INTRODUCTION

This selected article is entitled “Teaching Quality and Performance Among

Experienced Teachers in Malaysia”. The article is authored by three authors

whom are Siti Rafiah Abd Hamid (International Islamic University Malaysia),

Sharifah Sariah Syed Hassan (International Islamic University Malaysia), and Nik

Ahmad Hisham Ismail (International Islamic University Malaysia). It is created in

the year 2012. This article is the findings of the research made on the teaching

quality and performance among experienced teachers in Malaysia.

RESEARCH AND FINDINGS

Teachers’ roles in developing students’ achievements education wise is

very important. It is important to have effective teaching method and skills not

forgetting knowledge in bringing the education standard in Malaysia to the next

level. Teachers with good qualities and performances are considered effective.

According to the article, quality teachers and effectiveness are intertwined with

the same strands in the literature review with the stakeholders who determined

teachers’ effectiveness including students, principals or their peers. There are

also past studies that suggested teachers’ effectiveness could be measured by

the impact of teachers on students’ achievement (Broph, 1986; Darling-

Hammond, 1999; Rice, 2003). Moreover, according to the article, low wages are

no longer an issue in the Malaysian context as teachers are now better paid with

high allowances. Measuring teacher quality has become very complex as it

involves teaching preparation and confidence, experience and knowledge,

pedagogical skills, positive attitude, as well as organized and managed

classroom skills.

The Malaysian Ministry of Education (MOE) has always emphasized

recruiting smart candidates to be enrolled in the teaching profession. Actions

have been taken to ensure that the right candidates will be short listed to fill

these vacancies in schools. As the policies keep changing and becoming

uncertain at times, it is important that teachers make fast and good decisions in

their teaching instructions. Teaching can be seen as a profession to include the

technical knowledge which encompasses professional judgment that requires

strong knowledge base or cognitive ability. Cognitive ability can be defined in

science as In science, cognition is a group of mental processes that includes

attention, memory, producing and understanding language, learning, reasoning,

problem solving, and decision making. As an action for discovering the candidate

who is truly qualified for the teaching profession, an aptitude test known as

MEdsi has been developed and pilot-tested several years for sound validity and

reliability. The MEdsi consists of five components namely:

1. the quantitative (30 questions, 30 minutes);

2. English Language (25 items, 30 minutes);

3. INSAK (psychological test, 135 items, 30 minutes);

4. analytical (20 items, 30 minutes); and

5. verbal components (25 questions, 30 minutes)

This test is quite wide-ranging as it has several cognitive components

(quantitative, English Language, analytical and verbal components). Therefore, it

is proven that the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Higher Education in

Malaysia give priority to the teachers’ cognitive abilities as part of the teacher-

trainee yearly intake requirements. Conclusively, findings from the studies

researched by the article indicated that teachers’ cognitive abilities have a causal

relationship with classroom management and students’ academic performance.

Besides cognitive ability, the personalities of the teachers are also

important in the potential of teachers. By research from the article, according to

Polk (2006), highly effective teachers display certain personality traits which

affect instructional and student achievement. From all of the research referred by

the article, however, the article summarized that teacher personality is not the

same as any other job related areas. It requires religious values, moral and

teaching ethics which are bound by the mission and vision of the education

philosophy. In addition, the article also summarized in personality wise, the

findings from the referred researches suggested that certain effective and quality

teachers display certain personality traits such as conscientiousness, emotional

stability, openness to experience, extraverted, approachable, enthusiastic,

outgoing, sense of humor, thinker, supportiveness, warm, kind, friendly, just,

cheerful, communicative, able to relate to uninterested students and tolerate

usage of mother-tongue.

Besides that, the effectiveness of teaching also comes from the classroom

management. Teachers must be able to know how to manage the classroom so

the students can adapt their studies in a good environment. From the sample

research used in this article, it stated that the combination of constructivist-based

modifications to the instructional delivery plus the utilization of the tablet PCs

within the InkSurvey Tool environment have made it possible and effective in

creating a learner-centered, knowledge-centered community of inquiry where

students are actively engaged in pursuing knowledge. Halawah (2011) who

examined factors that motivate college students to learn from their perspective

found that the teachers’ personalities, teaching methodologies and positive

classroom management are the main factors that motivate students to learn.

