Educ Res Policy Prac (2012) 11:73–87

DOI 10.1007/s10671-011-9107-8

The Malaysian Teacher Standards: a look at the

challenges and implications for teacher educators

Pauline Swee Choo Goh

Received: 25 November 2010 / Accepted: 9 May 2011 / Published online: 21 May 2011
© Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

Abstract Talks of education transformation to improve the quality and outcomes of edu-
cation in Malaysia culminated in the articulation of standards for teachers. The all new
Malaysian Teacher Standards (MTS) launched in 2009 is to establish ‘high competency’
standards for the teaching profession and to increase the status of teachers in Malaysia. This
article briefly describes the standards that concern teachers and teacher educators alike. It is
proposed that there are three challenges to the standards system that teacher educators may
face. First, on transforming ingrained beliefs, values and biased perceptions of teaching that
student teachers bring to the teaching institution. The second centers on the rhetoric-reality
gap of the MTS itself, while the third challenge involves the actual training of teachers.
Given these three challenges, this article also outlines several avenues for teacher educators
to consider as they set out to better understand and re-design teacher education programs in
this standards-based era of educational transformation. The discussion of the challenges and
the proposed resources to meet the challenges are by no means exhaustive or acts as a con-
clusion but rather to create awareness for further discussion and analysis of the implications
proposed in this article.

Keywords Malaysian Teacher Standards · Teacher quality · Teacher education ·

Teaching standards · Educational transformation · Student teachers

1 Introduction

A policy of economic reform, known as the Economic Transformation Program (ETP),

recently unveiled in Malaysia in 2010, aspires to transform the country into a service-based
economy and to shift the nation towards the middle and high-income salary brackets by
2020. To achieve this, the ETP provides focus on 12 main pillars, named the 12 National Key
Economic Areas, in which aspects of education feature prominently. Education is defined as

P. S. C. Goh (B)
Sultan Idris Education University, 35900 Tanjung Malim, Perak, Malaysia
e-mail: goh.sc@fppm.upsi.edu.my; goh.sweechoo@yahoo.com

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one of the core driver of Malaysia’s economic activity that will directly contribute towards
its economic growth and has impact on productivity and human capital development (Per-
formance Management and Delivery Unit, 2010). Performance Management and Delivery
Unit or PEMANDU is dedicated towards providing quality education and that “improving
teacher quality in the education system is a top priority” (Jala 2010, para 16).
The decisive role in ensuring the quality of teachers is not exactly new and has already
been stipulated in Malaysia’s Education Act 1996, Article 550, Chapter 9 (Law of Malay-
sia 2006). The government’s quest to improve the quality of teaching and learning is also
articulated in the Education Development Plan 2006–2010 with a pronouncement that:

The Ministry of Education’s policy is to elevate the teaching profession by increasing

the quality of teachers, advancing teaching as a career and improving the welfare of
teachers. The Ministry of Education’s goal is to make the teaching profession one that
is respected and highly regarded in accordance with the trust given to the teachers to
carry out their roles in nation building (Education Development Plan 2006–2010 2006,
p. 106).

