MOLLY N. N.

LEE

MALAYSIAN TEACHER EDUCATION INTO THE

NEW CENTURY

School of Educational Studies, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Malaysia

1. INTRODUCTION

As in most centralized systems, the pattern of teacher education in Malaysia is

closely related to the development of the national education system, which in turn is
strongly influenced by the socio-economic and political changes of the country. The
recruitment of trainee teachers, the length of training, and the content and methods
of training tend to vary with the changing needs of the school system. In the early
years of independence, when the school system underwent fast expansion during the
1960s and 1970s, there was an urgent need to recruit enough teachers to staff the
newly built classrooms. To ease the acute shortage of teachers in primary schools,
many untrained teachers with academic qualifications as low as Form 3 (which is
equivalent to nine years of general education) were recruited and given part-time
training during the weekends and school holidays in training colleges and regional
training centers. To staff the secondary schools, many graduate teachers were
imported from the United Kingdom and India. During those years, the number of
teacher training colleges in the country was very limited: up to 1976, there were only
three teacher colleges and ten training centers for the training of primary school
teachers, and five other colleges for training secondary school teachers (Wong &
Chang, 1975).
After the initial quantitative expansion of schools to cater for all school-going
age children, more attention were given to the quality of education which largely
depends on the professionalism and commitment of the teachers. As from 1967, all
trainee teachers must have the minimum academic qualification of a School
Certificate, which is equivalent to an O-level obtained after 11 years of general
education. The Ministry of Education also took step to restructure the teacher-
training program by integrating the primary and secondary teacher colleges into one
common institution providing a common core curriculum with electives to enable
trainees to specialize in either primary or secondary teaching (Wong, 1977). The
1980s also witnessed an increase in the number of teacher training colleges. At the
same time, more public universities were established and, in each of these
universities, there is a faculty/school of education, which takes on the
responsibilities of training graduate teachers for secondary schools.

81
Cheng, Y. C., Chow, K. W., and Mok, M. C. Magdalena (eds.), Reform of Teacher Education
in Asia-Pacific in the New Millennium: Trends and Challenges, 81—91.
© 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
82 MOLLY N. N. LEE

The goals of teacher education have changed over the years according to the
pressing needs of the education system. Consequently, different types of teacher-
education programs have been developed to cater for the following priorities at
different points in time:
a) to ensure that enough teachers of the various level needed by the schools are
recruited and trained;
b) to raise the quality of teachers;
c) to train enough teachers in specialized subjects like English, science, and
mathematics;
d) to provide sufficient trained teachers for vocational and technical schools;
e) to provide in-service training for upgrading, as well as the professional
development of, practicing teachers; and
f) to provide professional training for all kinds of practitioners in the education
system, including school counselors, school principals, teacher educators,
curriculum developers, and others.
The aim of this chapter is to give an overview of the pattern of teacher education
in Malaysia, highlighting some of the current problems and challenges relating to
this area of educational development. The overview is followed by a discussion on
recent teacher education reforms in terms of selection and recruitment, length of
training, content and methods of training. The analysis on the approaches to teacher
education shows that there is a shift from the technical-rational approach to a
reflective practitioner approach.

2. OVERVIEW OF TEACHER EDUCATION

Malaysian teacher education for pre-service teachers takes place at two levels,
with the training of non-graduate teachers in the teacher training colleges and the
training of graduate teachers in the universities (Lee, 1996). There are 27 teacher
training colleges preparing teachers for both the primary and lower secondary
schools. The admission requirement to these training colleges was an equivalent O-
level (that is, a Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia obtained after five years of secondary
education), but now it is slowly being raised to an equivalent of A-level (that is, a
Sijil Pelajaran Tinggi Malaysia after seven years of secondary education). Since
1996, the training period has been lengthened from two and a half years to three
years, leading to a Diploma in Teaching instead of a Certificate of Teaching. The
total student enrolment in these 27 colleges was 17,766 in 2001 (Ministry of
Education, 2001). All the colleges follow a common curriculum, which adopts a
generalist approach for primary school teachers and subject specialization for
teachers at the lower secondary level (Ministry of Education, 1991). As Abdul Rafie
(1999) reported, there are six components in the teacher-training curriculum as
follows.
a) Teacher Dynamics - language skills, thinking skills, Islamic education/Moral
education, Islamic civilization, and environmental education.
b) Knowledge and Professional Competence - education in Malaysia, psychology,
pedagogy, and guidance and counseling.
 MALAYSIAN TEACHER EDUCATION INTO THE NEW CENTURY 83

