T. Subahan Mohd Meerah; Lilia Halim; Saemah Rahman; Roslina Tan Abdullah; Halimah Harun; Arbaat Hassan; Abang Ismail
Description:
This paper reports on a professional development initiative with Malaysian primary school science teachers throughcollaborative action research aimed at enhancing their teaching in order to improve marginalized children’s learning. Theirperformance of such children, both in the external as well as in the school-based assessment, is weak, especially in subjects likeScience and Mathematics and eventually results in their dropping out at the primary level. The first phase of the study, basedon a series of observations, focuses on group discussions with teachers and consecutive school visits, and has identified that theteachers face difficulties in teaching Science and Mathematics. The findings show that teachers tend to use similar teachingapproaches as those which are being used in urban schools, which are more teacher-centred in nature. Furthermore, manyteachers do not possess sound pedagogical skills in terms of teaching Science and Mathematics and have the ability to employalternative approaches suitable for marginalized children in their context. To overcome this situation, the second phase of thisstudy involved developing modules by the teachers and researchers collaboratively as a means of providing alternative ways ofteaching science. Additionally, teachers become used to the concept of action research. Findings show that teachers perceivethe modules to be very useful and beneficial to them. Moreover, the students demonstrated increase interest and activeinvolvement in the learning activities.