{"id":19871,"date":"2014-02-05T15:00:27","date_gmt":"2014-02-05T07:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.buletinonline.net\/v7\/?p=19871"},"modified":"2014-02-05T09:44:09","modified_gmt":"2014-02-05T01:44:09","slug":"science-teachers-teaching-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/science-teachers-teaching-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Science Teachers Teaching History"},"content":{"rendered":"

There is a surplus of 13,000 Science teachers in Malaysia.<\/p>\n

And what are they doing? Teaching History, it seems.<\/p>\n

This is rather alarming considering that History is one of the compulsory pass subjects in the Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM) examinations.<\/p>\n

These misqualified teachers have been adopting the conservative “chalk and talk” method as a teaching style due to their lack of understanding on the subject.<\/p>\n

They have been described as unimaginative, too reliant on textbooks, too syllabus-oriented and are generally unable to give a clear depiction of historical events, eventually killing student interest in the subject.<\/p>\n

How did this happen?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The situation is said to have taken root six years ago, when the Education Ministry decided to give stronger focus to the fields of science and technology.<\/p>\n

\"p20130518-095517\"<\/a>This was done to meet one of the challenges under Vision 2020, which was to establish a scientific and progressive society.<\/p>\n

To achieve the purpose, the intake allowance for Science teachers was increased to 60%, said Dr Ahmad Zainudin Husin, a lecturer at the History Department of the Sultan Idris University of Education (UPSI).<\/p>\n

“This is one of the reasons for poor understanding of History subject in schools. Many of the teachers are not competent in the techniques of teaching the subject,” he said.<\/p>\n

He said the surplus in Science teachers was due to the lack of students choosing to enter the Science stream in Form Four.<\/p>\n

The Science teachers then found themselves taking up the option to teach History.<\/p>\n

Government intervention<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ahmad Zainudin said the government was forced to take the initiative to retrain Science teachers so that they could take up other subjects, including History, under its Add-on Option Intervention Programme (PITO).<\/p>\n

The five-week retraining programme was conducted at local universities such as UPSI, Universiti Sains Malaysia and Universiti Teknologi Malaysia.<\/p>\n

“However, their level of competence on the History subject can never be at par with teachers graduating from the specific fields,” he said.<\/p>\n

Therefore, many PITO teachers depend very much of the textbooks, at the expense of student comprehension of historical events.<\/p>\n

“Comprehension is an important element in the learning of History. However, it cannot be done freely and must be based on facts.<\/p>\n

“Therefore, a teacher must have the ability to explicate the facts in textbooks to help students understand better,” he said.<\/p>\n

Data from the Education Ministry shows that out of 400,000 teachers in schools nationwide, 19,195 are teaching History.<\/p>\n

However, only 9,860 of the History teachers were graduates of the field and trained in the teaching of the subject.<\/p>\n

The rest were trained in other fields. Ironically, 8,545 teachers who have been trained in the teaching of History were not given the option to teach the subject.<\/p>\n

“They are faced with the risk of unemployment, even though they have the specific expertise in teaching the subject from the primary school level up to Form Six,” he said.
\n
\n\"upsi\"<\/a>The role of universities<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ahmad Zainuddin said the autonomic policy of universities also affected the intake process of high quality students in the field of History, particularly in UPSI.<\/p>\n

He said the policy favoured research universities in student quota fulfilment over non-research universities, such as UPSI.<\/p>\n

“The student intake policy used to be more open. Applicants were free to choose any university they desired, but today the policy has limited their options,” he said.<\/p>\n

He said UPSI’s intake of students in the History field had also decreased following the introduction of the policy, subsequently affecting the effort to produce more History teachers of quality, he said.<\/p>\n

Producing good History teachers is no longer an option but a necessity, given the National Education Development Plan 2013-2025 that was launched recently.<\/p>\n

But the reality is that at the university level, the study of History is still treated as a field of no particular importance.<\/p>\n

“Although the Education Ministry has made History a compulsory pass subject in SPM, this has yet to translate into anything evident at the university level. This has much to do with policies that give priority to the marketability of graduates,” he said.<\/p>\n

This has added further to the unpopularity of the subject, so much so that universities have had to reduce student intake.<\/p>\n

This is among the concerns raised by historians and academicians during the History Summit, recently.<\/p>\n

However, the scenario is a foreign one in western countries as special focus is given to the History subject in the development of their people’s citizenship.<\/p>\n

The University of Cambridge, Oxford University and the Moscow State University even have their own History Faculty.<\/p>\n

This is in contrast to what is happening in Malaysia, where less than 60 local universities offer a degree in History, said Prof Dr Ahmad Murad Mohd Noor Merican, a lecturer in Management and Humanities at Universiti Teknologi Petronas (UTP) in an article.<\/p>\n

Thorough reform needed<\/strong><\/p>\n

Malaysia needs to learn from the successful education systems of Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea, Finland, Canada and Singapore, which place its main focus on the quality of its teachers.<\/p>\n

“We cannot compromise on the quality of training curriculum and the quality of a teacher’s education. Only graduates who fulfil the criteria and need should be placed in schools,” he said.<\/p>\n

There also needed to be an emphasis on the specialisation of teachers when considering the assignment of teachers, he said, as an excellent curriculum and good textbook would mean nothing without a competent educator teaching the subject. \u2013 Bernama<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is a surplus of 13,000 Science teachers in Malaysia. And what are they doing? Teaching History, it seems. This is rather alarming considering that History is one of the compulsory pass subjects in the Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM) examinations. These misqualified teachers have been adopting the conservative “chalk and talk” method as a teaching […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19872,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"better_featured_image":{"id":19872,"alt_text":"","caption":"","description":"","media_type":"image","media_details":{"width":640,"height":381,"file":"2014\/02\/kementerian-pelajaran.jpg","filesize":71586,"sizes":{},"image_meta":{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0","keywords":[]}},"post":19871,"source_url":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/kementerian-pelajaran.jpg"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19871"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19871"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19871\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buletinonlines.net\/v7\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}