c) Knowledge in Subject Option and Specialization - major subject, minor subject,

and electives.
d) Self-enrichment - art education and physical and health education/games.
e) Co-curricular activities - management of co-curricular activities, games,
athletics, uniformed units, and societies.
f) Practicum.
In sum, these initial teacher education programs are geared towards the
professional, academic, and personal development of the students.
Graduate teachers for the secondary schools are mostly trained in the public
universities, which offer basically two types of initial training programs. One is the
consecutive program where students are required to take a one-year post-graduate
diploma in education after obtaining their first degree. This “add-on” teacher
education program has both its advantages and disadvantages. This type of programs
allows for quick responses to the changing demands of the labor market for teachers.
Students who opt for the Diploma of Education program do not have to make their
career choice until they have completed their undergraduate education. However, the
down side of this program is that it is very difficult to attract high caliber candidates,
especially during economic boom times when job openings in other fields are
plentiful. Partly to overcome this problem, universities have innovated the
concurrent program, which takes in student for teacher education at the beginning of
their undergraduate study. The idea is to catch them young, for many students would
not mind choosing a teacher education program just so that they can get admitted
into a university. This is especially the case in Malaysian universities where
competition for admission to other fields is very stiff. In the concurrent program, the
students do their teacher training, while at the same time they do their academic
studies and, on completion of the program, they obtain a Bachelor of Science
(Education) [B.Sc. (Ed.)] or Bachelor of Arts (Education) [B.A. (Ed.)] degree. In
addition to these two types of programs, the public universities also offer Bachelor
of Education (B.Ed.) programs, some of which are upgrading programs for college
trained teachers and others are specialized training in areas like early childhood
education, physical education, and special education.
In-service training programs generally come in two forms: one form is
mandatory, offered by the Ministry of Education and in line with particular
curriculum reforms. For example, when both the New Primary School Curriculum
and the Integrated Secondary School Curriculum was introduced in 1983 and 1989
respectively, massive in-service training were carried out for practicing teachers so
that they would be familiar with the rationale, content, and teaching methods of the
new curricula. Usually, the “cascading approach” is used so that information can be
disseminated to all schools and teachers at the quickest possible time. The other kind
of in-service training is through the teachers’ own initiatives in undertaking various
kinds of upgrading courses so as to further their own careers. Non-graduate teachers
can register themselves in various B.Ed. programs offered by many of the public
universities as well as the “twinning programs” co-jointly offered by teacher training
colleges and universities (Abdul Rafie, 1999). Post-graduate programs leading to
Master degrees or Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degrees have become very popular
among graduate teachers. To meet this increasing demand, many of the local
84 MOLLY N. N. LEE

universities have begun to offer “off-shore” programs, which are usually part-time,
in order to make these programs more accessible to practicing teachers who cannot
leave their schools to study full-time.