The pronouncement of teaching quality stems from the challenges faced and the great
responsibilities education in Malaysia carries, from pre-school to higher education, towards
the development of skilled human capital for the socio-economic development and the tran-
sition towards developed nation by 2020 (Kachar 1997).
Malaysia, like other Asia-Pacific countries has experienced rapid economic growth in
the last 20 years (Tam and Cheng 2007). These countries not only have to compete with
each other but also globally. Hence, the ever growing economic, technological and social
changes taking shape around the globe requires not only skilled workers, but those who are
also innovative and competitive (Ng and Tan 2006). High quality educational provision is
therefore necessary to achieve these goals, and high quality teaching becomes imperative.
The most valuable resource available in schools to raise the bar towards achieving quality
learning of all students is their teachers, therefore investments in teacher quality and their
on-going professionalism are essential (Ingvarson and Rowe 2007).
Cambodia has been on the track of rapid economic development since the late 1990s when
Hun Sen assumed the office of Prime Minister. Because education is considered important
to the nation’s economic growth and social development, an Education Strategic Plan 2006–
2010 has been initiated by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport-Kingdom of Cambodia
to improve the effectiveness and efficiency in the education system (Tan 2007). One of the
major areas in the strategic plan is to increase the quality of the country’s teaching force.
Some of the reformulation of teacher education includes elevating the qualification standards
of teachers; aligning pre-service and in-service teacher education with the needs of the coun-
try; restructuring the curriculum of teacher education; and introducing some form of teacher
evaluation to reflect the needs of the classroom (Tan 2007).
The Philippines is characterised by its differing social approaches and aptitudes having
previously being colonised by the Spaniards, Americans and the Japanese. To address these
differences has required reforms in the education system through changes in teacher train-
ing curriculum and the infrastructure, increasing educational opportunities and opening up
more opportunities for university place (Guzman 2003). Continuous efforts have been put in
place to upgrade the quality and competence of the teachers in the Philippines. These efforts
have looked at improving the teacher training programs; improving the welfare of teachers;
and providing more opportunities for professional growth through various in-service teacher
education programs (Guzman 2003).

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Singapore, one of the fastest growing economies in the Asia-Pacific region, takes pride
in many of its national accomplishments. Not least is in its education system. Under the
leadership of its Ministry of Education and the support of other education stakeholders, Sin-
gaporean educators have seen the need to emphasise diversity and innovation in the education
system. This has grown from the need to de-emphasise intensity and competitiveness within
the education system; a stratifying school environment; and the lack of creativity and thinking
abilities among students. The decentralisation of power from a central administration to the
schools has been seen as an effort by the ministry to increase the professional autonomy of
the schools and to empower teachers to initiate changes (Ng 2007).
Hong Kong has made a few initiatives to monitor teacher quality. It started with the Advi-
sory Committee on Teacher Education and Qualifications (ACTEQ) in 1993 to oversee new
policies relating to teachers’ professional development (Mok 2007). In 2003, the ACTEQ
generated a policy document entitled Towards a learning profession: the teacher compe-
tencies framework and the continuing professional development of teachers (Mok 2007).
Teachers in Hong Kong are expected to be mentored and supported by this competency
framework within four domains, namely: (a) teaching and learning, (b) student development,
(c) school development and (d) professional relationships and services.
Based on the reform experiences in Cambodia, the Philippines, Singapore and Hong Kong,
it can be seen that Malaysia is not alone in her quest to elevate the teaching profession to
meet the social and economic demands through quality education. The Malaysian govern-
ment expects the education system to help the country’s future competitiveness. Under such
circumstances, education reform under the ETP is inevitable and the transformation of teacher
quality is unavoidable. The Malaysian government’s continuous resolution to further teacher
quality culminated in the launch of the Standard Guru Malaysia or The Malaysian Teacher
Standards (MTS) in December of 2009 by the Minister of Education Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yas-
sin. Malaysia has now become the first nation in Southeast Asia to adopt a competency-based
teacher standard (“Malaysia first in region to adopt benchmark for educators” 2009).
The MTS developed by the Teacher Education Division (TED) of the MOE is described
as a guideline to measure teachers’ practice which is rigorous and is beyond the minimum
requirements of teaching. It serves as an early ‘warning system’ so that teachers themselves
are sensitive to the need to undertake the strengthening, improvement and enhancement of
knowledge, skills and personality. According to Asariah Mior Shaharuddin, the Education
Deputy Director General, the MTS: “serve as guidelines for teachers to develop profes-
sional values, knowledge and understanding while acquiring the relevant skills in teaching”
(Chapman 2009, para 2), and “this is something we have worked very hard for and is in line
with the issue of teacher professionalism brought up during the teachers’ forum” (Chapman
2009, para 7). The hard work involved in the standards development process is seen as a
transformational effort for developing teaching excellence in Malaysia and is an attempt
to remove misconceptions of what encompasses competent teaching and to uplift a rather
eroded image of the profession (Suriani 2007).
Thus, a new policy direction has been set by the MOE to collect credible evidence on
teacher quality. From the teacher educators’ perspectives, very likely, they will now be chal-
lenged to focus more specifically on linking the content of preparation to the standards-based
competency of their student teachers, and ultimately to the achievement of the student teach-
ers’ students. However, as the standards-based effort to improve teacher quality has just
begun, little has been investigated to show the relationship between the standards and the
outcomes to teacher education or the impact it has on student achievement. Although this
article lacks empirical base, it still aims to provide some insights into those challenges that

