Nurturing scholarly teachers a challenge
MALAYSIA needs more scholarly teachers, those who are not just lifelong learners, but also practise scholarly teaching, making decisions based on experience and discussions with colleagues, besides linking scientific literature and public theories to their work.
But how does Malaysia produce and identify scholarly teachers?
Since 1994, Malaysia has been assessing teachers by way of the Expert Teacher Scheme, now known as the Excellent Teacher Scheme.
The Education Ministry's website shows that the country has 14,327 excellent teacher posts with 13,300 appointed.
We know that among the criteria to obtain the status is to conduct research and disseminate findings to the public.
Is it high time to set research competency as the main criterion for those who want to join the teaching workforce?
The 2018 OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey said 76 per cent of primary school teachers reported that teaching was their first choice, while 66 per cent of secondary school teachers chose theirs as a first career choice.
The statistics are important if our educational system wants to retain a quality teaching workforce marked by intellectually-capable teachers, through revised selection criteria during job interviews and suitable training programmes for pre-service and in-service teachers.
This aligns with the ministry's aspiration to make the teaching profession a first career choice among high-calibre students and parents.
The professional learning community (PLC) is an initiative that may modify teachers' intellectuality.
PLC programmes are a wheel of hope for schools and academic faculties to collaborate in a smart partnership, sharing expertise in practice and theories of doing research.
These include doing critical self-reflection, linking and analysing practice with theories or models, and synthesising theories out of their own practice.
But PLC's return on investment remains a question.
It is postulated that in neglecting such scholarly activities, teaching becomes routine and a dull job.
Does this lead teachers' early retirement?
From our observation as supervisors and visiting lecturers to some schools during collaborative projects, there is a feeling of a comfort zone in some schools.
This has led some teachers to be not worried or bothered to understand the concepts of "cybergogy", "peeragogy" and "heutagogy" as alternatives to current pedagogical approaches.
At the same time, with more teachers complaining about a heavy workload and burnout, leading to early retirement, we sense that teachers' eagerness to work is subsiding.
It is critical to create a sense of joy among teachers to accept the challenges of the job.
To realise the notion of scholarly teachers, they should be trained to welcome challenges that come in new theories, models and research findings, which will keep their intellectual neurons alive.
Teachers should be encouraged to conduct research on their pedagogical problems, which will then encourage them to read academic materials.
This will also stimulate dialogue with colleagues to improve their own practices, detecting strengths and weaknesses, and identifying room for improvement.
We believe that if this culture is operational, it could help teachers become more intellectual and more scholarly in solving educational problems.
A review of studies of Malaysian teachers undertaking scholarly activities, such as researching their classroom practices, popularly known as action research, has revealed limited evidence of their intellectual capabilities.
In particular, action research activities, a mandated research initiative by the Education Ministry for teachers to be promoted as excellent teachers, also documented a rather less critical text written by teachers, which denotes a need to start thinking how this pool of teachers could be role models in the lifelong-learning agenda.
A study by Universiti Utara Malaysia researchers is underway to analyse and determine the composites that could drive teacher-scholar characteristics and quality.
Another small-scale study on how teachers who enrolled in postgraduate programmes conduct their literature review is also underway.
The latter study aims to look at the challenges that these teacher learners face while conducting research as part of the requirement of their studies.
A high attrition rate among teacher learners would raise the question on whether the incapability to think like a scholar might be a factor.
It is hoped that the findings will provide insights into how to help more teachers graduate with flying colours and use these capabilities to encourage their students' growth.
The writers are lecturers from the School of Education, College of Arts and Sciences, Universiti Utara Malaysia
