Teachers’ views about school-based professional development for promoting inclusive education in Malaysia’s primary schools

Abstract

Most countries recognise inclusive education, but the practice is inconsistent due to its complexity and variability in implementation. The Malaysia Education Blueprint 2013– 2025 emphasises the importance of quality-inclusive education. However, Malaysia’s context, including its diverse ethnicity, language, culture, religion, besides education and school systems, has implications for implementing and promoting inclusive education. This research explores teachers’ significant yet overlooked views of inclusion and schoolbased continuous professional development (CPD). The aim is to understand better the requirement for the promotion of inclusive education in Malaysia’s primary schools, focusing on practitioners’ views. This interpretative, exploratory, qualitative study employed multiple methods to obtain rich and in-depth data. There were 76 participants from five National primary schools, and 25 teachers were interviewed individually and 51 participated in eight focus-group interviews. Ten classroom observations were conducted prior to the individual interviews. The data were analysed thematically by the inductive approach, using NVivo software. Theories of inclusive education and the 'Cognitive Activation in the Mathematics Classroom and Professional Competence of Teachers' (COACTIV) model of teachers' professional competence were adopted to analyse teachers’ views. In the model, four aspects of competences were identified as needing improvement through professional development: beliefs, values and goals; motivational orientations; professional knowledge; and self-regulation. The results show that teachers view inclusive education as a challenging concept to implement. Such views are influenced by multiple factors, such as miscommunication between departments, sociocultural attitudes to disability, educational systems, insufficient facilities, and teachers’ lack of knowledge and skills. The analysis of data reveals that teachers’ views about school-based CPD in promoting inclusion are influenced by factors that correspond to the COACTIV model. In parallel, the study highlights the importance of the Malaysian context and structures within the education system in forming teachers’ views on inclusion and relevant CPD. The findings will be of value in developing teacher training programmes and informing the potential topics for school-based CPD programmes.

More information

Identifiers

ORCID for Rosmalily Binti Salleh: orcid.org/0000-0001-5735-5492

Catalogue record

Export record