Gender differences in the implementation of school-based assessment in a Malaysian state (original) (raw)
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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...
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.
International Education Studies, 2015
School-Based Assessment (SBA) was implemented in Malaysian secondary schools in 2012. Since its implementation, teachers have faced several challenges to meet the aims and objectives of the School-Based Assessment. Based on these challenges this study aims to find the level of teachers' knowledge and readiness towards the implementation of school-based assessment (SBA). The study was conducted in 15 daily secondary schools in the state of Kedah, which is situated in the northern part of Malaysia, bordering Thailand. 155 teachers were randomly selected from a total of 260 teachers. This study used 2 questionnaires to assess teachers' knowledge and readiness to implement SBA. The questionnaire was adapted from Alabah (2012) which was designed to assess the teachers' knowledge (30 items) and readiness (35 items) on Nigerian teachers' perception of SBA. This questionnaire used a 4-point Likert-type scale with strongly disagree e to strongly agree. The findings provide evidence that the knowledge of the teachers in terms of 5 dimensions, that is, conducting SBA, bands in SBA, knowledge of evaluating SBA, SBA procedural knowledge and knowledge of implementation of SBA. The overall mean (3.27) for the level of teachers' knowledge towards SBA shows that all the teachers agree that they have the knowledge about SBA. In terms of readiness, the mean (3.09) shows that all the teachers agree that they are ready to implement SBA. The comparison of the two means suggest that teachers have relatively more knowledge but are less ready to implement the SBA. The implication here is that teachers feel that their level of knowledge is not complete and more initiatives need to be taken by the educational authorities so that teachers are more confident of their level of readiness.
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
From Principle to Practice: Assessment for Learning in Malaysian School-Based Assessment Classroom
2014
School-Based Assessment (SBA) has been implemented in Malaysian schools in 2011 with attempts to (i) achieve the aspiration of National Philosophy of Education towards developing learners' physical, emotional, spiritual and intellectual abilities, (ii) reduce exam-oriented learning, (iii) evaluate learners' learning progress and (iv) enhance teachers' integrity in assessing, recording and reporting of learners' learning. Malaysian SBA system laid emphasis on features like Standard-Referenced Assessment, Holistic, Integration, Balance, Robust and Assessment for Learning (AfL). The purpose of this study is (i) to investigate teachers' AfL competencies across gender, teaching experience and measurement training and (ii) to examine the effect of gender, teaching experience and measurement training on the AfL practices. A set of questionnaire consisted of 30 items on 4 point frequency scale was used to collect data from 408 respondents which have been randomly selected using the cluster sampling procedure from 10 districts. Data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Overall results showed that the competency levels of AfL practices were mainly at the basic level. Effect of gender were found statistically significant on the level of practices. The implications of the results that underpin AfL are discussed to enhance teachers' overall assessment competency.
Advanced Science Letters
This study aimed to identify the slcills readiness of Malay language teachers in National Schools in implementation of School Based Assessment (SBA) and identify whether there was any relationship between experiences of teaching among the Malay language teachers in National Schools with their skills in implementation of SBA. A questionnaire was used as an instrument in the study. The respondents consisted of 110 Malay language teachers in 35 National Schools located in the Klang Valley, Kuala Lumpur. Data analysis was carried out with the aid of the SPSS program. The results showed that the readiness of teachers in terms of skills affect the implementation of the SBA, while Pearson'r correlation analysis showed that there was significant correlation between the teaching experiences of the Malay language teachers in National Schools with their skills in the implementation ofSBA. The researchers also proposed some recommendations to make the SBA a success.
Challenges Faced by The Teachers in Implementing School Based Assessment
The study aimed to identify the challenges faced by the teachers in implementing school based assessment in Bintulu, Sarawak, Malaysia. The study was conducted in all 8 secondary schools in Bintulu. Semi structured interviews and classroom observations are triangulated to collect qualitative data of the study. In addition, questionnaire is conducted to strengthen the data collection quantitatively. Findings show that there are internal and external challenges faced by the teachers in implementing school based assessment.