School Improvement Specialist Coaches Plus (SISC+) as a Catalyst for Enhancing Teachers Pedagogy Aspect in Malaysia

Abstract

The School Improvement Specialist Coaches Plus (SISC+) programmed in Malaysia has been in operation since 2012 and is a part of the professional education team in all districts in Malaysia that helps teachers through their coaches. According to the District Transformation Programmed 3.0 (DTP 3.0), the role of SISC+ is underpinned by knowledge and skills in curriculum, pedagogy and assessment aspects. The aim of this study was therefore to identify the level of competence of SISC+ in the field of pedagogy. This study employed a descriptive design. The data has been collected via a series of questionnaires distributed nationally to 118 ICs and analyzed with version 23 of SPSS. The study used descriptive statistics with frequency, mean score, standard deviation and percentage. The results have demonstrated that Pedagogical Knowledge SISC+ competency has a mean score of 4.63, sd = 0.469, at a high level. The results of this study show that SISC+ is competent and knowledgeable on the pedagogical aspects of the subject. The results of this study give insight on the capabilities of SISC+ in teaching coaches in schools and in the practice of teaching and teaching of quality (T&L). Furthermore, teachers interacted and defined the challenges in the school and social environment. It is therefore recognized that the programmed SISC+ needs to be properly understood and recognized by schools and educational institutions in order to achieve its objective of supporting teachers. Physical spaces and collaboration possibilities can improve the achievements of the coaches. The originality and value of the research is the first such research in Malaysia to explore the skills and experiences of coaches who are actively involved in the teacher instructional coaching programmed. The authority must therefore provide support and cooperation so as to ensure that SISC+ remains capable of providing teachers with good quality coaching.

The Teachers’ Professional Development in The Implementation of CEFR-Aligned Classroom Based Assessment

“…To note, the insufficient materials on the new assessment (Ghavifekr, Kunjappan & Ramasamy, 2016) and lack of training (Arumugham, 2020) have been compounded to this problem. Balang Mahamod and Buang (2020) reported that teachers were found to have a limited understanding on enacting CEFR CBA leaving the implementation of this new policy become vague as it did not align to the needs of policymakers. This situation has sparked a contested site to see that even the TPD was conducted for the teachers, however, it does not able to provide insights for them to enact the changes in education claiming that the TPD was ineffective.…”

“…To note, many past literatures (Arumugham, 2020, Balang et al, 2020, Acarerdol & Yildizli, 2018 has limit the discussion by addressing the effectiveness of TPD in engaging teachers' implementation of CEFR CBA. However, the types of TPD strategies in the enactment of CEFR CBA has yet to be discovered.…”