International journal of modern education studies, Dec 31, 2017
Teaching values in modern schools is a new phenomenon. Malaysian national curriculum at both prim... more Teaching values in modern schools is a new phenomenon. Malaysian national curriculum at both primary and secondary school levels ensures that students develop desirable attitudes and behaviors based on human, religious, and spiritual values. The inculcation of the values is made possible through various subjects and non-academic subjects and students' activities. However, knowledge about values education remains limited because there is no measurement device to assess the extent of values teaching in school. To fill this gap, the present study was designed to develop and examine the psychometric properties of an instrument measuring values teaching schools. Using data from 400 high school students, the study developed and validated a measure called Malaysia School Values Scale (MSVS) tailored to high school students in Malaysia. A robust analysis of Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) in Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) provides a rigorous analysis of the model power in relation to construct and content validity, confirming the dimension and analyzing the fitness of the data collected in the hypothesized model. This paper provides insight construct and content analysis using the CFA approach to consider the 15 school values constructs. To achieve the intended research objective, the 15 school values were explored. The results provide evidence that the MSVS achieved sound psychometric properties. The overall reliability value of Cronbach's Alpha was acceptable. The CFA results showed that the goodness-of-fit indices for the hypothesized model were as follows: x2 (182) = 627.269, p = 0.00, x2/DF = 3.409, GFI = 0.852; AGFI = 0.814, CFI = 0.92; IFI = 0.921, RMSEA = 0.077. Each of the indices was above the threshold value. Results imply that MSVS is a valid measure to describe the school values among high school students. However, more studies are recommended to further validate the scale.
School engagement is a relatively new concept in education. However, studies have demonstrated th... more School engagement is a relatively new concept in education. However, studies have demonstrated that the concept is useful in predicting students' academic achievement. The present study was conducted to examine Malaysian students' school engagement status and to understand the factors that influenced their engagement. The survey method was used to collect data with a questionnaire measuring the level of students' engagement in three psychological domains (cognitive, affective, and behavior). The influential factors were measured by learning about the ecological factors affecting the students' academic engagement, including their teachers' teaching practice and the support they received from teachers, peers, and parents. A total of 311 (male and female) participants between the ages of 12 -16 years from form one, form two, form three, and form four in a school in Selangor were selected using a random sampling procedure. Data was analyzed using descriptive and correlational analyses. The results showed that male and female students exhibit significantly different levels of engagement. Female students have a higher level of engagement than males. Teachers' teaching practices and the support students received from peers, parents, and teachers were positively correlated with students' engagement level. Although the results of the study support the findings of previous studies, further studies are suggested to verify the present findings. Implications for schools and parenting practices are also discussed.
Jurnal Pendidikan Malaysia (Malaysian Journal of Education), Nov 1, 2010
Kertas ini bertujuan membentangkan hasil kajian yang meninjau penglibatan bapa dalam asuhan anak-... more Kertas ini bertujuan membentangkan hasil kajian yang meninjau penglibatan bapa dalam asuhan anak-anak remaja dan hubungannya dengan perkembangan remaja. Tinjauan dibuat terhadap 468 sampel pelajar dengan menggunakan soal selidik tentang beberapa aspek asuhan bapa. Analisis korelasi antara tahap penglibatan bapa dengan perkembangan pembelajaran dan perkembangan konsep kendiri anak-anak remaja telah dilakukan. Analisis kekerapan, peratus, min juga dijalankan. Antara dapatan yang penting ialah anak-anak mendapati penglibatan bapa agak baik, iaitu bertanggungjawab dari segi menyediakan kemudahan fizikal serta sokongan kepada ibu. Bagaimanapun, responden merasakan bapa mereka tidak mesra dan tidak banyak berkomunikasi dengan mereka. Mereka juga beranggapan bapa tidak banyak terlibat dalam proses pembelajaran, khususnya dalam hal-hal yang berkaitan dengan sekolah. Tahap penglibatan bapa juga tidak mempunyai hubungan dengan prestasi akademik remaja. Manakala korelasi antara penglibatan bapa dalam asuhan dengan konsep kendiri pelajar lelaki adalah rendah . Implikasi kajian dapat dilihat daripada peranan bapa dalam konteks keluarga dan nilai kekeluargaan Islam. Oleh kerana lebih daripada 75 peratus sampel datang daripada latar belakang ekonomi rendah (<RM 1000), pendidikan ibu bapa yang rendah dan sampel Melayu, maka dengan itu dapatan ini lebih menggambarkan sikap bapa Melayu dari kumpulan yang disebutkan. Dengan itu, kajian yang menggunakan sampel yang lebih representatif adakah sangat penting untuk mengukuhkan dapatan ini.
