Managing and mobilising talent in Malaysia: issues,challenges and policy implications for Malaysian universities

ABSTRACT

The future of Malaysia as a high-income and competitive nation largely depends on its pool of highly skilled human capital. Hence, the issue of human capital development has taken centre stage in numerous reform agendas of Malaysia. This paper seeks to provide examples of policy initiatives aimed at facilitating the management of highly educated talent in Malaysia. It subsequently considers the role of higher education institutions, particularly the universities, as attractors, educators and retainers of intellectuals, in shaping talent. In conclusion, we argue that more significant underlying shortcomings of talent development are derived from the still transitional nature of the reforms and incomplete structural changes occurring in the national system, and that a change in mindset is the first necessary step towards nurturing and developing a human resource talent pool.     

A Learning Patterns Perspective on Student Learning in Higher Education: State of the Art and Moving Forward

The aim of this article is to review the state of the art of research and theory development on student learning patterns in higher education and beyond. First, the learning patterns perspective and the theoretical framework are introduced. Second, research published since 2004 on student learning patterns is systematically identified and reviewed. This part includes two main sections. In the first section, new evidence on internal and external relationships of learning patterns is reviewed. Four themes are covered here: the dimensionality and the internal relationships of learning patterns and relationships of learning patterns with personal, contextual, and outcome variables. In the second section, new directions in learning patterns research are examined. These include studies on learning patterns in new international contexts and populations, longitudinal development of learning patterns over time, methodological advances in learning patterns research, and studies on fostering the quality of students’ learning patterns. Next, relationships with adjacent theories on student learning are discussed, the learning patterns perspective is critically examined, and pathways are derived to move the model forward. Finally, future conceptual and methodological directions for learning patterns research are derived.     

What Does Prone Skateboarding in the Newborn Tell Us About the Ontogeny of Human Locomotion?

The crawling behavior of sixty 2-day-old newborns was studied while they were supported prone on a mini skateboard and on a pediatric mattress without additional support. Analyses of the number and types of limb movements and their characteristics, the coactivation of limb pairs, and the displacement across the surface, revealed that newborns can crawl with locomotor patterns similar to those documented during quadrupedal locomotion in animals and human adults. This was particularly apparent on the skateboard. This discovery suggests that locomotor circuitry underlying quadrupedal locomotion develops during fetal life. Drawing upon other evidence for a quadrupedal organization underlying bipedal gait, we argue that early quadrupedal training may enhance interventions designed to hasten the onset of independent walking.     

Taiwanese primary school teachers’ perceived enablers for and barriers to the integration of children’s literature in mathematics teaching and learning

Educational Studies in Mathematics - This study is part of the international survey studies on teachers’ beliefs concerning the integration of children’s literature in mathematics...     

Learners’ perspectives on Life Orientation sexuality education in South Africa

ABSTRACT

This article examines the views of male and female learners regarding how Life Orientation (LO) sexuality education is taught at their schools. Learners in the study were selected from five former ‘Black’ schools in the Eastern and Western Cape Provinces of South Africa. Focus groups were used to identify what learners could recall about their LO sexuality education classes. The strong trend in the data speaks to how LO sexuality education implies a gendered, heteronormative and moralistic approach to youth sexuality which silences and negates same sex relationships and girls’ accounts of sexuality. Although LO sexuality curricula are, as crafted on paper, often sophisticated learning programmes, participants point to a disjuncture between the official LO sexuality education curriculum and how LO sexuality education is taught in the studied schools. The paper concludes with some specific recommendations for teachers to promote a non-judgemental approach to sexuality education that challenges heteronormativity and other gendered injustices as part of the teaching of LO sexuality education.     

Making connections among multiple graphical representations of fractions: sense-making competencies enhance perceptual fluency,but not vice versa

Prior research shows that representational competencies that enable students to use graphical representations to reason and solve tasks is key to learning in many science, technology, engineering, and mathematics domains. We focus on two types of representational competencies: (1) sense making of connections by verbally explaining how different representations map to one another, and (2) perceptual fluency that allows students to fast and effortlessly use perceptual features to make connections among representations. Because these different competencies are acquired via different types of learning processes, they require different types of instructional support: sense-making activities and fluency-building activities. In a prior experiment, we showed benefits for combining sense-making activities and fluency-building activities. In the current work, we test how to combine these two forms of instructional support, specifically, whether students should first work on sense-making activities or on fluency-building activities. This comparison allows us to investigate whether sense-making competencies enhance students’ acquisition of perceptual fluency (sense-making-first hypothesis) or whether perceptual fluency enhances students’ acquisition of sense-making competencies (fluency-first hypothesis). We conducted a lab experiment with 74 students from grades 3–5 working with an intelligent tutoring system for fractions. We assessed learning processes and learning outcomes related to representational competencies and domain knowledge. Overall, our results support the sense-making-first hypothesis, but not the fluency-first hypothesis.     

‘It’s small steps,but that leads to bigger changes’: evaluation of a nurture group intervention

This article presents the results of a small-scale research project that aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of a part-time nurture group recently established in one primary school. Qualitative interviews were used to gather staff, pupil and parental perceptions about the nurture group. These focused not only on what difference the nurture group was making to the pupils concerned but also on views about what factors contributed to noted changes. All stakeholder groups identified areas of development for nurture group pupils. These included improved social skills, growth in personal confidence, greater engagement with academic tasks and fewer incidences of undesirable behaviour. The evidence suggests that the nurture group offered an effective way of supporting the social, emotional and behavioural skills of a group of ‘at-risk’ pupils. Nine practices thought to be important in achieving these outcomes are highlighted.     

‘I haven’t lost hope of reaching out … ’: exposing racism in sport by elevating counternarratives

ABSTRACT

This paper tells the ‘back story’ to the development of a local soccer hub, which focuses on the experiences of a predominantly South Sudanese team called the Western Tigers. We use a counter-story telling approach anchored in critical race theory, to develop a composite story that brings together biographical and autobiographical accounts gathered during an ethnographic study. These accounts are narrated from the vantage point of David, a player/coach, whose experiences expose everyday racism and its effects, while also illuminating responses to racism in the context of sport. This composite story challenges dominant narratives about sport in Australian society particularly those that position sport as the great equaliser and a pathway to ‘integration’ and belonging. Our analysis sheds light onto how the dynamics of racialisation and exclusion take the form of a slow violence for young people of refugee background, shaping their experiences and trajectories on and off the field. We discuss the paradoxical role of settings such as the Western Tigers and the Community Soccer Hub as important ‘public homeplaces’, that can also be understood as marginalised and marginalising for young people of refugee background.