RESEARCH PROPOSAL By Mohd Nur Fadzly bin Basar

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CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

1.0 Introduction

The degree to how the students think, feel, act and lead their colleagues often developed through

the extra-curricular activities (ECA) programed by their school. The theoretical lessons in the class may

often produce a bundle of knowledgeable students but sometime failed to bring them to the reality of

venomous life. Secondary school, in fact, tend to sponsor a lot of ECA yet only a few known about it

contribution to student’s educational development process.

Student performance at secondary school is the main determinant for enrolment in tertiary

education (Shulruf 2011). We are living in the competitive world where the competition to get enrolled in

the college was at the highest point. In addressing this demand, nowadays, secondary school has lay a lot

of emphasize on the co-curriculum by allocating higher considerable resources for its activities. In the

multicultural nation where the population comes from various background and beliefs, education system

through the clubs, societies and uniform bodies is the fundamental element in uniting the people. In

addition, students who failed to participate in ECA often experienced the communication apprehension in

their daily life since the communication skill are largely taught in the society or club when it is compared

to what has been taught in the classroom. According to Wan Nurul Aini (2012), students whom

apprehensive in communication will face detrimental effect in the long run, and effect normally begins

when they go for job interviews. On top of everything, there is no evidence that can deny the importance

of ECA since students would get a bundle of lessons that impossible to be demonstrate in the classroom.

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In the so-called examination and quantitative-assessments oriented education system like Malaysia,

ECA are managed by the ‘Guru Penolong Kanan Kokurikulum’ or co-curriculum teacher (CT). He or she

in authority to manage and ensure all the administration process of the extra-curricular activities in the

school. The existence of CT in the schools of Malaysian education system proved that the ECA has been

recognized as a vital component of student’s development. However, although CT can be considered as

top management of a school, CT are still weighed down by a lot of academic task. General observation in

secondary school in Malaysia, CT still have to prepare for their class and teaching stuff. As an effect, they

are less focus to his or her ECA jobs and triggered to the less effective ECA which indirectly put all the

students as a victim. Since CT play a major role in ECA, they are supposed not to be hampered by other

responsibilities in order to supervise the quality in co-curriculum implementation of the school.

1.1 Background of the study

The need to counterpart ECA and curricular together in the development process of the students in

secondary school has grown significantly along with the globalization. The more students are engaged in

their schoolwork, the more likely they are to perform well academically (Corso, Bundick, Quaglia and

Haywood, 2013). The time before this, the job recruitments only take CGPA or grade into account while

deciding on the employees. However, as the competition grows along with number of the population, the

communication skill, leadership skill, inter-personal skill and speaking skill are being counted in any job

interviews.

Academic achievement of the students were often measured by the CGPA or grade, conversely,

how the human resources department measure student’s achievement in communication and leadership

skill? Without any doubt they will refer those indicator by looking at student’s co-curricular participation

and their contribution in school or non-school programmes such as community services, competition, sports

and community engagement.

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This study articulate the idea on how importance of having the special person in charge in all ECA

without interfered with other responsibilities like academic and clerical jobs, particularly, CT. The

hypothesis statement of this study is, the more attention the CT can offer to their ECA tasks, the more the

quality of ECA that the school can conduct to their students.

Therefore, the hindrances those possibly interfered the major task of the CT need to be detected

and overcome fast as it may have damaging effects on the student’s personality as well as their

communication and leadership skill.

1.2 Statement of the research problem

By enforcing the students to become member of the club, society and uniform body is the simplest

and easy way to give mark and acknowledgement on their participation in ECA. In certain and definitely

anonymous schools registration as a member of those societies is must, not contributing is another issue

and remained unimportant. This situation occurs because the school emphasize more on the school image

instead of student’s performance. They want to be known as a school where the students involve in many

societies, in fact they are not. In a worse scenario, the school administrator just produce a lot of ECA

certificates to their students, and the students can choose which clubs or activities that they want their name

to be acknowledge in.

1.3 Research Objectives

The research objectives for this study are:

i. To identify the various tasks of the curriculum teacher in typical Malaysia secondary school

specifically in Shah Alam area regardless of its relevancy co-curriculum.

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ii. To determine the problem faced by the co-curriculum teacher in controlling the effectiveness of

extra-curricular activities on the skills development of the students.

iii. To identify the ways to overcome the problem faced by the curriculum teacher in controlling the

effectiveness of extra-curricular activities on the skills development of the students.

1.4 Research Questions

The research questions for this study are:

i. What are the tasks of the co-curriculum teacher in Malaysian normal secondary school in Shah

Alam area?

ii. What are the problems confronted by the co-curriculum teacher while striving for ECA

effectiveness to the students?

iv. How to solve the problem faced by the curriculum teacher in controlling the effectiveness of

extra-curricular activities on the skills development of the students.

1.5 Operational Definitions

The operational terms for this research are:

1.5.1 Extra-curricular activities: ECA is described as “student’s participation in a wide variety of activities,

over and above the core curricular teaching and learning classroom work” (Shulruf, 2011). He further

defined ECA as an integral component of school life. In this study, ECA is defined as any activities or

learning process that are held outside of the classroom in order to for students to learn what they could not

learn in the classroom session.