To measure how effective is the teacher’s effectiveness in teaching their

students, studies have suggested that commitment and responsibilities are

important in every teachers teaching skills to their classroom and students. A lot

of studies have been made and a lot are being used and mentioned in this

article. The studies are made to show that the quality or effective classroom

management and teaching effectiveness depend on the commitment and

responsibilities. In a survey of Sturman (2002) point out that secondary teachers

are more responsible and involved rather than primary teachers. Furthermore, it

also indicates that the teachers’ quality of working life as well as their working

hours are influenced the teachers’ roles and responsibilities.

The hypotheses of this study are as follows:

H1: cognitive ability significantly correlates with personality

H2: cognitive ability significantly influences classroom management

H3: cognitive ability significantly influences commitment and

Responsibilities

H4: personality significantly influences classroom management

H5: personality significantly influences commitment and responsibilities

The study in this article is to know how effective, what is the quality and

how good is the performance of the experienced teachers in Malaysia. They

have made a research by creating questionnaires to a group of teachers as

samples for their research and findings. This study comes with a set of

questionnaires with 120 questions which then being distributed among 2,000

school teachers from different types of secondary schools in Malaysia. This study

is effective as it includes research among teachers both teaching in urban areas

as well as in rural areas. From the distribution of the questionnaires, 1,366

questionnaires were returned, completed and then analyzed. The rest of the

questionnaires were rejected due to incomplete data. A five-point Likert scale

(1=strongly disagree to 5=strongly agree) was used in this study. In addition, the

demographic information such as gender, age, years of teaching experience and

so on were also included.

This study is mainly focus on the examination of the effect of teacher

qualities such as personality, cognitive ability, performance in classroom

management, commitment and responsibilities. This study was based on the

proposed model of teacher effectiveness by investigating teachers’ self

assessment of their own qualities as teachers and their performance as the

outcome. The questionnaires consists of two (2) dimensions which are:

1. independent variable: personality and cognitive abilities (such as IT

skills, co-curricular skills, assessment skills and subject knowledge)

2. dependent variables of teacher performance such as classroom

management, commitment and responsibility.

From the compiled results of the gathered questionnaires, this study has

experimentally shown that teacher quality influences their performance in

schools. Teacher quality was measured by teacher’s cognitive ability which are

skills of assessment and evaluation, IT skills, and co-curricular knowledge. The

quality also measured by the teacher’s personality or interpersonal skills. Not to

forget teacher classroom management, commitment and responsibilities. Since

majority of the teachers involved in this study were those with more than 5 years

experience, the results have confirmed that cognitive abilities among the

experience teachers can be measured through the teachers’ skills in

assessment, IT and co-curricular.

Teacher personalities were explained by their attitudes towards teaching

and the teaching profession, passion to help young individuals undergo growth

and development, commitment towards professional ethics and discipline, and

understanding of personal relevance and meaning of education to individuals.

However, teacher personalities also need to be associated with their cognitive

ability in order to render commitment and show responsibility to their studies.

CONCLUSION

It is undeniable that teachers play important role in educating their

students, the young generations of the world. That is why the effectiveness of

teaching must be continuously measured to ensure that the students (young

generations) get their best educations in order to achieve a higher level of life in

their near future. The studies made like this study is a good approach in bringing

the education standard in Malaysia to a higher level, able to compete with other

rapid developing countries.

REFERENCES

Abd Hamid, S. R., Syed Hassan, S. S., & Ismail, N. H. (2012). Teaching Quality

and Performance Among Experienced Teachers in Malaysia. Australian Journal

of Teacher Education, 37(11).

Abdullah Mohd Noor. (1986). Cabaran-cabaran profesion perguruan masa kini.

Seminar Mengenai Akta dan Dasar Pelajaran Kebangsaan.

Hewit, J. S. & Whittier, K. S. (1997). Teaching methods for todayÊs schools:

Collaborative and inclusion. Boston: Allyn Bacon.

Kementerian Pelajaran Malaysia. (1993). Falsafah Pendidikan Negara [Versi

Elektronik]. Retrieved from

http://www.moe.gov.my/tayang.php?laman=falsafah&bhs=my

Kementerian Pelajaran Malaysia (KPM) (2008). Pelan Induk Pembangunan

Pendidikan [Versi Elektronik]. Retrieved from

www.moe.gov.my/tayang.php?laman=pipp&unit=kementerian&bhs=my