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may be faced by teacher educators as they go about devising ways to train their graduates for
the standards-based era.
Since the MTS has been formulated based on the intention to improve teacher quality,
it may be appropriate at this point to briefly define the concepts of teacher competency or
quality (terms used interchangeably in this article) that sparked the formulation of the MTS.

2 Teacher quality

One of the most widely recognised measures that influence student achievement and success
in schools is teacher quality. Historically, defining teacher quality has remained a difficult
task and the consensus of what constitutes high quality teaching remains relatively elusive.
According to Berliner (2005), teacher quality “… always requires value judgments about
which disagreements abound” (p. 206). A plethora of definitions has ranged from teacher
actions, knowledge a teacher possesses to the creativity of the teacher (Blanton et al. 2006).
Over a 100 years work on the characteristics of high quality teachers and their teaching
has been conducted and is well documented in a series of Handbook of Research on Teach-
ing (e.g. Richardson 2001). In the late 1960s, it was conceptualised that teacher quality was
linked to specific teacher actions and student learning was based on behavioural psychology
and child development. This became better known as the process-product approach. The
process-product approach suggested that an effective teacher was able to: (a) monitor expec-
tations, (b) provide clear objectives and learning guidelines, (c) encourage student responses
during instruction, (c) break a large teaching unit to smaller tasks and (d) provide regular
feedback (Blanton et al. 2006).
Continuing research developed aspects in teacher planning, teacher beliefs, teacher think-
ing, and these dominated much of the 1970s and beyond. The complexities of teaching,
classrooms and schools began to be addressed and were referred to by different research
names such as ‘learning-to-teach research’ and ‘classroom ecology research’ (Fensterma-
cher and Richardson 2005; Kagan 1992). It was followed by various other research that
looked at teacher planning (e.g. Reynolds 1992), teacher thinking, beliefs and efficacy (e.g.
Tschannen-Moran and Woolfolk 2001) and novice versus expert teaching (Berliner 1986).
More recently, researchers have started to focus on the multidimensional aspects of teacher
quality and have attempted to define teacher quality as: (a) good teaching, which encompasses
a teacher meeting the expectations of the role of teaching (e.g. able to use appropriate method-
ology) and (b) successful teaching which means a positive learning outcome as a result of the
teachers’ actions on student learning (Berliner 2005;Fenstermacher and Richardson 2005).
Fenstermacher and Richardson (2005, p.190) also point out that good teaching depends on
three other conditions:

• willingness and effort by the learner;

• a social surround supportive of teaching and learning; and
• opportunity to teach and learn.

On a similar note, Ng (2008a, p. 7) adds that teacher quality also encompasses two impor-
tant aspects. One, a teacher must understand the fundamentals of education, the “why, and
how of teaching”, and two, that the students “have to become engaged learners, interested
and proactive agents in the learning process”.
The literature on teaching and understanding teacher quality continues to expand. Changes
continue to be made for better clarity towards the concept of effective or successful dimen-

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sions of teacher quality. However, regardless of how onerous it is to encompass the concept
of teacher quality, educational stakeholders (e.g. students themselves, parents, educators and
educational administrators) need credible measures to judge quality teaching performance or
to help guide teacher education programs. Fenstermacher and Richardson (2005) argue that:

The vital insight is that when making a judgement of quality, one is always engaged in
an interpretation – a selection of one set of factors or indices over another, in attention
to some dimensions of the phenomenon over other possible dimensions, in desiring
and valuing some features of the task or the achievement more than other features (p.
206).