3. PROBLEMS AND CHALLENGES

One of the basic problems prevailing in Malaysia is that the teaching profession
does not attract the most talented young people. This is particularly so when it
comes to attracting male teachers. The ratio of male to female trainees in the teacher
training colleges in Penang in 1995 is as low as 1:4 (Lee, 1995). Teaching is not
very attractive, partly because of its low social status and partly because a teacher’s
job is very complex and demanding. Therefore, it is imperative that better pay
incentives be provided to attract talented young people to the teaching profession,
the quality of teacher training be improved by paying attention not only to the
intellectual qualifications of future teachers but also the characteristics of their
personalities, and the working conditions for teachers be improved to include a
better career structure with more promotion and professional development
opportunities. The Ministry of Education has initiated several reforms towards this
direction by increasing the basic monthly salary for college-trained teachers from
RM582 to RM900 (from US$153 to US$236) in 1996, by lengthening the teacher
training program from two and a half years to three years, by introducing Heads of
Subject Departments and Master Teachers in the teaching career structure, and by
offering scholarships to teachers to further their studies.
Besides facing difficulties in attracting high caliber candidates, the teaching
profession is also experiencing a high rate of turnover. Many trained teachers would
not hesitate to quit their jobs when a more prestigious and lucrative job comes along.
While there is a seemingly shortage of teachers, the real problem is one of uneven
distribution. An unresolved problem is the shortage of qualified teachers in the rural
areas. To tackle this problem, the Ministry of Education has introduced financial
incentives like regional and housing allowances as well as building more teacher
quarters to encourage teachers to serve in remote areas.
To improve the quality of the teaching, the Ministry of Education aims to have a
100 percent graduate teaching force in all the secondary schools by 2005 and 50
percent graduates in primary schools by 2010. It was reported in 2003 that only
78,804 out of 288,541 teachers in Malaysia were graduates (“School heads”, 2003).
To meet this challenge, the Ministry of Education has taken a drastic step by
reducing the length of undergraduate study leading to a first degree from four years
to three years in all the public universities in 1996. Indirectly, this reform has greatly
affected the proficiency of teachers in their subject areas in disciplines like English,
mathematics, and science. It is quite common to come across teachers who make
grammatical mistakes and wrong pronunciations in their English lessons, teachers
who do not know how to solve mathematical problems in their classes, and science
teachers who themselves do not understand the scientific concepts that they are
supposed to teach their students. A mere increase in the number years of teacher
 MALAYSIAN TEACHER EDUCATION INTO THE NEW CENTURY 85

training does not necessary result in an increase in the quality of training for the
profession. The challenge is on the content and methods of training.
The most significant problem lies in the important gulf between training and the
actual demands of carrying out the teaching job in an efficient and innovative
manner. Teacher training programs are usually remote from the actual problems
encountered in the teaching of socially disadvantaged pupils, such as multi-level or
multi-cultural classes, teaching in rural areas, teaching new immigrant children, and
mixed ability classes. A recent study on the teaching and learning conditions in a
rural district in Sarawak shows that most of the teachers have passed the survival
state of their craft, but they have not moved beyond it (Mohd. Daud, et. al., 2000).
They are able to control their classes, have a good rapport with their students, and
can present their lessons systematically. These teaching competencies are very much
related to what have been emphasized in their initial training programs, but these
survival skills are not enough to make an effective and competent teacher. What
most of these teachers lack are their abilities to ensure that their students can follow
and understand their lessons. They are not able to cater for the different abilities of
their students. They tend to teach the class as a whole and, as a result, the weak
students are neglected and the good students are not mentally challenged or
stimulated. Many of the teachers are weak in diagnostic and assessment skills. They
are not able to identify the weaknesses among their students; they do not know how
to correct their students’ mistakes and give them immediate feedback. In short, the
teachers do not know how to cater to the diverse needs of their students. Now that
the school is no longer reserved for a limited number of privileged children, the
challenge for the teachers is to learn how to pay attention to a school population
which is very varied intellectually, culturally, and socially.
In many teacher education programs, the practicum is an essential and important
component, which attempts to link theory and practice of teaching. The challenge
faced by teacher educators is to design, develop, and implement a practicum that is
effective and meaningful to the trainee teachers. During the practicum, the trainee
teachers are usually placed in schools for a period of time to do their teaching
practice. Because of the shortening of the first-degree program in all the public
universities, the length of teaching practice has also been shortened thus affecting
the amount of time that the trainees can practice their craft under close supervision.
Furthermore, the number of trainees has increased tremendously over the past
decade making it quite impossible for the college or university lecturers to observe
their students teaching their own subject areas. More often than not, the trainees are
not supervised by their subject specialists. In an attempt to overcome this problem,
many teacher-training institutions recruit the help of practicing teachers to act as co-
operative teachers in supervising the trainee teachers during their teaching practice.
However, this approach has not been very successful, because practicing teachers
are reluctant to take on this additional responsibility especially if they are not given
any incentives and, very often, the co-operative teachers do not know how to
provide effective supervision and guidance to the trainees under their care.
Therefore, it is very essential that co-operative teachers be well prepared for their
role before they are given the job. To move beyond the practicum, maybe it is timely
86 MOLLY N. N. LEE

