Malaysian Teachers’ Perspective on the Implementation of STEM in Education Institution
Over the years, much research has been done in assessing the teachers’ view on STEM implementation in the education system. This is because they play an important role in the increase as well as the decreasing interest of students towards STEM education. These are some of the perspectives of Malaysian teachers towards STEM gathered from local research!
1. The actual teaching practise did not align with what they believed.
Physic teaching is one of the teaching practice that shows many features of integrated STEM teaching. When a study was done to assess physics teachers’ teaching practice (Bunyamin, Abdul Talib, Ahmad, Ibrahim, & Surif, 2020), they were still using teacher-centred pedagogy, countered with their thought of having a relatively accurate concept of STEM- which supposed to be students-centred pedagogy. Even though they were group discussion and group-based lab work, teachers still had a large control during the whole processes.
2. Split views on STEM implementation among teachers.
In assessing the teachers’ readiness in implementing STEM from the effectiveness aspect (Abdullah, Raja Hussin, Abd Rahman, Hamzah, Abdul Kohar, Junaidi,2017), some teachers felt the burden with the element of having to relate their teaching with the real-world context while some accepting this educational reform positively, seeing this as a door towards more fun and effective learning. These two different views were due to teachers having different skills, background, knowledge and psychology.
3. Teachers needed time to strengthen their skills in applying STEM knowledge in their teaching practice.
For the cognitive aspect in assessing the teachers’ readiness in implementing STEM(Abdullah, Raja Hussin, Abd Rahman, Hamzah, Abdul Kohar, Junaidi,2017), despite having exposed to the basic knowledge of STEM, their skills on implementing them still leave a lot of room for improvement. They needed time to get themselves accustomed to the STEM education curriculum along with sufficient time to search for ideas or to do reflections before implementing them into their teaching practice. Most importantly, training on this should also be given to the teachers.
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