2.

0 The Challenge in education: Teachers emotional disturbance, innovation and

changes in education.

Educational systems around the world have been experiencing changes and
reforms. The 21st century has brought a greater demand for the nation to produce quality
teachers. Therefore, it is acknowledged that teachers are not only one of the variables that
need to be changed in order to improve the educational system but are also the most
significant agents in this reform. Teachers in todays world are having emotional disturbance
because of the dual role of teachers; as the subjects and objects of change. The challenges
in education are the teachers emotional disturbance, innovation and also the changes in
Malaysian education.

Higher expectations and greater needs in ministers aspirations have brought job
stress to the teachers to perform effectively in the classroom. Job stress is defined as the
relationship between the person and the environment that is appraised by the person as
taxing or exceeding his or her resources and endangering his or her well being (Lazarus &
Folkman, 1984 in Carson, R., Plemmons, S., Templin, T., & Weiss, H., 2011). Teachers
nowadays are undergoing emotional disturbances as our education are emphasizing on
quality teachers who are the determinants of their student achievement. The key objective is
to improve the quality of education so that students have the skills needed for life and work
in the modern economy. Those skills are known as students aspiration inside the Malaysian
Education Blueprint where by 2025 every Malaysian student will have knowledge, thinking
skills, leadership skills, bilingual proficiency, ethics and spirituality and a strong sense of
national identity. Thus, because of the current changes in education, teachers are
undergoing continual stresses as they must instruct their students, evaluate their
performance, and help them in the overall developmental process of growing up.

Teachers in Malaysia have become the driving force to raise the capacity of
knowledge and innovation and nurture the first class mentality among their students. The
National Higher Education Plan also outlines aspects that will transform the quality of human

capital by focusing on all the necessary attributes that define First Class Mentality. As
stated in Action Plan,
This transformation plan aims squarely on holistic human capital (modal
insane) development to produce Malaysian who are intellectually active,
creative and innovative, ethically and morally upright, adaptable and capable
of critical thinking. The model human capital would also need to be wellrounded individuals with an appreciation for humanistic pursuits such as the
arts, culture, sport and volunteerism.
(National Higher Education Action Plan, 2007-2010)

Based on the statement in the National Higher Education Plan 2007-2010, being innovative
is one of the attributes that a teacher should have in order to nurture first class mentality
among their students. UNESCO has defined innovation as the implementation of a new or
significantly improved product (good or service), or process, a new marketing method, or a
new organizational method in business practice, workplace organization or external relations
(cited in Faizah Abd Majid). Thus a teacher who is innovative must be dare to be different
and be open to new ideas such as innovating a curriculum, an app, a social media platform
for learning, an existing instructional strategies or something else that is related with the
educational areas. One of the examples of innovation is the project-based learning.
Learning through projects is innovative compared to the traditional method of teaching such
as sit-and get, drill-and-kill, teacher-led and textbook-sourced instruction. However, the
report from NEAC (2010) concludes that creativity and innovation has yet to reach
comfortable level in Malaysia. According to the report, Efforts to innovate and create
have been insufficient. The weak track record of domestic innovation in Malaysia is reflected
by the comparatively low number of researchers (NEAC, 2010, pp. 5 - 6 cited in Faizah Abd
Majid).

Some of the challenges in innovation for education are in some areas such as
research and development, academia, internalization, learning and teaching and also
graduate employability (Academia.edu, 2014). Firstly, our innovation management has lack
of high impact research in research and development area. The heavy workloads of the

educators in school management is one of the reason of teacher being uninterested to be

innovative teachers. Another reason of lacking in high impact research in our education
nowadays is because of the lack research knowledge. The students in higher education also
have difficulty in searching for research done by researchers in Malaysia. So, the education
management needs to encourage the educators and collages to take an active part in the
educational research. Secondly, our education system in Malaysia also has limited number
of competent experts. According to Majlis Penyelidikan dan Kemajuan Sains Negara,
Malaysia needs a workforce of 493,830 people in RSE by 2020 to support the current
government initiatives in the Economic Transformation Program, the Government
Transformation Program and the New Economic Model (MyForesight, 2013 in Selvaraj
Grapragasem, Anbalagan Krishnan & Azlin Norhaini Mansor, 2014). Thus, lack of
competent and qualified academic staff is one of the challenges in our education system.
Thirdly, in form of internalization in education, our education system is still lack of exposures
and resources to embrace education without borders. What is meant by education without
borders is the integration of information and communications technology (ICT) in teaching
and learning. Our educators are having low level of confidence in using ICT and also
incompetence to integrate ICT in the classroom. Though ICT is part of the curriculum in
teacher training colleges the teachers have not achieved sufficient confidence when it
comes to integrating it in teaching (Mahani, 2006 & Thang, et al. 2010 in Hazri Jamil, Nordin
Abd. Razak, Reena Raju and Abdul Rashid Mohamed).