for teacher educators and policy makers in Malaysia to review their approaches to
teacher education.
It is interesting to note that many of the ideas, theories and approaches to teacher
education in Malaysia have been greatly influenced by global trends in the field. A
brief review of the literature on teacher education shows that there has been a shift
from the technical-rational model to the reflective practitioner model (Lee, 2002a).
The technical-rational model is a behavioral approach to teacher education that
places great emphasis on the acquisition of teaching skills and competencies in order
to become an effective teacher. On the other hand, the reflective practitioner model
is a constructivist approach to teacher education that assumes that students cannot be
told how to become an effective teacher. Instead of being told by “experts”, they
have to build or construct their own knowledge base and their own professional
skills.
In Malaysia, most of the teacher education programs are based on the technical-
rational model and a major part of the training is focused on the acquisition of
generic teaching skills such as preparing lesson plans, classroom management skills,
questioning techniques and methods of assessment. As for the teaching method
courses, much of the content is based on the findings of process-product research on
teacher effectiveness that identifies significant relationships between student gain
(product) and teacher performance (process) (Fenstermacher, 1978). The emphasis is
on the acquisition of general pedagogical skills such as drills, practices, praises,
time-on-task, response time for questions and competence in subject matter.
However, this competency-based approach to the teaching method courses has been
heavily criticized for trivializing the teaching process. Instead of generic skills,
Shulman (1987) advocates the development of a “content pedagogical knowledge”
that aims at blending content and pedagogy into an understanding on how particular
topics, problems, or issues are organized, represented, and adapted to the diverse
interests and abilities of the learners. Currently, there are attempts to adopt
Shulman’s ideas into some of the teacher education programs in Malaysia but so far
these attempts have not been very successful as indicated in the next section.

4. RECENT REFORMS

To overcome some of these problems and challenges, the Ministry of Education

has initiated in recent years several important reforms pertaining to teacher
education. A major reform introduced in 1996 is the upgrading of the Malaysian
Certificate of Teaching to that of Diploma level with the aims of giving greater
recognition to college-trained teachers and to improve their teaching effectiveness.
There are a number of aspects related to this reform. First and foremost, the starting
salary of a college-trained teacher has been increased so as to attract high caliber
people to the teaching profession. To ensure that capable people with the right
aptitude are recruited, the Ministry of Education introduced a set of stringent
procedures to select candidates for the teacher training colleges. These procedures
comprise of a two-tier interview and a qualifying test which is an aptitude test
(Abdul Rafie, 1999). In addition to the minimum academic qualifications,
 MALAYSIAN TEACHER EDUCATION INTO THE NEW CENTURY 87