Here, Fenstermacher and Richardson (2005) may have implied that any judgement of qual-
ity teaching can be highly interpretive and will require a high level of discernment for the
evaluators.
Nevertheless, it is also highly probable that accountability and performance standards will
continue to dominate the teacher quality agenda with teacher competency standards, teacher
appraisals and teacher assessment standards as major quality control mechanisms for the
teaching profession. If the intention about improving teacher quality is to become a reality,
then quality control mechanisms through standards must be in place (Ingvarson and Rowe
2007). After all, the main aim of developers of teaching standards is to “articulate sound prin-
ciples of instructional practice and what teachers should know and be able to do” (Ingvarson
and Rowe 2007, p. 9). Similarly in Malaysia, the proposition that for high quality teaching
to occur, a rigorous method of assuring teacher quality should also be in place (Malaysian
Teacher Standards 2009). The new MTS is here to stay.

3 The MTS

The 2009 published edition of the Malaysian Teacher Standards begins with a five-page intro-
duction by various ministers from the MOE. They outline their individual understanding of
the context of the book and describe the need for the new standards. The book has two distinct
sections. The first section provides narrative descriptions of the rational, the development
and the conceptual framework of the standards. It is followed by the description of the three
main content standards which are:

• Standard 1: Professional values within the teaching profession. This standard refers to
those values teachers hold and that should be developed so that teachers can more effec-
tively contribute to the teaching profession to achieve the aims of the national education
system.
• Standard 2: Knowledge and understanding of education, subject matter, curriculum and
co-curriculum. Teachers should have sound knowledge to improve professionalism in
teaching, carry out their duties efficiently and effectively and be more creative and inno-
vative.
• Standard 3: Skills of teaching and learning. This standard focuses on the ability of teachers
to plan, implement and evaluate teaching and learning and extra-curricular activities.

Each content standard is divided into three to eight competencies. The competencies are
written in paragraph-length narratives of complete statements. For example, for Standard 3,
Competency 1, skills that a teacher should possess are “skills to provide teaching and learning
plan based on the syllabus and school calendar, taking into account differences in ability,

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prior knowledge and expectations of student performance” (Malaysian Teacher Standards

