Primary Teacher Education In Malaysia

Abstract

In Malaysia the training of primary school teachers is solely carried out by teacher training institutes which offer the Bachelor of Teaching with Honors (Primary education) program and was first launched in 2007. This program prepares primary school teachers specializing in various subjects or major and is carried out in 27 teacher training institutes. The main aim of this program is to produce quality primary school teachers in terms of knowledge, skills and professional competencies in their respective subjects and in line with the National Philosophy of Education. After a span of five years, has this Bachelor of Teaching program achieve its learning outcomes outlined? Thus this study intends to evaluate this primary teacher education program by focusing on the achievement of learning outcomes (LO) of this four years program. The sample involved in this study is a group of 106 final year student teachers who have completed their 8^th semester of study. A questionnaire was administered to check the extent of the learning outcomes being achieved. This questionnaire was developed based on the eight main learning outcomes of this Bachelor of Teaching program. The question items were written individually by referring to the sub outcomes of each main LO. Thus this studys main objectives are to find out to what extent the overall LO was achieved and also to determine the importance of each LO. The results would serve as guidelines for the teaching staff to further improve their teaching practices and guidance given to students in the future.