Puvaneswary Murugaiah

Creating and maintaining online communities of practice in Malaysian Smart Schools: challenging realities

Wenger describes an educational community of practice (CoP) as a group of professionals who share a passionate concern for practice‐based issues and who voluntarily choose to deepen their knowledge, understanding and skills through collaborative and critical dialogue. Peer collaboration of this kind, which involves social interaction, reflection and a critical engagement with practice issues, has been widely suggested to be effective for teacher learning and professional development. The online continuing professional development for teachers (e‐CPDelT) Vision 2020 model outlined here aims to bring about innovation in practice through an online or virtual CoP (VCoP). Twenty Malaysian teachers in five Smart Schools were invited to take part in a Higher Education (HE) project, funded by one of the main universities in Malaysia. By participating collaboratively in this CoP, it was anticipated that the teachers would form an active online CoP that would lead in turn to innovation in teaching and learning practices in the schools. An action research approach was used in tracing the developmental process of the three subject‐based CoPs (namely, Mathematics, Science and English) and identifying challenges faced by the higher education institution (HEI) project team in fostering the active participation and commitment of the teachers. Preliminary data generated from mentor forum discussion, focus groups and blogs suggested that low levels of participation in VCoP activities were a result of low levels of trust and social affiliation, performance anxiety, time pressure and failure to see the relevance of online interaction as directly related to their individual needs as practitioners. Approaches to remediating these challenges and promoting more authentic teacher engagement are outlined.

Consonant acquisition in the Malay language: A cross-sectional study of preschool aged malay children

Abstract To date, there has been little research done on phonological acquisition in the Malay language of typically developing Malay-speaking children. This study serves to fill this gap by providing a systematic description of Malay consonant acquisition in a large cohort of preschool-aged children between 4- and 6-years-old. In the study, 326 Malay-dominant speaking children were assessed using a picture naming task that elicited 53 single words containing all the primary consonants in Malay. Two main analyses were conducted to study their consonant acquisition: (1) age of customary and mastery production of consonants; and (2) consonant accuracy. Results revealed that Malay children acquired all the syllable-initial and syllable-final consonants before 4;06-years-old, with the exception of syllable-final /s/, /h/ and /l/ which were acquired after 5;06-years-old. The development of Malay consonants increased gradually from 4- to 6 years old, with female children performing better than male children. The accuracy of consonants based on manner of articulation showed that glides, affricates, nasals, and stops were higher than fricatives and liquids. In general, syllable-initial consonants were more accurate than syllable-final consonants while consonants in monosyllabic and disyllabic words were more accurate than polysyllabic words. These findings will provide significant information for speech-language pathologists for assessing Malay-speaking children and designing treatment objectives that reflect the course of phonological development in Malay.

Teacher Learning Via Communities of Practice: A Malaysian Case Study

Abstract This article features the extent of learning traced during the development of online communities of practice (CoPs) among a group of Smart School teachers in a partnership model designed to help them develop professionally through the use of online tools. In the e-CPDelT project which involved 20 teachers of English, Mathematics and Science from five Smart Schools, teachers collaborated with other teachers by sharing classroom issues and experiences using online tools. A central conviction underlying the design of the project is that teacher collaboration in online CoPs can help teachers grow professionally. This article attempts to probe whether the CoP approach facilitates teacher learning in the English cohort. The Community of Inquiry (CoI) model propounded by Garrison, Anderson, and Archer (2000) was used to understand the dynamics of online teacher learning. Although social, cognitive and teaching presences are the prerequisites for a successful and meaningful educational experience, for the purpose of this preliminary study, only cognitive presence is examined since it is related to knowledge-building through inquiry and refl ection. The findings based on participant blog entries revealed that teacher learning was evident in the blog interactions to a small extent due to varied participation patterns and group dynamics. The article concludes with several recommended measures to enhance teacher learning.