There are three main aspects of the methodology of the study: sampling, instrument and the data analysis.
This study involved 171 teacher educators in Malaysia from 18 public universities and two private universities. The respondents had at least five years of experience in teaching and learning, and were pursuing various academic and professional qualifications. The teaching and learning instrument was filled in voluntarily by the teacher educators through online and offline survey.
This study focuses on the development of teacher education model for preparing quality teachers for the future. The research involves both qualitative and quantitative research. The project started with the collection of data that were needed to guide the generation of provisional guiding principles for teaching and learning from three sources of data. These sources of data were university websites, research literature on teaching and learning theories, policies and practices, and focus group interviews with key informants.
Collection of data from the first and second sources employed the method of document analysis. The data from the first source consisted of online information gathered from selected university websites from different parts of the world. The universities that were included in this study were based on geographical zones, specifically North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia. Once the geographical zones had been determined, the countries within each zone were selected based on their reputation as providers of teacher education. They were Malaysia, Hong Kong, Singapore, United Kingdom, Finland, United State of America and Australia. This was followed by the selection of universities within each country. These universities consisted of public and private universities. The universities included were ones which provided information about the institutions’ teaching and learning guiding principles in their websites.
The second source of data was the research literature on teaching and learning. The selected research literature was reviewed with a particular focus on theory and practice. Contemporary theories about teaching and learning were compiled and later analysed. The third source of data was the focus group interviews which were conducted with 10 key informants from various sectors such as Ministry of Education officers, university academicians, private sector officers and other stakeholders. The purpose of the focus group interviews was to gather the informants’ opinions about aspects of teaching and learning that should be included in planning a teacher education programme and guiding principles for teaching and learning.
Content analysis was conducted on the data gathered from the three sources. The interviews from the third data source were transcribed. All data from the three sources were thematically analysed guided by the inductive approach proposed by Miles and Huberman (1994) . Gap analyses were also done to benchmark the Malaysian teaching and learning practices. Elements of gap analysis are current and future state of teaching and learning practices, identification and descriptions of the gap, factors responsible for the gap and remedies, actions and proposals to transform the teaching and learning environment. The content and gap analyses produced a list of elements that are important for teaching and learning. This list was further analysed and classified into themes. The set of 11 themes is shown in
From the document analysis, the 11 themes later listed to 6 final themes shows in
| No | Themes | Example of Teaching and Learning Principles |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Active role of learners | Constructivist teachers encourage active, engaged, inquiry ?oriented learning enabled by formal and informal assessment of prior student learning and experience by instruction designed in response to those assessment. |
| 2 | Cultural sensitivity (importance of understanding how learner differences) | Teachers use differences in student social and cultural backgrounds to design instruction that enhance both teaching and learning. |
| 3 | Curricular integration (Strategies to meet individual needs and styles of diverse learners) | Teacher use interdisciplinary curricula to promote student and experience. |
| 4 | Multiculturalism | Provide learning experiences that develop inter-culturally capable graduates who can make a difference as socially and ethically responsible global citizens. |
| 5 | Critical Reflection and critical review of the learning process and personal experiences of student teachers | Teachers use multiple formal and informal methods to review their teaching and student learning in order to strengthen both. |
| 6 | Connection of teaching and assessment | Candidates know and understand current theory, research and practice that inform the cyclical and interactive process of good teaching (e.g., analysis, preparation, instruction, assessment, and decision making based on assessment results). |
| 7 | Technology Integration | Candidates can demonstrate skills in the use of technology appropriate to the respective discipline. |
| 8 | Content knowledge and Pedagogical Content Knowledge (Alignment with standard) | Candidates identify, understand and use and continue to build knowledge in the disciplinary field(s). Candidates apply this knowledge to teaching within the structure of the standards and seek opportunities to continually learn and improve professional practice. |
| 9 | Collaboration with stakeholders | Candidates identify, understand, and use processes to work and advocate cooperatively and professionally, with students/clients, colleagues, parent and community to move toward mutual goals. |
| 10 | School-based Experience | Continuously improve teaching practice through academic staff professional development, and critical reflection informed by a range of evaluation approaches. |
| 11 | Civic and moral values | Value and recognize individual and cultural diversity through the provision of an inclusive context of support and respect for all students. |
| Theme | Name of construct | Amount of item | Number of item |
|---|---|---|---|
| Teaching and learning should foster an atmosphere of intellectual excitement in students. | Intellectual excitement (IE) | 16 items | Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 and 16 |