1.5.2 Co-curriculum teacher: As stated by NCTE (1998) in Quality Concerns in Secondary Teacher

Education, teacher is the most important element in educational programmes who mainly responsible for

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implementation of educational process at any stage. In this study, Co-curriculum teacher is well-defined

as a teacher who mainly responsible for implementation of co-curriculum programmes for the students. CT

is the one who will observe, admins, controls, guides the other teachers on how they are going to implement

the learning process through ECA. However, most of the time CT also has to do many additional jobs those

unrelated to the co-curriculum extent such as academic stuffs, teaching and classroom teacher. This was

happening just because of the lack in academic staffs and there is something not right on the way of top

management admissions and governs the whole system. It is not wrong but it is just not right.

1.5.3 Educational outcomes: According to Shulruf (2011), educational outcomes cover the academic

achievement, retention or school attendance, attitudes towards school, tertiary participation and aspirations

for tertiary education. Educational outcomes cannot be seen only by academic and numerical aspects only.

It must cover the academic aspect without the pass over the life skills and human development aspects

together in how we measure it. The students that possess the educational outcome should be excellent in

academic achievement, communication and leadership skills, their attitude towards the other people, how

they can communicate and make themselves be part of the society and not forgotten their aspirations to

tertiary education.

1.5.4 Academic responsibilities: According to the National Union of Teachers, through their published

journal academic responsibilities cover planning and teaching lessons and sequences of lessons to the

classes they are assigned to teach within the context of the school’s plans, curriculum and scheme of work.

They further defined, assess, monitor, record and report on the learning needs, progress and achievements

of assigned pupils and participate in arrangements for preparing pupils for external examinations. In this

study, we highlight academic responsibilities as any tasks assigned to CT that are not related at all to his

actual responsibility. It may include class lessons, clerical jobs, to prepare an examination question and

etcetera. The other responsibilities those unrelated to ECA may only unmotivated the CT and expectedly

will reduce the quality implementation in ECA.

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1.6 Limitation of the study

The small sample size of this research might result in insupportable findings that cannot be consider

represents all the situations those were happening in Malaysian secondary schools. In addition, to come

out with the trusted solution to the problem statements require a lot of time, effort and expenses, hence any

suggestion on action should be taken might not be necessarily useful and effective. Besides, not all

management of school allows open policies where they can expose all the information about current

problems faced by the CT. Some schools might rather choose to conceal some information, in which, they

think the disclosure would resulted in unprofitable event to the school.

1.7 Significance of the study

Nowadays, the tertiary education institution, private and government sector will not only put academic

qualification as an exclusively measurement in intake or recruitment process. In traditional practice, the

candidates with high CGPA or straight A’s on their certificate were likely to exempt to all job requirements.

But in the modern era, it does not make any senses anymore. The massive advancement in technology have

brought human-being one step forward, results in a lot of people now being exposed to vast information.

The world now has turned into a competitive market, hence, indicator that we called educational outcomes

are now being valued by the human resources department in order to measure student’s employability.

York (2004) defined employability as a set of achievements such as skills, understandings and personal

attributes that make graduates more likely to gain employment and be successful in their chosen occupations

which benefits themselves, the workforce, the community and the economy. What the students learn inside

the classroom is not comprehensive enough to tell them what the world is all about. There are many things

that are not covered through the formal curriculum syllabus, results in some students do not know how to

apply their knowledge in real life. The worst event is there are students that are not interested at all in what

they have been learning. “Participating in certain extracurricular activities having to do with the field that

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the student is interested in could help them find a job. If someone is looking at a resume for a potential

employee, and they see they have experience or interest in what they are looking for, they will be more

likely to hire that person. These students will then have higher career aspirations” (Massoni, 2011).

By knowing that, ECA has a positive relationship to student’s employability, the question of quality

in its implementation need to be revised. Occasionally, the changes in ECA policies sometime challenge

the forbearance of the teacher in charge requires them to cope with more emotional consequences. This

will certainly affect the quality of teaching in the class and the implementation of the ECA (Mohd Fitri,

2006). In order to improve quality of ECA, schools need the special person that will be in charge in all

matters about ECA and will not bothered by other tasks in the school and simultaneously, the ECA stuffs

will not bother the other academic teachers. As a result, both qualities in academic matters and co-

curriculum can be value-added. This study was trying to find if there any significant relationship between

a burden faced by the CT and the quality carried out from ECA that controlled by them. In the school, from

form 1 to form 5, every subject will be instructed by two or more teachers, ironically the matters related to

ECA among all students only been managed by one CT. Are we really serious to adopt ECA as a tool in

developing student’s educational outcomes?

It is hoped that, the findings and results from this study will offer insights and understanding about

this issue and may help the teacher and school management to improve the educational outcomes among

the leaders in the making under their supervision.

1.8 Conclusion

This chapter has covered the background of the study, the statement of the research problem, the

research objectives and questions, the operational definitions and the significance of the study. The

literature review of the issues related will be discussed in the next chapter.