candidates must fulfill such other criteria as having good communication skills, a
healthy and constructive attitude towards teaching, and the like.
Once selected, the successful candidate undergoes a three-year training program
instead of two and a half year. The lengthening of the teacher education program is
aimed at upgrading the trainee teachers’ knowledge in the school subjects that they
are going to teach, at developing their personalities, and at increasing their cultural
sensitivities while teaching in a multicultural environment. An analysis of the
Malaysian Diploma in Teaching curriculum shows that 50 percent of the training
time (62 credits out of a total of 124 credits) is devoted to learning the subject matter
of the subject options and specialization (Abdul Rafie, 1999). Other than the formal
curriculum, trainee teachers are also expected to develop their character and
personality through co-curricular activities, which emphasize discipline, orderliness,
responsibility, and accountability, as well as good citizenship and cultural sensitivity
and tolerance (Ministry of Education, 1992). In a multicultural society, it is
paramount that Malaysian teachers should “know something of the religious
customs, culture and traditions of the various peoples in the country” (Ministry of
Education, 1991, p. 73). Therefore, trainee teachers in the training colleges are
required to take such core subjects as Islamic Religious Knowledge (for Muslim
students only), Moral Education (for non-Muslim students), and Islamic
Civilization, all of which are designed to sensitize them to the socio-cultural context
of the Malaysian society. Malaysian teachers should be sensitive to the religious and
cultural susceptibilities of all Malaysians and should help break down prejudices and
ignorance among their pupils and foster an understanding and acceptance of
different religious and cultural practices (Lee, 1996).
As mentioned in the above section, the shortening of the undergraduate teacher
education programs in the universities from four years to three years has affected the
quality of the graduate teachers especially in their knowledge of the subject matter.
Therefore, starting from 2001, the length of the undergraduate teacher education
program has been reverted back to four years. To improve the quality of teacher
education, there is a move to incorporate new techniques like clinical supervision
and reflective practice in the teaching practicum. During teaching practice,
supervisors are required to adopt the sequence of “pre-conference, observation, post-
observation analysis, and post-conference critique”, a sequence recommended by
advocates of clinical supervision (e.g., Acheson & Gall, 1987; Goldhammer,
Anderson, & Krajewski, 1980). Furthermore, teacher educators have attempted to
encourage trainee teachers to reflect on their teaching experiences through the use of
method courses (Goodman, 1991), the use of classroom cases (Laboskey & Wilson,
1987), the use of action research (Kemmis, 1985), the use of journal writing (Holly,
1984), and the use of supervisory conferences (MacKinnon & Erickson, 1988).
However, many of these innovative ideas were poorly implemented in many of the
teacher education programs in Malaysia, partly because not all teacher educators
have fully understood or shared the underlying values and beliefs of these ideas.
A recent study by Lee (2002b) on the understandings of reflection held by
teacher educators, co-operating teachers and trainee teachers in a teacher training
college in Malaysia shows that there is a lack of conceptual clarity on the meaning
of reflective practice in the Practicum Model that has been adopted for use in the
88 MOLLY N. N. LEE

college. As a result, meanings of reflection that were developed and used by

supervisors and trainee teachers were “layman views of reflective practice” (p. 210).
These layman views of reflective practice were limited to the trainee teachers’ focus
on technical concerns in their classroom teaching. This over-emphasis on teaching
problems and issues prevented trainee teachers from deliberating on other aspects of
teaching with their supervisors.
As for in-service teacher education programs, many new initiatives have taken
place over the past decade. Each time when a new subject is introduced into the
school curriculum, in-service training is given to teachers who are involved in
teaching this new subject. To prepare students for the information age, the Ministry
of Education launched the Smart School project in 1997 (Lee, 1998). Under this
project, 85 smart schools were set up in 1999, and all schools would be converted
into smart schools by the year 2010. The concept of the smart school is one where
learning is being enhanced by the use of extensive multimedia technology. The
smart schools would continue to use the existing school curriculum but multimedia
technology would be used to enhance the quality of teaching and learning. The
Ministry has since taken steps to develop courseware for four subjects, namely,
science, mathematics, Bahasa Malaysia, and English. A more recent curriculum
reform is the implementation of the use of the English language to teach
mathematics and science in all nation schools starting in 2003. A massive round of
in-service training has started in 2002 for all the mathematics and science teachers to
re-orientate them to teach in English instead of in Bahasa Malaysia. Each of these
teachers has been provided with a notebook and a LCD projector to help them to
teach these subjects and so they have to be trained to use these educational
technologies. A total sum of RM5 billion for a period of seven years (2002 to 2008)
has been allocated by the Ministry of Education to train teachers and equip schools
with the necessary infrastructure to teach science and mathematics in English (“Big
slice”, 2002).
To meet the increasing demands of practicing teachers who wish to upgrade
themselves, many teacher-training institutions have begun to offer innovative
programs to suit their diverse needs. One of such programs is a three-year twinning
program between a teacher training college and a local university, of which was
launched in 1997 to upgrade non-graduate teachers to that of graduate teachers. In
this program, the non-graduate teacher is required to undergo the first year of study
in a designated teacher training college, and then proceed to another two years of
study in an affiliated local university, specializing in secondary school subjects. On
successful completion of the program, they are awarded the B.Ed. A total of 14
teacher training colleges and 7 local universities are currently involved in the
running of this program (Abdul Rafie, 1999).
Another kind of twinning program is between a teacher training college and a
foreign university. From 1993-1996, several programs were organized for teacher
educators to undertake post-graduate study overseas. An example of such a program
is the “Malaysian Trainer Development Program” which was initiated and
implemented specifically for upgrading the teaching and learning of the English
language. Under this program, teachers, teacher educators who were Master degree
holders in English Language Teaching were sent to undertake the “Training of the
 MALAYSIAN TEACHER EDUCATION INTO THE NEW CENTURY 89