Kertas ini bertujuan membentangkan hasil kajian yang meninjau penglibatan bapa dalam asuhan anak-... more Kertas ini bertujuan membentangkan hasil kajian yang meninjau penglibatan bapa dalam asuhan anak-anak remaja dan hubungannya dengan perkembangan remaja. Tinjauan dibuat terhadap 468 sampel pelajar dengan menggunakan soal selidik tentang beberapa aspek asuhan bapa. Analisis korelasi antara tahap penglibatan bapa dengan perkembangan pembelajaran dan perkembangan konsep kendiri anak-anak remaja telah dilakukan. Analisis kekerapan, peratus, min juga dijalankan. Antara dapatan yang penting ialah anak-anak mendapati penglibatan bapa agak baik, iaitu bertanggungjawab dari segi menyediakan kemudahan fizikal serta sokongan kepada ibu. Bagaimanapun, responden merasakan bapa mereka tidak mesra dan tidak banyak berkomunikasi dengan mereka. Mereka juga beranggapan bapa tidak banyak terlibat dalam proses pembelajaran, khususnya dalam hal-hal yang berkaitan dengan sekolah. Tahap penglibatan bapa juga tidak mempunyai hubungan dengan prestasi akademik remaja. Manakala korelasi antara penglibatan bapa dalam asuhan dengan konsep kendiri pelajar lelaki adalah rendah . Implikasi kajian dapat dilihat daripada peranan bapa dalam konteks keluarga dan nilai kekeluargaan Islam. Oleh kerana lebih daripada 75 peratus sampel datang daripada latar belakang ekonomi rendah (<RM 1000), pendidikan ibu bapa yang rendah dan sampel Melayu, maka dengan itu dapatan ini lebih menggambarkan sikap bapa Melayu dari kumpulan yang disebutkan. Dengan itu, kajian yang menggunakan sampel yang lebih representatif adakah sangat penting untuk mengukuhkan dapatan ini.
Teaching values in modern schools is a new phenomenon. Malaysian national curriculum at both prim... more Teaching values in modern schools is a new phenomenon. Malaysian national curriculum at both primary and secondary school levels ensures that students develop desirable attitudes and behaviors based on human, religious, and spiritual values. The inculcation of the values is made possible through various subjects and non-academic subjects and students’ activities. However, knowledge about values education remains limited because there is no measurement device to assess the extent of values teaching in school. To fill this gap, the present study was designed to develop and examine the psychometric properties of an instrument measuring values teaching schools. Using data from 400 high school students, the study developed and validated a measure called Malaysia School Values Scale (MSVS) tailored to high school students in Malaysia. A robust analysis of Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) in Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) provides a rigorous analysis of the model power in relation t...
Malaysian Journal of Learning and Instruction, 2014
Tujuan – Kajian ini bertujuan untuk meneliti perbezaan gender dalam sokongan pembelajaran, keterl... more Tujuan – Kajian ini bertujuan untuk meneliti perbezaan gender dalam sokongan pembelajaran, keterlibatan murid di sekolah dan pencapaian. Kajian ini juga meneliti sejauh mana keterlibatan tersebut berperanan sebagai perantara kepada gender, sokongan pembelajaran dengan pencapaian akademik.  Metodologi – Kajian ini menggunakan model keratan rentas yang melibatkan hubungan gender dengan keterlibatan murid di sekolah, sokongan pembelajaran dan pencapaian akademik. Sampel kajian adalah seramai 2,359 remaja lelaki dan perempuan berumur 12 hingga 16 tahun dari sekolah harian di kawasan bandar dan luar bandar. Instrumen Keterlibatan Murid di Sekolah dan Sokongan Pembelajaran digunakan untuk kutipan data. Kedua-dua instrumen telah diterjemah ke dalam bahasa Melayu untuk meninjau sejauhmana keterlibatan murid di sekolah dan persepsi mereka terhadap sokongan pembelajaran daripada ibu bapa, guru dan rakan sebaya. Kesahan dan kebolehpercayaan instrumen menunjukkan nilai tinggi. Analisis inferen...
The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the use of the Online Project-based module (m-PAT) to cu... more The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the use of the Online Project-based module (m-PAT) to cultivate positive values among students. Evaluation was made to the positive values used in this study based on the six constructs of Contextual Development Model for Positive Youth Development namely competence, confidence, connection, caring, character and contribution (6C’s). The learning approach used by m-PAT is project-based learning which is applied as a School Based Assessment activity for Physics subject. A mixed method case study design was employed, where the findings of quantitative data were confirmed using the findings of qualitative data. A total of 42 Form 4 students were chosen based on purposive sampling from a secondary school in Klang Valley, Malaysia. The data were collected through questionnaire, student reflection, students’ online learning activity and discussion, interviews with the students, as well as teacher’s checklist after each participant generated a physic...
