Can change leadership impact on staff organizational citizenship behavior? A scenario from Malaysia

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of change leadership on staff organizational citizenship behavior in a university setting. Moreover, the study aims to explore forces that influencing on staff organizational citizenship behavior in higher education institutions. Design/methodology/approach – The study adopts a qualitative research design. An interview protocol along with field notes were used as major approaches for collecting in-depth data. Coding and categorizing approach were used to analyze interview transcriptions to help for emerging the study’s themes. Findings – The findings reveal that change leadership builds confidence of staff, motivate them and helps to ensure trust. Moreover, results show that staff organizational citizenship behavior is influenced by personal, organizational, social-cultural and economic forces. To increase the organizational citizenship behavior of staff in higher education institutions, there is a need for leaders to use appropriate change-oriented style in leading their organizations. Findings also revealed that change leaders must serve as role-model to their subordinates as a way on enhancing staff organizational citizenship behavior. Research limitations/implications – Academic leaders are the pivot of change in higher education institutions. Accordingly, the effectiveness of higher education institution, staff and students are depending on the effectiveness of the leadership. In this regard, academic leaders’ willingness to change is the most effective factor that not only sets the credibility of the organization, but, more importantly, influence on staff organizational behavior. Practical implications – It is hoped that the outcome of this research will contribute to the current knowledge of change leadership and organizational behavior in universities. Originality/value – This is an original research and makes a great contribution to higher education in Asian countries

GENDER AND EMPLOYABILITY IN HIGHER LEARNING INSTITUTIONS IN MALAYSIA: IMPLICATION FOR LEADERSHIP AND POLICY

Education is a key factor in human capital, social, economic, technological and political development of the society. Higher education institutions helps in producing high level manpower needed to attain speedy, purposeful and sustainable development in modern society. It provides students with skills and technical knowledge needed in coping with difficulties in the changing society. For higher learning institutions to perform their duties as expected, the need to employ skilled and competent experts in academic community is indispensable. This paper aims to overview the issues in regard to employability and gender in higher learning institutions. Moreover it tries to clarify the roles of policy makers and academic leaders in ensuring equal opportunity for all as a way of ensuring sustainable development. In order to achieve the goals of higher education globally, there is a need for re-orientation of people on gender disparity. Policy makers and academic leaders need to set a pace for others to follow by promulgating laws and guidelines that will ensure reasonable representation of skilled and competent personnel in academic community and eradicate gender segregation in employment process. Universities should be help and encourage students to develop their skills and capabilities. Concise effort must be made in supervising, guiding and evaluating students training program from time to time. This is to help students to thrive and compete favourable with their counterpart at workplace without facing the issues of gender and segregation.&nbsp

Head of Departments’ Instructional Supervisory Role and Teachers’ Job Performance: Teachers’ Perceptions

This study examines the effect of instructional supervisory role of the Head of Departments on teachers’ job performance. More specifically, the study was conducted to obtain an understanding on how the Head of Department supervisory role is perceived, and how it affects the instructional development and job performance of private secondary school teachers in private secondary schools in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Data for this quantitative research was collected via the distribution of a questionnaire among 100 teachers from private secondary schools in Kuala Lumpur. The 5-Likert-scale questionnaire was analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The findings of this study indicate that there is a significant relationship between teacher’s perception on the instructional supervision role of the Head of Department and improving teachers’ job performance from various aspects including teaching practices, professional competencies and motivation. All the findings have signify positive relationship on how the good qualities and roles of the Head of Department will instill difference towards better changes in achieving better job performance among teachers in the schools. In short, this study reveals that it is important for the Head of Departments in schools to play the role of instructional leader as it possesses good characteristics in enhancing better teaching and learning for both leaders and the subordinates. In this regard, both the Head of Departments and the teachers are able to develop and create a platform for teaching and learning, and this will also indirectly develop the teachers’ teaching practices, competency and motivation. As a result, good leaders influence their subordinates and encourage them towards better job performance

Cultivating positive values via online project-based module (M-Pat) / Ashfahani Zakaria … [et al.]

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the use of the Online Project-based module (m-PAT) to cultivate positive values among students. Evaluation was made to the positive values used in this study based on the six constructs of Contextual Development Model for Positive Youth Development namely competence, confidence, connection, caring, character and contribution (6C’s). The learning approach used by m-PAT is project-based learning which is applied as a School Based Assessment activity for Physics subject. A mixed method case study design was employed, where the findings of quantitative data were confirmed using the findings of qualitative data. A total of 42 Form 4 students were chosen based on purposive sampling from a secondary school in Klang Valley, Malaysia. The data were collected through questionnaire, student reflection, students’ online learning activity and discussion, interviews with the students, as well as teacher’s checklist after each participant generated a physic-learning blog by using the m-PAT as a platform. Quantitative data were analysed descriptively in form of mean scores and standard deviations to observe the distribution of students’ feedback on the constructs being studied. Qualitative data were analysed using thematic analysis related to the constructs being studied and confirmed by teacher’s checklist. The results showed that m-PAT was able to cultivate all positive values of 6C’s among the participants of the study. Overall, the findings has important implications for contributing to a new approach in learning which integrates the use of information technology and communication via project-based online learning as well as making it possible for the cultivation of students’ positive values especially in relation to the use of the Internet. Further research with a larger number of participants is needed to support the present findings