2009, p. 25). The standards are not subject specific.
The second section contains the actual questionnaire for teachers to gauge their compe-
tencies. In each questionnaire, teachers rate themselves on a scale of ‘1’ (weak), ‘2’ (poorly),
‘3’ (good), ‘4’(excellent).
Teachers in Malaysia must now concern themselves with the MTS. Currently, teachers are
advised to use the standards voluntarily as part of their own self-appraisal and to benchmark
their teaching competency against the MTS. Teachers must attempt to teach in the direc-
tion of the new standards and also to meet the performance standards eschewed within the
guidelines in the MTS. The standards will require teachers to assist their students to meet
the standards for learning outcomes; be innovative in their teaching; and assess students at a
much higher level of thinking such as problem solving, decision-making and being able to
continually learn, think, do and create (Zakaria 2000;Abd Rashid 2002). Teachers must also
understand that different learning diversities can exist within their classrooms; they must
show that they are able to demonstrate, select and design good instructional tasks. Moreover,
they are also required to teach more complex content at a deeper level of understanding and
integrate teaching and learning with technology, whilst covering the national curriculum.
Teachers must act more as a facilitator by initiating classroom discussions, attending to stu-
dents’ understanding, using new ways of assessing, effectively managing the classroom and
student behaviour, and at the same time, ensuring that all their students achieve meaningful
and effective learning. In addition to fulfilling the duties of high quality teachers as espoused
in the MTS, they must be seen to uphold the cultural values of the country and possess a strong
sense of patriotism. Teachers must also ground their teaching in the belief that all students
have the capacity to learn and should therefore be treated fairly, with integrity and compas-
sion (Malaysian Teacher Standards 2009). A tall order indeed for experienced teachers and
even more so for beginning teachers who are just starting out.
If teaching in Malaysia were to be transformed through the MTS in these ambitious man-
ners, then it would seem logical that teacher education would need to transform as well. It
would appear that the new standards are of great importance to teacher educators as it is in the
teaching institutions that pre-service teachers are trained, prepared and acquire the necessary
knowledge to succeed as in-service teachers. Teaching institutions play a significant role in
assisting pre-service teachers and newly qualified teachers begin learning to teach that are
congruent with the effort to transform and improve teacher quality.
It would be safe to claim that the new standards also represent the standards towards which
teaching institutions must now aspire. In fact, one of the rationales of the MTS is the hope
that by transforming the process by which teachers must now approach their teaching would
in turn effect transformations in how they are trained (Malaysian Teacher Standards 2009).
Less understood, however, are the challenges that lay ahead as teacher educators grapple
with the best ways to align the standards to how they train and prepare pre-service teachers
and to get pre-service teachers ready to face the new competency-based standards era.
To investigate the full spectrum of implications of the MTS for the professional develop-
ment of all teachers is beyond the scope of this modest article. However, pre-service teacher
education does seem a reasonable place to begin the discussion, as it is here that new teachers
begin to learn to teach in ways that are aligned with the MTS. The discussion may provide
some insights to teacher educators as they go about planning ways of preparing their student
teachers to teach for success in this new standards-based era.
The following sections will provide a discussion of the challenges that lies ahead for
pre-service teacher educators. This will be followed by a consideration and suggestion of
possible implications and resources for meeting those challenges. Because the MTS is so

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new in Malaysia, the standards based effort has not undergone much research and scrutiny,
therefore, very little (if any) empirical data exist to guide in the examination of the challenges
and implications attached to the MTS. Instead, what this article offers is a logical discussion
to examine these issues based on the author’s own practice and experiences of preparing
pre-service teachers in Malaysia.

4 Challenges to teacher educators in the era of the MTS

What would be the likely response to the introduction of standards? History has demonstrated
that when a new and attractive idea is initiated in the educational system, there is always an
excited buzz of happenings—seminars, road shows, training and re-training. Alternatively,
the easiest way to respond is by tweaking the current teaching curriculum by adding a course
or two, changing some components, inserting some new experiences and installing it as a
new repackaged curriculum. However, if the education effort to improve teacher quality is to
succeed, perhaps teacher educators need to re-formulate and re-shape the curriculum’s struc-
ture and content at the core. Teacher educators may need to learn from history and not repeat
scenarios of previous reforms. Cuban (1992) asserts that for any teaching transformation to
work, it must be altered at the core because “the premise behind fundamental reforms is that
basic structures are flawed at their core and need a complete overhaul, not renovations” (p.
170). The teaching transformation envisioned by the TED and MOE, like Cuban, aims to
transform teaching at its root, to elevate the quality of teaching, and alter society’s image
of good teaching (Chapman 2009;Suriani 2007). This change does raise several challenges
for teacher educators. The first is the issue of overcoming student teachers’ in-built beliefs,
values and old ideas. The second centres on the rhetoric-reality gap of the MTS, while the
third challenge involves the actual training of teachers.