Fourth, in learning and teaching, our education system also have problem in lack of
innovative/contemporary approaches to research, teaching and learning. During the year
2008 there were more than 54,000 students in Year 1 (about 30% of the total student
population) who did not meet the literacy level and an estimated 117, 000 (24%) students in
Year 4 who did not reach the targeted numeracy standards ( National Key Results Areas,
2010 in Hazri Jamil, Nordin Abd. Razak, Reena Raju and Abdul Rashid Mohamed). Thus, it
is a challenge for the teacher to be innovative in the teaching and learning session in order
to overcome the Numeracy and Literacy problem. Teachers need to change their teaching
approaches from traditional method to more student-centered, technology as medium and
also project-based learning. Fifth, the graduate employability is also one of the challenges in
education as there is the need for more quality education programs to meet market
demands. (Hrm ASIA, 2012 in Selvaraj Grapragasem, Anbalagan Krishnan & Azlin Norhaini

Mansor, 2014) reports that some 150,000 people graduate from Malaysias universities each
year, but many of them fail to secure a job. Thus, it is challenging to produce an innovative
education because of the issue of unemployment among Malaysian graduates.

Furthermore, changes in education are also one of the challenges in education faced
by the school community. There are three changes in education that I would like to
elaborate on which are changes in teaching and learning, language proficiency and
knowledge-based society. Firstly, teaching and learning is one of the strategies included in
National Higher Education Strategic Plan (NHEAP) 2007-2010. In order to ensure a stable a
strong institution, dynamic and relevant curricula and pedagogy are needed. Of course,
effective pedagogy needs an effective delivery system. Textbooks are no longer considered
as an important element of knowledge acquisition in students. Learning activities are done
through electronic media, whereby information and communication technology (ICT) has
become main means of imparting knowledge and gathering information. Thus, the changes
of delivery systems in our pedagogy is one of the challenges in education that a teacher
need to face. It is a positive transformation as ICT has a lot of benefit to both teachers and
students. According to (Oliver, 2002 in Selvaraj Grapragasem, Anbalagan Krishnan & Azlin
Norhaini Mansor, 2014), ICT has actually changed students learning behaviour, helping to
move from content-centered curricula to competency-based curricula, and from teachercentered to student-centered forms of delivery. Next, as the country moves into a new era of
globalization in education, the government has placed much emphasized on bilingual
proficiency among students. According to the students aspirations is Malaysian Education
Blueprint 2013 2025, every child will be at minimum operationally proficient in Bahasa
Malaysia as the national language and language of unity, and English as the international
language of communication. It means that upon leaving school, the student should be able
to work in both Bahasa Malaysia and English environment. Therefore, teachers in schools
play an important role to ensure the students able to become proficient in both languages.
Furthermore, producing a knowledge-based society is another change in our curriculum that
had become a challenge to the educators. Malaysia has certainly moved towards a
knowledge-based society since the transformation of its education system into a more
holistic approach through the introduction of various initiatives and approaches in the
Malaysian Education Blueprint 2013-2025, the NHEAP 2007-2010, and the NHESP beyond
2020. As the former Prime Minister Dr. Mahathir bin Mohamad said in 2001:

In our pursuit towards developing the K-economy, knowledge has to replace

labour and capital as key factors of production in our economy. The challenge
for Malaysia is to develop this knowledge amongst our citizens so that our
success will be due to the contributions of Malaysian talents and knowledge
workers. (Evers, 2001).
Thus, teachers need to ensure that their students are fully equipped with knowledge and
skills in order to meet the challenge of producing a knowledge-based society.

With globalization, professional teacher development has become an increasingly

challenging task for Malaysias younger generation which has a higher set of values and
greater expectations from life. With the growing needs and expectations of the society,
teachers have to face educational challenges such as being in emotional disturbance state,
innovation in teaching and learning and also have to adapt to changes in Malaysian
education