Enhancing Quality of Education: A Case Study on an International Islamic School

Abstract

Private secondary schools that want to gain a competitive edge need to search for effective and creative ways to attract, retain, and foster stronger relationships with students. The decision of selecting a school by the parents for their kids is based on a multitude of factors that differ from one society to another depending on its culture, economic status, religion, and others. The objective of the present research is to identify and prioritise the factors that can enhance the quality of education in an international Islamic school located in Kuala Lumpur from parents' perspective. The researchers employed both qualitative and quantitative approaches for data collection. The qualitative data were collected through interviewing 10 parents whose kids are currently enrolled in the school, while the quantitative data were collected through a questionnaire survey based on the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). A thematic analysis and AHP were used for analysing the qualitative and quantitative data, respectively. Findings from the thematic analysis resulted in 19 factors; however, only 8 factors with higher frequency were selected to represent the factors expected to enhance the quality of education. The AHP analysis resulted in prioritising these eight factors according to parents' judgements. The results show that the Islamic environment represents the most desired factor, followed by quality of teachers and school discipline.

Influence of Lecturers' Competence on Students' Satisfaction of Lecturing: Evidence for Mediating Role of Lecturing Behaviour

“…The first component of great teaching that has strong evidence of impact on students' outcomes is content knowledge, and the most effective teachers have deep knowledge of the subjects they teach, and when teachers' knowledge falls below a certain level, it is a significant impediment to students' learning [39]. Knowledge of specialization area and years of teaching experience are major components of quality of teachers [40]. lecturers' competence comes from knowledge and skills acquired through right education and experience.…”

“…Dimensions and Elements of the Three Variables for Development of Measurement Instruments Sources:[32,34,37,38,39,40,45] …”

Rasch Analysis for Standards-Setting Appraisal of Competency Level-Based Performance on the Part of Instructors in Higher Education

“…The teaching workload of higher education institutions is not limited to their regular teaching activities, such as giving lectures, preparing lesson plans, evaluating scripts, and attending training programs and conferences. In addition, they have to be involved in non-academic activities such as proctoring, coordinating various higher education institution activities, and taking on various administrative posts (Hosain, 2016;Islam et al, 2019). Moreover, higher education instructors' work performance is based on their dedication to the job, success in research and development, student achievement, and active communication involving international collaboration and networking (Le, 2021;Odero & Makori, 2018).…”

“…Gómez and Valdés (2019) found that instructors' performance is assessed by higher education institutions to favor teacher learning over the practice to improve it. Therefore, the analysis and establishment of standards-setting appraisal are important, leading to the need to create a proposal for the professional development of instructors and improvement in education quality (Aliasghar et al, 2017;Gómez & Valdés, 2019;Islam et al, 2019;Prasetio et al, 2017). Tan et al (2019) investigated how higher education students in Malaysia evaluated their instructors based on noninstructional factors, namely physical attractiveness and psychological factors, which could affect students' perceptions regarding their instructors' performance.…”

Can Islamic Stories be Used as Supplementary English Materials at Islamic Elementary Schools?

“…Thus, many Muslim parents send their children to Islamic schools in which Islamic identity as their core value in their education system is integrated with the national education system determined by the government. Religious value and character building, and Islamic environment provided by Islamic schools are dominant factors influencing parents' decision in choosing Islamic schools in countries where Muslims are majority (D. Hidayati & Rifa'i, 2020;Islam et al, 2019), even in those where they are not (Musharraf & Nabeel, 2015).…”