4.1 Overcoming in-built beliefs, values and old ideas

Student teachers who enter teaching institutions often come with years of experience. They
have watched their teachers teach, they have formulated ideas about what teachers do, how
they themselves behaved in classrooms and how to assess students. Student teachers will
most likely have formed a personal image of themselves as a teacher who is helpful, kind,
correcting mistakes, instructing new knowledge, explaining, showing and providing knowl-
edge. They feel that they know what it is to be a teacher, they are confident to lead discussions
and to assess well. They have seen it all a hundred times in their own lives as students in
schools (Feiman-Nemser 2001). When they enter the teaching institutions, they are con-
fused when their educators now ask them to think differently and to reconsider how teachers
should behave in the new standards-based era. Therefore, teacher educators are faced with an
issue—how best to prepare their student teachers for situations that are different from what
their students have experienced. Student teachers are asked to re-consider what they know,
and this can make teacher education difficult work (Feiman-Nemser and Featherstone 1992).
Student teachers must now learn to become facilitators, they now allow their own students
to find the solution and to learn to guide rather than dictate. In the new standards-based com-
petency, instead of merely ‘completing the syllabus’, teachers are required to ensure that a
problem is worked through in greater depth. Teachers are also required to pose a problem that
is likely to necessitate higher order thinking skills and unconventional responses. Teachers
are to move away from structuring students’ work to help them avoid mistakes or merely

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providing answers to problems. In the new standards era, teachers would also be required to
treat their students differently, instead of forming ability groups, teachers must expect high
levels of performance from all their students regardless of ability.
As the MTS is formed based on the goals of access and equity (Malaysian Teacher
Standards 2009), teachers are challenged to serve the needs of their students whose cul-
tural, linguistic, socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds which are different from their own.
A challenge then to teacher educators is to breakdown student teachers’ developed values,
norms and habits of learning along diverse cultural and ethnic lines. Student teachers must
learn to teach for diversity. When student teachers are in conflict with their own beliefs,
expectations or understandings about learning, they may teach in ways that will fail to serve
their diverse students (Banks et al. 2005), possibly then compromising the competency that
promotes good teaching as espoused in the standards.
Possibly, there would be a rift with what student teachers bring with them from their own
experiences in schools and the kind of teaching which they must now prepare for. Teacher
educators are required to help student teachers deconstruct their old habits, inherited ideas
and beliefs and replace it with a broader array of alternatives, else skewered images and per-
ceptions of good practice may function as barriers to change (Feiman-Nemser 2001). This
puts onus on teacher educators to adopt the new policies themselves if institutions are to
produce competent future teachers.

4.2 Rhetoric-reality gap of the MTS

Teaching is a complex undertaking and not easily defined. However, it is found that the com-
petencies promoted by the MTS are somewhat rigid and less prescribable in actual practice.
The MTS attempts to establish underlying conceptions of competent teaching. The under-
lying conception of competent teaching emphasises the importance of perceived action and
decision making on the part of the teacher. For example, in one of the question pertaining
to managing class discipline, teachers are asked to choose from a scale numbered 1–4 if
they are capable of: ‘implementing classroom rules based on the school’s rules’,‘undertaking
appropriate action on negative student behaviour’,‘referring the case of a severe discipline
to discipline teacher/counselor/teacher guidance’, and ‘discussing the case of a severe disci-
pline with parents’ (Malaysian Teacher Standards, Standard 3. Question 24). As statements
of good class management, there is little to dispute. However, what should a teacher, con-
fronted with a disciplinary issue that has prevented the lesson from proceeding, do? And
how should the teacher decide? There appears to be a large chasm between those compe-
tency statements about what a teacher is capable of doing as part of the teacher’s role and
the actual enactment of it. In addition, teachers are afforded no opportunity to explain those
actions or decision, and scoring did not allow for the reality that good class management
could take many forms.
Probably the gap that exists between the rhetoric of the competency statements and the
reality of classroom teaching lies in MTS’s newness. Ng (2008b) has argued that sometimes,
rhetorical statements are not necessary all that bad as they symbolise an ideal that is ambitious
and hopefully inspirational. Rhetorical statements “can signal various desiderata or directions
but may not rigidly determine which concrete actions to be embedded within” (Ng 2008b,
p. 600). In the case of MTS, this rhetoric-reality gap will continue to exist, at least until
there is more evidence collected about whether and if those competent teaching advocated
by the standards work. Probably with time and experience, this novelty will diminish and
there will be more evidence on which to compare and a clearer perspective will emerge to

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drive teaching development. Meanwhile can teacher educators afford to wait too long before
propelling change in teacher education?