Trainer” programs in universities in the United Kingdom to become “Master

Trainers.” It was projected that by the end of 1999, the program would have
produced a total of 80 “Master Trainers” (Abdul Rafie, 1999).
At the local scene, the demand for post-graduate study by practicing teachers has
resulted in a few newly developed teacher education programs. An extremely
popular program is the Master of Education (M.Ed.) by course work, which is a one-
year full-time or two-year part-time program. The program offered by USM consists
of 32 units of course work (from 8 courses) and another 8 units from a research
project (a mini dissertation). This program was introduced in 1995 and since then
several hundreds of Master degree holders have been produced. In the year 2000,
USM launched the Doctorate of Education (Ed.D.) program which is a doctoral
program by course work and the response has been very encouraging.
Besides providing in-service training to primary and secondary school teachers,
there are other programs which provide in-service training to other practitioners like
pre-school teachers, school counselors, and school administrators. With the
increasing importance of early childhood education and the proliferation of
kindergartens throughout the country, more and more opportunities are available for
pre-school teachers to obtain some kind of formal training at various government
agencies, such as the Ministry of Rural Development, Ministry of National Unity
and Community Development, Social Welfare Department, and Islamic Religious
Department (Lee, 1997). Starting from 1996, full-time school counselors were
appointed in every secondary school but, unfortunately, many of them do not have
any formal training and therefore there is an urgent need to provide them with
professional training, and much of these responsibilities fall onto the shoulders of
teacher training colleges and public universities. In the case of school administrators,
the Ministry of Education has established the Institute of Aminuddin Baki (IAB) to
provide all kinds of training programs for educational administrators, ranging from
one week courses to a full blown Master’s degree course on educational
management. One of the latest innovations from IAB is the one-year advanced
diploma program for aspiring school heads. Stringent requirements have been
introduced for the selection of future school heads, and these include intelligence
and emotional quotient and physical and computer proficiency tests for teachers
before they are selected for this program (“Smart principals”, 1999). After being
selected, the candidates have to undergo a six-month theory course and another six
months of practical attachment in a school for them to obtain some hands-on
experience in school management.
Another significant development is the changing role of the various institutions
that are responsible for teacher education. In recent years, a number of teacher
training colleges have begun to offer programs for the training of graduate teachers.
This change has come about partly because an increasing number of college
lecturers have pursued post-graduate studies and they are now in a position to take
over some of the roles and responsibilities which were previously under the
jurisdiction of the universities. In fact, starting from 2001, all faculties of education
have stopped offering the Diploma of Education program. In line with this recent
development, teacher educators in the universities are devoting more time, energy,
and resources in offering post-graduate programs - like M.Ed., Ed.D., and Ph.D. - as
90 MOLLY N. N. LEE

well as carrying out educational research. In an attempt to consolidate resources, the

Ministry of Education has upgraded in 1997 a teacher training college to a university
- that is, the Universiti Perguruan Sultan Idris (UPSI) - and closed down three other
teacher-training colleges.

