This article reports the findings on classroom practice in Malaysia, as the nation attempts to transform the education system to better prepare children for the 21st Century. The goal of the study is to describe an overview of classroom practice in Malaysia, to provide essential empirical data to inform discussions in one of the most important areas in education â€“ what happens in the classroom in relation to national aspirations, policies and practices. A random sampling of 24 secondary schools from across the country led to a sample size of 140 teachers. Lessons facilitated by these teachers were video recorded and analysed. The findings revealed that classroom practice was largely the same throughout the country, and lacked the kinds of activities widely associated with creating engaging and thinking classrooms. Systemic issues and possible ways forward are discussed in light of these findings.

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Classroom Practice and the Quality of Teaching: Where a Nation is Going? (doi: 10.14425/jice.2018.7.1.17)

Brave New World of Teacher Evaluation.

The purpose of this research is to determine the knowledge and skills possessed by instructional design (ID) practitioners in Malaysia. As ID is a relatively new field in the country and there seems to be an absence of any studies on its community of practice, the main objective of this research is to discover the tasks and activities performed by ID practitioners in educational and corporate organizations as suggested by the International Board of Standards for Training, Performance and Instruction. This includes finding out the ID models applied in the course of their work. This research also attempts to identify the barriers and issues as to why some ID tasks and activities are rarely or never conducted. The methodology employed in this descriptive study was a survey questionnaire sent to 30 instructional designers nationwide. The results showed that majority of the tasks and activities are carried out frequently enough but omissions do occur due to reasons such as it being out of job scope, the decision was already made at a higher level, and the lack of knowledge and skills. Further investigations of a qualitative manner should be conducted to achieve a more in-depth understanding of ID practices in Malaysia. Keywords—instructional design, ID competencies, ID models, IBSTPI

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Instructional Design Practitioners in Malaysia: Skills and Issues

This article analyzes the way in which educators and researchers have pronounced themselves for incorporating computer programming in the K-12 curricula (basic and secondary education), recognizing its cognitive benefits in those who practice it, which can be useful in contexts other than computing, by influencing the development of higher order thinking skills and problem solving, both concepts integrated in the so-called computational thinking (CT). The proposal includes the vision of various authors, who conclude that the transfer of cognitive programming skills does not happen correctly given the prevalence of educational interventions designed under the belief that it occurs as an automatic and spontaneous process. The structure of the article is made up of three fundamental aspects: (1) historical account of the definition of knowledge transfer (KT), its main theoretical and classificatory taxonomies; (2) integration of existing definitions on CT and the way in which the formulation of various study plans in different countries has resulted; and (3) the investigation of different challenges and implications present in the CT, as well as recommendations for its improvement, taking as a reference the results of experiments carried out in different academic fields, proposed in order to strengthen both the KT as well as the CT.

https://www.cedtech.net/download/implications-of-computational-thinking-knowledge-transfer-for-developing-educational-interventions-11810.pdf

Implications of Computational Thinking Knowledge Transfer for Developing Educational Interventions

Abstract Background Nursing education was affected by the COVID-19 pandemic as most institutions shifted to e-learning. The aim of the current study was to examine students’ engagement and satisfaction levels with e-learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods A descriptive correlation design was used to guide this study. A voluntary response sampling method was used to recruit undergraduate nursing programs in Jordan. Data were collected using an electronic link to a self-reported questionnaire. Results A total of 1,562 undergraduate nursing students responded to the questionnaire. The study showed that most students have high engagement in the emotional, skills, and performance subscales and low engagement in the participation subscale. Further, they were moderately satisfied with e-learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Conclusions Students identified several issues regarding their e-learning, which must be considered to improve their engagement and satisfaction. Further, the study revealed several shortcomings in preparing students to attend e-learning classes.

Jordanian nursing students’ engagement and satisfaction with e-learning during COVID-19 pandemic

This paper presents the evaluation on the face and content validity of a Soft Skills Transfer of Training Instrument. This is a newly developed instrument with an aim to assess the influencing factors of soft skills application back into the workplace after training amongst clerical employees in a Malaysian context. The instrument comprises of 85 items with twelve constructs: personal efficacy; intention; motivation; expectations; training contents; delivery; awareness; interventions; superior’s support; trainer’s quality; workplace; and climate. The constructs were derived from Baldwin and Ford’s Transfer of Training Model (1988), Burke & Hutchins’ Model of Transfer (2008), and Holton’s HRD Evaluation Research and Measurement Model (1996). The evaluation was based on the opinions of five experts from academia and training industry background. Each item was evaluated to ensure its relevance to the study and rated based on a dichotomous rating of agree or disagree. The ratings were used to calculate the extent of agreement between raters using Kappa Index (Kappa) and Content Validity Index (CVI). As this study involved multiple raters, Fleiss’ Kappa Index (FKI) was applied. The calculation yielded that the inter-rater agreement was 0.76 (FKI) while the proportion agreement was 0.96 (CVI). Items with at least a CVI of 0.80 were included in the final instrument. This evaluation confirmed and supported that the face and content validity of the items on the instrument could be used to assess the influencing factors of soft skills training transfer and ready for a pilot study.

https://hrmars.com/papers_submitted/8267/evaluation-on-the-face-and-content-validity-of-a-soft-skills-transfer-of-training-instrument.pdf

Evaluation on The Face and Content Validity of a Soft Skills Transfer of Training Instrument

This paper focuses on the training of selected soft skills among higher education students. The call for such focus was guided by the growing Graduate Employability (GE) demands from the 21st century industries and the trending competencies as documented in ‘The Future of Jobs Report 2018’ by World Economic Forum. In the investigation, the students’ perspective became central in interpreting the current instructional practices in the higher education institutes. The training of a selected set of soft skills based on the Critical Thinking Theory namely; analyzing, information seeking, logical reasoning and transforming knowledge, was the scope of the investigation. Central to the scope of the investigation is the respondents’ perceptions of their instructors’ instructional practices. Hence, a quantitative research design was chosen resulting in the administration of a set of questionnaire to 110 students in a selected faculty in one of the public universities in Malaysia. A descriptive statistical analysis was done in analyzing the data. The salient findings include a medium range of mean scores across the instructional practices of the instructors across the training of most of the soft skills as perceived by the respondents. Specifically, the instructors were seen to be average at training logical reasoning (M= 3.48) and transforming knowledge (M= 3.49). The instructors were perceived to be slightly better at training the respondents analyzing (M= 3.66) and information seeking (M= 3.74). Several recommendations were highlighted including the need for the instructors to be more comfortable with scientific data and language in promoting the training of transforming knowledge skill and to encourage research-based activities in promoting the training of logical reasoning. Based on the recommendations, it is expected that the instructors themselves could consider relevant innovations in their instructional practices as an effort to produce graduates with the identified soft skills. Additionally, policy makers and curriculum developers could also benefit from the findings of the present study.

https://hrmars.com/papers_submitted/7362/Soft_Skills_Instructional_Practices_An_Investigation_from_The_Perspective_of_The_Immediate_Stakeholders.pdf

Soft Skills Instructional Practices: An Investigation from the Perspective of the Immediate Stakeholders

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Shaliza Shafie

Papers

Evaluation on The Face and Content Validity of a Soft Skills Transfer of Training Instrument

Soft Skills Instructional Practices: An Investigation from the Perspective of the Immediate Stakeholders

Evaluating Construct Validity and Reliability of Intention to Transfer Training Conduct Instrument Using Rasch Model Analysis