4.3 Training in the standards-based era

A more experienced teacher may find it easier to transform teaching and to teach creatively,
innovatively and knowledgeably as espoused in the MTS. It may prove harder for a begin-
ning teacher just starting out. Moreover, in the current Malaysian norm of ‘spoon-feeding’
type of teaching that embraces a drill and practice approach for examination (Raja Musa
et al. 2000;UPSR and PMR 2010), the MTS will require beginning teachers to move away
from the ‘conventional’ mode of teaching and learning, which is defined as emphasising
teaching as telling and learning as listening (Feiman-Nemser 2001). The other spectrum of
‘conventional’ mode are learner-centred teaching which emphasises conceptual understand-
ing and provide opportunities to all students to think critically, solve problems and make
meanings of their learning (Feiman-Nemser 2001). The Malaysian government has made
plans to abolish the Primary Six and the Secondary Year Three National Examinations in an
effort to move the school system away from an ‘examination-centric’ structure (UPSR and
PMR 2010). The third challenge then is the training of new teachers that will require them to
move away from the popular drill and practice mode and away from an ‘examination-centric’
form.
Granted, some aspects of good teaching researched during the past four decades about
learning to teach (e.g. Fuller and Bown 1975; Grossman 1990; Murray 1995) have helped
inform the development and implementation of teacher education programs. Moreover, some
facets of teaching practice may remain relevant such as students working in groups and pro-
viding remedial work, but possibly others may need to change. For example, in the ‘con-
ventional’ mode, the teacher plans a lesson to provide information. However, in the teaching
promoted by the MTS, planning a lesson may change, for example, to one that engages
students in open-ended problems, accepting different answers, allowing students to struggle
with confusion, and at the same time managing a productive discussion. In the first scenario,
a teacher plans by analysing the subject material, devices steps to provide clear explana-
tions, considers a strategy or uses teaching aids that can better clarify the information, and
decides on the best assignment. In the standards era scenario, a teacher must now explore a
problem within a subject more carefully, expands what is stated in the written text and links
it to students’ ‘real-life’ situations. The teacher tries to put herself/himself in the shoes of
the students and imagine how the students may explore the problem, how the students may
think and solve the problem. Assessments take the forms of students presenting the work and
justifying their best solutions. A teacher may find it hard to plan a series of steps, as the lesson
will be dependent on what her/his students do and say. A teacher in the standards-based era
is akin to be on a ‘voyage’ rather than on a clearly mapped out journey. Nevertheless, during
this ‘voyage’, a teacher must also be confident with the terrain she/he is in—a teacher must
be alert to what the students are saying, at the same time—allowing constructive responses
and drawing out ideas from the other students. If an example of lesson planning may need
to change in the standards-based era, may it also mean that teacher educators’ understanding
of how student teachers learn to plan need to change, and that other aspects of learning to
teach need to change too? In addition, could the absence of research in these periods of
transformation in Malaysia mean that teacher educators will have to build fresh theories of
learning to teach as they teach?

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This challenge, like the other two, holds important implications for teacher educators. The
next section attempts to discuss some of these implications.

5 Implications for teacher educators

In the light of these challenges and some unanswered questions, what actions may teacher
educators take? The following sections attempt to suggest some impetus towards action and
testing of different methods of preparing future teachers.