5. TRENDS AND PROSPECTS

The main challenge now is to develop programs to suit the specific needs of
different practitioners in the Malaysian educational system. In developing these
programs, teacher educators have to grapple with important questions: How to form
a closer link between general education and professional education? How to reduce
the gap between training and actual demand of the job? How to integrate theory and
practice? What to draw from the various disciplines to form a knowledge base for
sound practices? The content and methods of training will continue to be at the heart
of concerns amongst teacher educators as they strive to improve the quality of
teacher education in Malaysia.
To enhance the quality of teacher education, there should be continual research
on the governance, curriculum, and processes of teacher education, as well as the
evaluation of existing teacher education programs. The perspectives of teacher
education should be broadened to include other practitioners in the educational
system and to take into account the widening role of the schoolteachers. There
should be more collaborative research between universities, teacher colleges, and
schools. Educational practitioners should be encouraged to carry out action research
so as to broaden the knowledge base for their practices.
The historical development of teacher education in Malaysia has resulted in a
dual system of teacher training, involving two main types of teacher training
institutions: one is administered by the Ministry of Education and the other by
universities; the Ministry of Education is responsible for the training of non-graduate
teachers, while the universities are responsible for the training of graduate teachers.
Such an institutional arrangement has both its advantages and disadvantages.
Because the Ministry is directly responsible for teacher training, this makes it easier
to control the demand and supply of teachers to some extent. The weakness lies in
the fact that, unlike other countries, its teacher training colleges are not affiliated to
any university and the award of the Malaysian Diploma of Teaching is not validated
by any professional body or university, but by the Ministry itself. Hence, as far as
non-graduate teachers are concerned, the Ministry of Education not only registers
and employs them, but also validates their awards. This practice is contrary to what
is commonly found in other professions like doctors and engineers where there is a
deliberate effort to make a distinctive separation between the awarding body, the
licensing body, and the employing agency. Therefore, if Malaysia is considering a
move towards the professionalization of teachers and to ensure that certain standards
are maintained at the teacher training colleges, some radical changes will have to be
made in this respect.
 MALAYSIAN TEACHER EDUCATION INTO THE NEW CENTURY 91

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presented at the 1999 APEID International Seminar on Innovation and Reform in Teacher Education
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Acheson, K. A., & Gall, M. D. (1987). Techniques in the clinical supervision of teachers (2nd ed.). New
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Big slice of budget goes to education. (2002, December 29) Sunday Star, Education, p. 16.
Fenstermacher, G. D. (1978). A philosophical consideration of recent research on teacher effectiveness.
Review of Research in Education, 6, 157-185.
Goldhammer, R., Anderson, R. H., & Krajewski, R. J. (1980). Clinical supervision. New York: Holt,
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Goodman, J. (1991). Using a methods course to promote reflection and inquiry among preservice
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education (pp. 56-76). London: Falmer Press.
Holly, M. L. (1984). Keeping a personal-professional journal. Victoria: Deakin University.
Kemmis, S. (1985). Action research and the politics of reflection. In R. Bould, R. Keogh, & D. Walker
(Eds.), Reflection: Turning experience into learning (pp. 139-164). London: Croom Helm.
Laboskey, V. K., & Wilson, S. M. (1987). Case writing as a method in preservice teacher education.
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Lee, M. N. N. (1995). Women in education: Information bank on women (Vol. 1). Penang: Universiti
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Lee, M. N. N. (1996). Unity in diversity: Teacher education, in multicultural Malaysia. In M. Craft (Ed.),
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Lee, M. N. N. (1997). Educational services in Penang: An overview. In P. L. Tan (Ed.), Establishing
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Lee, M. N. N. (1998). Malaysia: Review of educational events in 1997. Asia Pacific Journal of
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Lee, M. N. N. (2002a). Teacher education in Malaysia: Current issues and future prospects. In E. Thomas
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