Pendekatan konstruktif dalam inovasi pengajaran dan pembelajaran Bahasa Melayu di Kolej Vokasional

Pendekatan konstruktif adalah pendekatan pengajaran dan pembelajaran yang berpusatkan pelajar manakala inovasi pengajaran pula dikaitkan dengan kaedah pengajaran yang terbaru demi mengukuhkan pemahaman pelajar. Pembelajaran berasaskan pendekatan konstruktif merupakan elemen yang penting dan perlu difahami oleh guru-guru bagi memantapkan proses pengajaran dan pembelajaran sesuai dengan peredaran masa dan menjayakan proses tranformasi pendidikan negara. Objektif kajian ini dijalankan untuk mengenal pasti pemahaman guru-guru bahasa Melayu berkaitan inovasi, mengenal pasti perbezaan yang wujud antara guru lelaki dan guru perempuan dalam mengamalkan inovasi, pengkaji juga melihat adakah wujud perbezaan antara guru baru dan guru yang sudah berpengalaman dalam aspek mengaplikasikan inovasi serta mengenal pasti kekangan-kekangan yang dialami oleh para guru untuk mengaplikasikan inovasi di sekolah. Seramai 63 orang guru bahasa Melayu dari lapan buah kolej vokasional telah dipilih sebagai responden dalam kajian ini. Data dianalisis menggunakan perisian Winsteps 3.69.1.11 dengan pendekatan Model Pengukuran Rasch. Hasil analisis menunjukkan bahawa guru�guru bahasa Melayu memahami kepentingan inovasi dalam pengajaran dan pembelajaran. Hasil kajian juga menunjukkan guru-guru perempuan lebih banyak menerapkan unsur inovasi dalam pengajaran berbanding guru lelaki. Walaupun begitu, aspek pengalaman tidak menunjukkan perbezaan dari segi pengamalan inovasi sama ada guru baru ataupun guru yang sudah berpengalaman. Pengkaji juga mengenal pasti beberapa kekangan yang dialami oleh guru-guru untuk mengamalkan inovasi ini. Sebagai langkah untuk menangani masalah berkenaan, beberapa cadangan telah dikemukakan oleh pengkaji bagi memastikan guru-guru dapat merealisasikan proses pengajaran berkesan dengan penerapan inovasi mengikut model pendekatan konstruktif. Pengkaji berharap, kajian ini dapat dijadikan sebagai satu panduan kepada pelaksana kurikulum bagi memastikan budaya inovasi sentiasa menjadi amalan dalam kalangan guru demi mengangkat profesionalisme guru di Malaysia

The mediating effect of happiness on the relationship between work-life balance and life satisfaction: an empirical study on employees of Malaysian financial industry / Siti Hartini Najamudin, Muhamad Khalil Omar and Azzarina Zakaria

The issue of happiness in organisation has been debated among academicians, practitioners, and policy makers nowadays. This is because it provides an index of how well things are going within the organisational context. The ability for an organisation to track front-line employee’s happiness over time is a very useful in order to achieve organisation’s successful policies and practices. Some previous studies conducted to measure the relationship contribute of work-life balance effects in quality in life, life satisfaction and wellbeing. Also, the impact of decreased income on happiness has hardly been studied except through the drop in income due to unemployment. Therefore, this paper attempts to show the relationship of work-life balance and life satisfaction with the mediating role of happiness. The main problem is to relate the situation to the Malaysian Financial Sector work-life balance with sense of happiness by World Happiness Report to get the outcomes of life satisfaction. Perhaps for these reasons, towards the end of this paper, happiness is proposed to be measured in mediating concept by linking the relationship of work-life balance and life satisfaction

Enhancing the security of RCIA ultra-lightweight authentication protocol by using Random Number Generator (RNG) technique

This study is an attempt to enhance the security of Robust Confidentiality, Integrity, and Authentication (RCIA) ultra-lightweight authentication protocols.In the RCIA protocol, IDs value is sent between reader and tag as a constant value.This makes RCIA susceptible to traceability attack which lead to the privacy issue. In order to overcome this problem, Random Number Generator (RNG) technique based on Bitwise operations has been used in the tag side.The idea of this technique is to change the IDs of a tag on every query session so that it will not stay as a constant value.The implementation of Enhanced RCIA has been conducted by using a simulation.The simulation provided the ability to show that the operations of RCIA protocol as to compare with the enhanced RCIA.The outcome shows that the enhanced RCIA outperforms existing one in terms of privacy