| Teaching and learning should nurture a climate of inquiry and critical reflection. | Quality learning (QL) | 12 items | Nos. 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27 and 28 |
| Teaching and learning should ensure a constructive alignment between an evolving knowledge base, student learning outcomes, learning experiences, actual practice, and assessment. | Constructive alignment (CA) | 7 items | Nos. 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34 and 35 |
| Teaching and learning should offer an international and culturally diverse learning environment. | International and culturally (IC) | 10 items | Nos. 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44 and 45 |
| Teaching and learning should provide quality learning spaces, resources and technologies. | Climate of inquiry (CI) | 12 items | Nos. 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56 and 57 |
| Teaching and learning should nurture good values, attitude and behavior. | Nurture good values (NV) | 10 items | Nos. 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66 and 67 |
| Total | 6 | 67 items | 67 items |
themes were obtained, the themes recognized as a constructs that they were used to generate items for a survey which was used to gather information about what local university teacher educators think are important for teaching and learning. Several items were generated for each construct. In the process of generating the items, related literature was consulted. A total of 67 items were generated based on the 6 constructs. The items consist of positive and negative statements. The instrument applies 5-point Likert scale, which is, 1 (Not at all important) to 5 (Extremely important). The survey questionnaire was distributed online and offline to 18 public universities and two private universities and responded by 171 teacher educators. The
The questionnaire would provide evidence of the suitability of the items under each theme and to generate constructs of teaching and learning practices. These constructs will later be used to guide the development of provisional guiding principles for teaching and learning in teacher education. An Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) was conducted on the items in the questionnaires.
In this paper, six themes of teaching and learning guiding principles were elected provide the structure and methodology of institutional teaching and learning quality which are interrelated and interdependent. Fundamentally, these principles are based on the National Philosophy of Education, the Philosophy of Teacher Education as well as the National Education Transformation Plan. The principles depict holistic components of the teaching and learning process that reflect the balance of evidence in the research literature on the conditions under which student learning thrives. Each principle has a direct bearing on the quality of students’ intellectual development and their overall experience of university life and beyond as they go aboard on a process of lifelong learning. The eventual objective of teaching and learning programs is to prepare quality teachers for future with distinctive attributes that enable them to contribute to ever-changing global context in a meaningful and positive way (University Education Research Laboratory, 2014) .
1) Intellectual excitement refers to a state where students are actively engaged in the process and content of learning to the point that they are intellectually stimulated and challenged, intrinsically motivated and find learning to be personally meaningful. Intellectual excitement is probably the most powerful motivating force for students and teachers alike. 2) The quality teaching and learning spaces that encourage and allow a wide range for teaching and learning methods, which accommodate different approaches to teaching and learning across the disciplines, and which have effortlessly integrated electronic technologies. 3) Internationally and culturally diverse learning environment embedded in teaching and learning as the challenges for teachers to manage educational
processes to make an individual feel supported and learn to explore difference with civility, honesty and fairness. 4) Climate of inquiry is the process to develop the environment of life-long practices of self-discipline, hard work, commitment, and stick-to-itiveness as well as those more subtle practices of looking at problems from multiple perspectives, grappling with ambiguity and recognizing that the truth of things needs deep and abiding exploration. 5) Constructive alignment between developing knowledge base, student learning outcomes, teaching and learning experiences, activities to bridge knowledge, practice and assessment. It is a balancing between all the elements in teaching and learning for actual practice. 6) Our own values and beliefs have a critical impact on the way we make decisions, design programs and conduct ourselves. The discipline-specific values, one must be spirituality brawny in his or her beliefs as the foundation for living. Possess the courage, the discipline, and the will to do the right things are the need to integrity (University Education Research Laboratory, 2014) .
This paper is limited to teacher educators in the higher education institutions in Malaysia from 18 public universities and two private universities focusing on teacher education programmes. Thus the outcome of this research cannot be generalized to other groups of teacher. The paper also only focused on six Teaching and Learning Guiding Principles earlier which provide the structure and methodology of institutional teaching and learning excellence. Hence, the results obtained may not bring the same effect in future due to higher education and more widespread of guiding principles in teaching and learning.
The data were analysed using the SPSS 11.5 software. Generating teaching and learning guiding principles, which comprised 67 suggested items, was analysed using a factor analysis. The factor analysis has been used to ensure the particular factors contained items suitable in the context of the generating teaching and learning guiding principles (Chua, 2009; Tabachnick & Fidell, 2001) .