One barrier for people with disabilities to obtain employment is negative perceptions of employer... more One barrier for people with disabilities to obtain employment is negative perceptions of employers. As a result, many disabled people are underemployed. However, a small fraction of employers is willing to hire youth with disabilities. This paper presents the views of employers who hire youth workers with disabilities from vocational secondary schools leavers in Malaysia. Semi structured interviews that lasted for one and a half hours were conducted with three employers from service industries. Keywords or phrases were extracted, clustered, and interpreted into themes. The analyzed data were confirmed with the participants to ensure trustworthiness and reliability. The findings showed that the employers did recognize youth with disabilities as workers. The views of employers against workers were focused on the strengths and weaknesses in terms of personality and employee skills. The strengths of youth workers with disabilities in personality are hardworking, responsible, compliant, honest, and social ability. However, youth workers with disabilities have low self-confident, and are very sensitive, and easily influenced by negative elements. The employers realized that the youth workers with disabilities did master the basic work skills that fulfilled the employers' needs. Nevertheless, they needed monitoring while working and repeated learning process if new training was given to them. The findings reported here were based on a pilot study of a larger research project. This study provided a conceptual framework of the findings. This pioneer study is expected to provide significant contribution in employment implications to youth with disabilities, and to reduce negative perceptions among employers in Malaysia.
The paper reports a case study on the ability of a group of children with autistic spectrum disor... more The paper reports a case study on the ability of a group of children with autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) in recognising face using potrait drawing technique. Sample comprised of four ASDs children and four non-ASDS children and eight teachers. Eight individual drawing sessions were conducted with the children sample. Data were collected using observations, interviews and Portrait Drawing Assessment (PDA) Instrument. Results showed that the two groups of children had different profile. The analysis was also able to identify the drawing developmental stage of each participant. The results imply that drawing technique has a potential to draw autistics children attention and teacing them to recognise faces. This paper concludes that potrait drawing session has a great potential to be an intervention for ASDs children developing communication. As the present study was the first for children with ASD in Malaysia therefore more evidences are required to confirm the finding.
Worldwide, most of the mainstream media commonly reports bullying behavior. Nevertheless the inst... more Worldwide, most of the mainstream media commonly reports bullying behavior. Nevertheless the instruments for measuring bullying behavior and the attitude towards bullying behavior among Malaysian adolescents are lacking. This study examined the reliability and validity of the peer aggression coping selfefficacy scale measuring the self-efficacy of bully victims among Malaysian adolescents. The scale, which consists of 45 items, was translated to Malay language using back translation method and its validity was examined using 176 high school students. The split-half reliability result revealed Cronbach's alpha of 0.91, indicating a high reliability. Four experts in the counseling field established face validity. The Peer Aggression Coping Self-Efficacy Scale provides a useful measure for examining children's self-efficacy.
The paper reports a validity and reliability study on a newly developed Moral Value Inventory for... more The paper reports a validity and reliability study on a newly developed Moral Value Inventory for Muslim Adolescent (MVIMA). Analysis of data using 107 subjects showed a high general relialibity (.95), and the nine sub-scales (patience, gratefulness, humility, respecfulness, positive regard, honesty, love, tawakal, sincerity and taqwa) shows reliability value ranging between .72 to .84. The convergence validity for the sub-scales were significantly correlated (.36 to .72; p<.01). Factor analysis identified four factors (self-spiritual, self-social, social-spiritual, and self). Forty eight items with factor loading between .413-.657 of 99 original items were retained in the final inventory.
Employability of vocational school leavers with disabilities has been often an issue at the natio... more Employability of vocational school leavers with disabilities has been often an issue at the national and international levels. The purpose of this study is to identify the employability and working patterns of vocational school leavers with disabilities. The survey involved 99 school leavers with disabilities who have had previous vocational training at a vocational school for special needs. Data were collected using a set of questionnaires and were statistically analysed. Chi-square test was also used to identify the difference between types of disability with job fields which are relevant to their vocational skills. The result showed that 69 school leavers were employed with 24 of them are currently working in the area related to the skill trained in the vocational school. The chi-square results showed a significant difference between school leavers' type of disability and the employment gained based on their trained vocational skills. Employability of school leavers with disabilities has reached almost 70%, but unfortunately most of them were not employed based on their vocational skills from school. Improvements can be made by reviewing appropriate job market which suits with the type of disability.
Career guidance programs in schools have always championed honoring diversity by promoting fair e... more Career guidance programs in schools have always championed honoring diversity by promoting fair educational opportunities for students and helping them to realize their individual abilities and talents. To support such claims, this paper examines the extent to which the career guidance program in Malaysian schools is ready to respond to the challenge of providing services to diverse clients.
