroom. Ongoing and onsite training may best help them to have a ...
The implementation of School-Based Assessment System in Malaysia: A study of teacher perceptions
The school-based assessment system is a holistic assessment system conducted in school by subject teachers to assess the students' cognitive (intellect), affective (emotional and spiritual) and psychomotor (physical) aspects in line with Malaysia's National Philosophy of Education and the Standards-based School Curriculum. This study evaluated the implementation of SBA in Malaysian schools in the course of preparing a summative report on the effectiveness of the system. The model proposed examined the interrelationship between the evaluation dimensions (input, process and product). It was hypothesized that process would be positively associated with product, and input with both process and product. Although SBA is still in its infancy it is becoming increasingly important that it be evaluated considering its impact on students' achievement in an upper middle-income developing country like Malaysia. The study took nearly two years. A self-administered questionnaire was designed based on the Daniel Stufflebeam CIPP (context-input-process-product) evaluation format. The primary data were derived from a total of 776 primary and secondary school teachers who have been sampled using a stratified random sampling of schools. The results revealed a reasonable fit with the SBA evaluation model with an interrelationship between the three dimensions of evaluation (input, process and product). Theoretical, methodological and practical implications suggested the importance of the findings to different audiences.
Asian Social Science, 2014
In tandem with educational best practices the world over, School-based assessments (SBAs) were introduced in Malaysia in 2012 for secondary one students. This study investigated quantitatively and qualitatively matters such as the teachers' knowledge of SBAs and the issues faced when implementing SBAs. Whereas the factors contributing to the problems of SBA implementation was investigated only qualitatively. A sample of 60 English teachers in the district of Dungun, Terengganu, who were involved in SBAs from the beginning was used, out of this, 20 teachers were interviewed to obtain qualitative findings. It was found that teachers had satisfactory knowledge of planning an SBA tailored lesson. They also showed satisfactory knowledge of developing SBAs but appeared to have difficulty in the psychometrics of test analysis. As for issues faced by teachers, they were not indifferent to SBA implementation but team work and collaboration among SBA teachers needs to be improved. Teachers faced problems in SBA implementation but overall had a positive attitude towards SBA. Teachers voiced concerns over the lack of adequate staff numbers, lack of uniformity and a possible element of biasness in grading. Teachers also faced time constraints, lack of effective materials and methodologies and poor ICT facilities in schools. They also feared cheating by students in SBAs. Future researchers should investigate the success of SBA implementation after a few years.
School-Based Assessment : A Study on Teacher's Knowledge and Practices
School-Based Assessment is a new policy venture in the highly centralized education system of Malaysia. The traditional system of assessment no longer satisfies the educational and social needs of the third millennium. In the past few decades, many countries have made profound reforms in their assessment systems. Since then, there have been only a few studies that looked into the implementation of SBA in Malaysia. Therefore, this study is conducted to investigate the knowledge and practices of Malaysian primary school teachers who directly involved in the SBA implementation. This study is deemed timely and crucial as it could provide a relevant picture for scholars, practitioners and policy makers in relation to testing and assessment. Descriptive research design was employed to examine the level of knowledge and practices of 400 school teachers in Johor Bahru that has been selected randomly using the Teacher Assessment Knowledge and Practice Inventory (TAKPI). The data were validat...