Jawi character recognition using the trace transform

The Trace transform, a generalisation of the Radon transform, allows one to construct image features that are invariant to a chosen group of image transformations. In this paper, we used some features, which are invariant to affine distortion, generated by the Trace transform to discriminate between Jawi characters. The process consists of tracing an image with straight lines, along which certain functionals of the image function are calculated, in all possible orientations. For each combination of functionals we derived a function of orientation of the tracing lines that is known as an object signature. If the functionals used have some predefined properties, this signature can be used to characterise the character in an affine way. We demonstrated the usefulness of the derived signature and compared the result of character recognition with those obtained by using features based on affine moment invariants. Experiments using the Trace transform produced decent results for the printed and handwritten Jawi character recognitions that are invariant to affine distortion.Keyword: Affine moment invariant; Jawi character recognition; trace transfor

Pressure to improve scores in standardized English examinations and their effects on classroom practices.

This study surveys English language teachers’ pressure to improve students’ scores in standardized English examinations and how it has affected their classroom practices. The purpose of this study is to explore the teachers’ level of pressure to improve students’ performance in the examination. This study also seeks to investigate whether there are any differences in terms of classroom practices between teachers who express high pressure and low pressure. In this study, classroom practices are determined by four variables which are; (i) test preparation activities, (ii) mode of instruction during English lesson, (iii) instructional content, and (iv) teachers’ involvement in motivational practices. Responses were analysed using Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) to determine whether there is any significant difference in terms of the four classroom practices variables and the pressure subgroups. This study found that teachers are pressured to improve students’ scores in standardized English examinations. Further, there are significant differences between teachers experiencing high pressure and low pressure in terms of their classroom practices, mode of instruction, instructional content and motivational practices

Study on the downward movement of carbofuran in two Malaysian soils

The downward movement of carbofuran in two Malaysian soil types was studied using soil columns. The columns were filled with disturbed and undisturbed soils of either the Bagan Datoh soil (clay) or the Labu soil (sandy clay). The average total percentage of carbofuran in the leachate of the undisturbed Labu soil after 14 days of watering (80.8%) was approximately similar to that of the total amount from the disturbed soil (81.4%). However, carbofuran leaching was observed in the disturbed soil after the fourth day of watering whereas for the undisturbed soil, leaching occurred after the first watering. A similar trend was observed in the Bagan Datoh soil where the residue of carbofuran was detected after the first day of watering in the undisturbed soil column but only at the eighth day of watering in the disturbed soil column. The total percentage carbofuran in the leachate of disturbed and undisturbed soil columns from Bagan Datoh after 14 days of watering was 3.6% and 41.7%, respectively. The study showed that less leaching occurred in soil columns with high organic content such as the Bagan Datoh soil and especially so in disturbed soils where the organic matter was homogeneously mixed in all layers

Pathogenicity of salmonella enteritidis phage types 3A and 35 after experimental infection of white leg horn chicks.

Out of 155 newly hatched SPF White Leghorn chicks, five chicks were randomly separated to confirm the SPF status of the chicks before inoculation. The remaining 150 chicks were divided into six groups. The three sacrificed groups (A, B and C) of 30 chicks each and their respective three mortality groups (MA, MB and MC) of 20 chicks each. The chicks in groups A and MA, and in groups B and MB were challenged orally with 0.1mL containing 107 cfu of SE phage type 3A(UPM-0541) and SE phage type 35 ( UPM-0525), respectively. The un-inoculated groups C and MC served as negative controls. Pathogenicity of Salmonella enteri caserovar enteritidis (S.Enteritidis) phage types (PTs) 3A and 35 infections was determined through inoculation orally with (0.1mL/chick) 107 colony forming units (cfu). Clinical signs and mortality were observed for 21 days post inoculation (pi). Body weights, bacterial isolation, gross lesions and histological lesions were recorded on days 1, 3,5,7,14 and 21pi. The inoculated chicks in A and B groups showed clinical signs of depression, anorexia, ruffled feathers, vent pasting and diarrhea starting from day 1pi. Lifting of wings from thorax was observed in group A only at day 5 and 7pi. The chicks in MA and MB groups that died during experiment showed all the clinical sings before death. There was no significant difference (p>0.05) in body weight gain among the inoculated and the control groups. The growth index value (0.035) for all the groups remained increased. The mortality caused by SE PT3A and PT35 was 10% and 5%, respectively. About 20-10% inoculated sacrificed and all the dead birds showed gross lesions of enlarged livers, fibrinous perihepatitis and pericarditis which was supported by histopathology. The Salmonella was isolated from the cultured samples of chicks inoculated with SE PT3A and SE PT35 throughout the experiment period with the individual variation of chicks and samples. It was concluded that newly hatched SPF chicks are susceptible to PT3A and PT35 infections. These phage types are mild to moderately pathogenic for SPF chicks