Page 53 - Jurnal Kurikulum BPK 2020

Respondents believed that their motivation for teaching KDL are to help preserve the
language and to conserve the Kadazan and Dusun cultural heritage. Other motivations for
teaching KDL were because they were able to use their own mother tongue while teaching and
they were able to promote the use of KDL to the Kadazan and Dusun communities. Apart from
that, teachers were in the opinion that they were motivated to teach KDL because they could
plan interesting activities for their pupils and because teaching KDL gave them satisfaction in
their teaching.
KDL teachers in the district of Penampang felt that their pupils were somewhat good
in their reading skills but were only average in listening and speaking skills, writing skills and
in the Language Arts module. In spite of this, they were sure that their pupils were weak in
grammar.

DISCUSSION

KDL has been implemented in the district of Penampang since 1998 (Kadazandusun Language
Foundation, 1999) and yet most KDL teachers in Penampang have only taught KDL for ten
years or less. This could mean that, teachers teaching KDL in this district are not permanent.
This is common considering teachers are not KDL option teachers. It looks like, the needs of
these in-experienced teachers ought to be addressed so that they could teach KDL effectively
and hopefully improve pupils’ learning experience. This issue could be addressed by providing
consistent trainings or coaching to them. Through trainings and coaching teachers would be
able to obtain supports and assistance that could improve their pedagogic skills, content
knowledge and language fluency. Strengthening their skills, knowledge and command of KDL
may eventually sustain their motivation and interest in teaching KDL.
There are also no participations from KDL teachers in the age range of 20-29 in this
study. This could indicate that young teachers are uninterested with the subject or they do not
know KDL. For this reason, the Education District Office and The State Education Department
need to promote this language to young teachers. At the same time provide continuous
language-based trainings and pedagogic development courses in order to increase their
pedagogic content knowledge (PCK) so that the district of Penampang could have a good
number of younger generations of KDL teachers.
There are only two KDL option teachers teaching in this district. This issue needs to be
addressed immediately so that the level of teaching and learning of KDL in this district could
be improved. District Education Office should inform the State Education Department of this
matter so that placement of KDL option teachers can be arranged for this district.
Fifty-four percent of KDL teachers teaching in Penampang district come from the
various Dusunic tribes of Sabah. This could mean the local tribe which is the Kadazan is either
not interested or not qualified to teach KDL due to the incompatible dialects. Thus, there is a
need to train more Kadazan teachers to teach KDL so that the local dialect and cultural heritage
could also be maintained simultaneously.
Teachers state that they face difficulty in their delivery due to lack of language fluency
and hence they found no joy in teaching this language. Teachers are not fluent in KDL because
they are not native speakers of KDL. In addition to that, they are also not KDL option teachers,
thus they do not have enough pedagogic and content knowledge to be able to teach this subject
efficiently. This could imply that pupils may not be getting the right language model or
knowledge from their teachers. Language fluency of teachers could to be improved through
continuous language development trainings or courses on KDL for specific purposes. Non-
Governmental Organization (NGO) such as KLF’s service in conducting language
development trainings is much needed. Language development trainings for in-service teachers
can also be done by the respective teacher teaching institutes in Sabah.
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