This study examined the effectiveness of Multiple Stress Management Intervention (MSMI) on academ... more This study examined the effectiveness of Multiple Stress Management Intervention (MSMI) on academic performance and mental health among undergraduate students. Sixty students were randomly assigned to either a stress-management training group, or a non-training control group. During the 8-week period, sixteen 2-hour session interventions were conducted for the experimental group. Results indicated that there is an increase in the academic performance and mental health measures in the experimental group. This study implies that stress management could be learned and coping skills could be acquired.
The paper reports a survey to investigate the influence of contextual aspects on students' career... more The paper reports a survey to investigate the influence of contextual aspects on students' career planning and development. A set of questionnaire was used to collect data from 1,436 Form Five students from 22 Technical/Vocational schools in Malaysia. The results show that contextual factors have influenced the choice of students' career decision. Other findings show that the contextual factors such as lack of role models in the family and lack of career information received at home influenced the respondents' career choices in technical fields. The paper concludes that parents should play significant role in providing career information at home.
Gender differences with regard to academic performance remain one of the more challenging issues ... more Gender differences with regard to academic performance remain one of the more challenging issues in educational research. Gender disparity in education has traditionally focus on the under participation of girls and still is in some parts of the world. In a number of countries, including Malaysia, gender disparity in basic and higher education are in favor of girls both in terms of participation and performance. The dual purpose of this paper is to address and to understand the nature of the issue by analyzing the trends of student participation and performance; and secondly, to seek whether student engagement and burnout are possible factors contributing to school dropout and low achievement. There are evidence in the literature to show student engagement and student burnout accounted for gender differences in school performance. The results of the analysis of secondary data reflected a trend that shows girls outperformed boys in national examinations across school levels and types. These trends are confirmed by results of a survey of the level of student engagement and student burnout on a sample of students aged 12, 14 and 16 which seems to suggest that boys are less engaged than girls, and experience more burnout. The findings are discussed in the context of developing support for students, particularly boys, to be more engaged, and less burnout in school and in learning.
A study was carried out to test the effects of a 2-week structured intervention program on academ... more A study was carried out to test the effects of a 2-week structured intervention program on academically challenged students' career development. A quasi-experimental study was designed using pre-tests, post-tests, and a control group approach to examine the effects of the intervention program. Data were collected from both the experimental and control groups. The test was carried out on eight schools in the state of Kedah in Malaysia. Eight school counselors were trained to facilitate the assignment to the experimental groups and to collect data. A total number of 335 students with low academic achievement participated in this study. This number included male (43.6 %) and female (56.4 %) students who were aged 15-16 and a half. Modes of measurement used consisted of a career planning inventory (measuring career planning skills), an academic learning motivation scale (measuring attitude toward academic learning), and an academic study skills test (measuring academic study competencies). Analysis was performed using t-tests and the multivariate analysis of variance to examine the differences in the mean scores. The results show that the sample's career academic score improved significantly from the pre-test to the posttest. A simple regression analysis was also performed to see the effect of the intervention program on the three dependent variables, which revealed that the career intervention program has positive and significant effects on the three variables. However, further studies on the career program for academically challenged students are highly recommended to support the present study.
This study examines whether there are changes in the levels of integration of people in the state... more This study examines whether there are changes in the levels of integration of people in the state of Selangor (Malaysia). Data was collected from 744 respondents and analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics and interpreted using integration model. Integration was found to be at the third level that is level with the Chinese groups scoring the lowest in all the three domains, the Malays achieving the highest score in the cognitive domain, whilst the Indians receiving the highest score in the affective domain. Although the level of integration is rather high, there are areas which need to be improved.
This qualitative study examines the counseling process provided for three pupils who are going th... more This qualitative study examines the counseling process provided for three pupils who are going through parental divorce. The children are aged 9-12 and attend a primary school in Malaysia. Data was gathered from 29 individual and peer group counseling sessions. Creative interventions such as art and play therapy helped the clients to express their hidden emotions and mistaken goals and to rebuild interaction skills with peers. A collaborative approach involving teachers, parents and peers helped reduce stress on the clients and encouraged them to resume daily activities. This study suggests that professional help be provided for children coping with parental divorce.
One of the core developmental tasks in the adolescents' stage is building the sense of responsibi... more One of the core developmental tasks in the adolescents' stage is building the sense of responsibility. This study examined the relationship of sibling position and family communication to the sense of responsibility among 903 Malaysian adolescents, using The Malaysian Adolescents' Responsibility Inventory, Parent-Adolescent Communication Inventory and interview protocol. Sense of responsibility was found to be related to Family communication but not to sibling position. The interview revealed that middle born children can be responsible when they are given responsibilities. This study suggests adults' participation in encouraging young people to inculcate sense of responsibility.
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