ICT Application for Administration and Management: A Conceptual Review

AbstractInformation Communication Technology (ICT) plays an important role in enhancing the quality of education. Administration and management applications of ICT are currently popular in schools due to its capabilities in facilitating administration activities from data storage to knowledge management and decision making. In this paper, review of the literatures regarding applications of ICT, types of applications and their effectiveness for administrative activities in schools is presented. Result may shed light on administrators to improvise and increase the utilization of ICT in daily administrative tasks to make their work more efficient and effective. Finally recommendations for school administration growth of ICT knowledge and practice will also be discussed

Examining SPeCTRUM as an e-learning platform to empower students' learning among five faculties in University of Malaya

This study alms at examining SPcCTRUM to empower students' learning among five faculties(Business & Accountancy, Education, Engineering, Medicine and Science) in UM. The study used a quantitative research design and the data were analyzed using both descriptive and Inferential statistical methods to define the relationship between the variables. The population of the study comprises of undergraduate and Master students from the five selected faculties In University of Malaya and random sampling technique was used to select the respondents. This gives every member of the population equal chance of being selected. A total of 750 questionnaires were distributed to students over a period of 2 months across the selected faculties. Out of these, 541 were returned. The research Instrument for this study is a combination of adapted and self-developed survey questionnaire, consists of nine sections of A to I consisting; Demographic Information, Self-Efflcacy, Attitude, Perceived value, Behavioral intention, Faci litating condition, Skills and knowledge, Challenges and barriers and Usage pattern of SPeCTRUM among the students of University of Malaya. Pearson correlation coefficient, Independent sample T-Test and Two-way Analysis of Variance were used In analyzing the result gathered from the respondents In the study. The result shows that there exists significant relationship between demographic Information in relation to level and pattern of SPeCTRUM usage and learn Ins outcome of students In the five selected faculties In UM. Also, there Is a positive relationship between SPeCTRUM usage and students learning outcome In the five faculties. In addition, the level of students' skills, knowledge, attitude, perceived platform more functional and responsive to needs of students, staff and university there is need to enhance the usage among staffs and students in University of Malaya

Pengurusan disiplin murid di sekolah kawasan bandar dan luar bandar: perspektif pemimpin sekolah

Although the low achievement of a school discipline associated with students’ misconduct, there is a high correlation between good school discipline and student achievement. Therefore, this study aims to identify the effectiveness and differences of school discipline management in urban and rural areas. A quantitative survey method was applied and questionnaire was distributed to the total of 80 school leaders that included 47 from urban and 33 from rural areas in selected schools in Malaysia. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistic including percentage, mean, and standard deviation, and inferential statistic for Mann-Whitney U test. The study found that the effectiveness of managing students’ discipline in both rural and urban schools is high and shows satisfactory when the mean score is 4.00 and standard deviations is 0.79. Furthermore, the results show that that there is no significant differences between urban and rural schools in managing the students’ discipline at p>0.05. In addition, this study found that the importance of the school factors especially school leaders in managing the students’ discipline systematically involving planning, organizing, leading and controlling

Problematic Internet use (PIU) in youth: A brief literature review of selected topics

We aimed to discuss several selected topics related to problematic Internet use (PIU), including fear of missing out, nomophobia, cyberchondria, cyberbullying, and certain health conditions (e.g. autism-spectrum disorder and schizophrenia) among youth. We also aimed to review some recent evidence examining PIU during COVID-19. The review was conducted using keywords relevant to the selected topics and searching in the PubMed database and Google Scholar. The results of this review indicate that PIU could be associated with health issues in a minority of the youth population. Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic may lead to PIU and subsequent health problems. Information from this review could help healthcare providers to design individualized and appropriate interventions to tackle health issues related to PIU among youth

User Experience Design of History Game

User experience (UX) and user interface design of an educational game are important in enhancing and sustaining the utilisation of Game Based Learning (GBL) in learning history. Thus, this article provides a detailed literature review on history learning problems, as well as previous studies on user experience in game design. Future studies on educational history games will benefit from this systematic review and analysis of current educational history games, as this article examines in detail which game features are the most effective in promoting engagement and supporting the process of learning Malaysian history. The results have revealed that mobile game applications with historical content can indeed be a meaningful way to create gaming experience, learning experience, adaptivity and usability, which can facilitate history learning through UX of playing history mobile games. The correlation results of these four dimensions have indicated four positive and significant relationships

Digital transformation in education: Teachers competency in Integrating Interactive White Board (IWB)

The main purpose of this study was to disclose the effectiveness of Interactive White Board (IWB) in school settings. More specifically this research intended to investigate on teachers' perceptions about IWB integration in their daily teachings. For this quantitative study, data were collected by distributing a set of survey questionnaire to total of 313 teachers from primary schools in Kuala Lumpur, The collected data were analysed using SPSS (23.V) through descriptive statistical analysis. Findings indicates that teachers possess a positive attitude towards IWB with small to moderate significant value and had indicated themselves as apprentice users or initial users with basic to moderate competent level in using the IWB. The study found that, the best way to strengthen teachers' IWB competence is cultivate teachers with relevant and quality professional development and training