Page 165 - Jurnal Kurikulum BPK 2020

‘Science and Technology’, ‘Personal Competence’, ‘Humanities’, ‘Physical Development and
Aesthetics’, ‘Spirituality, Attitude and Values’ and ‘Communication’.
The DSKP also included the 21st century skills where the focus is on the students’
profiles and higher order thinking skills (HOTS). The HOTS element was introduced to inform
teachers of various methods and activities they could adopt to enable students to discuss and
think of issues critically, as well as to solve problems in creative and innovative ways (Abdul
Halim, Mahani, Noor Dayana, Dayana, Lokman, & Umar Haiyat (2017). Besides, various
teaching and learning strategies, cross-curricular elements which included language,
environment sustainability, values, patriotism and citizenship, creativity and innovation, global
sustainability and financial education are also included in the document.
In addition to this, the inclusion of classroom assessment in the DSKP indicates to the
teachers the effectiveness of the T&L carried out in classrooms. Classroom assessment through
various continuous formative and summative assessment approaches are used to gather
information on the progress of a child in a formal or non-formal approach to enable the teacher
to gauge the child’s level of mastery (Bahagian Pembangunan Kurikulum, 2018). The
principles applied in classroom assessment in this country is similar to Wiliam’s (2018) model
of formative assessment which includes principles of inclusive, authentic and localized.
Information gathered from classroom assessment will be used by administrators, teachers,
parents and pupils to plan out further action to upgrade or to improve the development stage of
the child (Bahagian Pembangunan Kurikulum, 2018; Wiliam & Leahy, 2015).

METHODOLOGY

This research employed the quantitative framework; thus, survey design was carried
out to obtain data from respondents in cross-sectional manner. The numerical data collected
would explain the phenomena of interest (Creswell, 2012; Creswell & Creswell, 2018; Mills
& Gay, 2016).

Sample

This study conformed to a targeted population of teachers who taught Year 1 to Year 3
in primary schools and Form 1 to Form 3 in secondary schools. The total number of teachers
in primary schools and secondary schools in June 2019 were 166,761 and 117, 210
respectively. However, only 91,964 teachers responded to the survey which was uploaded
online and made accesible to teachers via a link provided. Table 1 presents the number of
respondents from each of the 16 states and type of curriculum used. The demographic section
of the questionnaire did not intend to disclose the identity of the teachers and the schools they
taught in and hence participation was voluntary and all the details provided were kept
anonymous.

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