5.1 Forming new ideas and beliefs

High on teacher educators’ agendas may be the need to establish new components within
the teacher education curriculum and to conceptualise new ways to help student teachers
teach and to prepare them to integrate newer innovations with instructions. However, before
any ‘revamp’ of teacher education programs, teacher educators may want to analyse what
aspects of the teaching practice that can still be learned by student teachers with those that
need to transform. Through the decades, much about learning to teach has improved, and
although assumptions that teaching and learning need to change, many characteristics of
good teaching do remain. It would be quite unreasonable to expect student teachers to be
able to immediately embrace the new ways of teaching. These students may be better trained
to develop by first mastering traditional mode of teaching before being introduced to more
innovative learner-centered teaching (Feiman-Nemser 2001). Teacher educators may want to
sort out and determine those teaching and learning aspects that are to remain and those that
will require new formulation. For example, learning to plan a lesson is a staple of most teacher
education curriculum, however, learning to plan may now necessitate new improvisation that
is different from the conventional understanding of planning.
Similarly, student teachers’ beliefs, values and their function in the teacher education
process may need to be refocused to be in alignment with the requirements of the stan-
dards-based images of good teaching. The inherent perceptions and beliefs student teachers
bring into their education may function as a barrier towards their ability and willingness to
change. They may be misled into thinking that what they know about teaching from their
own experiences would be enough. They may find it hard to break old habits and become
inflexible to learn new ways and receive new ideas (Feiman-Nemser 2001; Murray 1995).
Teacher educators may need to provide opportunities and avenue for teacher candidates to
analyse and reflect upon those in-grained perceptions and beliefs so that these beliefs can be
discussed and dispelled. Through student teachers’ own self-evaluation of their beliefs, what
may develop are new images of good teaching and the formation of fresh beliefs about good
teaching to propel and sustain them through their teaching careers.

5.2 Walking the talk

Teacher educators have important roles to play in increasing student teachers’ insights, teach-
ing skills, and assisting them to seek and make sense of pedagogical information in the context
of teaching and learning (Feiman-Nemser 2001). Teacher educators are required to introduce
new ideas to challenge popular assumptions, processes and outcomes in teacher education.
Clearly too, in preparing student teachers for the standards-based era, teacher educators need
to also practice new curricular materials in their programs, be they case studies, using CD-

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ROMS, creating actual teaching environment, or immersing their students into actual school
environments. Sometimes in the excitement of new designs and ideas, teacher educators tend
to forget that they have at their disposal a method that is inexpensive, yet effective—they can
‘walk the talk’, that is, to teach student teachers as they would have them teach. Teacher edu-
cators use their own teaching to help their students learn to teach. Student teachers develop
teaching skills by observing how their educators facilitate and teach and at the same time
analyse what impact those instructions have on them. If carried out as part of the teacher
educators’ teaching process, the teaching activities may help foster a common understanding
of what ‘new’ teaching should be and to strengthen shared standards.

5.3 Developing and situating practices

Student teachers have very little exposure to actual teaching and even less insights into the
workings of teaching practices such as professional reasoning, analysis or decision-making
(Feiman-Nemser 2001). As previously discussed, student teachers carry with them images
of teaching from their own experiences in schools as students. Their schools have provided
them with an expected view of teaching and learning. Chances are that student teachers who
enter teaching institutions have very little perspective of what is expected of them or what is
promoted in the current standards framework. Therefore, teacher educators need to consider
constructing an environment in which student teachers are able to apply new representations
of practice and provide them with opportunities to investigate approaches to teaching and
learning that are compatible with the idea of a standards-based agenda. One way in which
this may be achieved is to situate work in the schools by developing resources and opportu-
nities for teacher candidates to examine new images of practice in schools. No matter how
good a teacher education program is constructed or no matter how high the quality of the
teaching curriculum, student teachers will still not experience the new images of teaching if
they do not have the opportunity to try it out in a real environment. Critics may argue that
the mandatory teaching practicum that student teachers are required to undergo is already in
practice. However, this time around, teacher educators must seek out schools and teachers
who teach and think in ways that support the efforts in the new standards framework. Since
most schools are probably also struggling to understand the requirements of the MTS, the
visions of teaching and learning towards the new standards do not, at least for now, exist in
many schools. There will not be many teachers who are ready to help new teachers with the
kind of practice and ways of working which is in line with the standards. Such predicament
in itself creates new implications for teacher educators.
First, teacher educators need to move out of the teaching institutions and to work with
selected schools to help start and incubate school practices that align with the standards. In
addition, teacher educators could work closely with experienced teachers in developing the
kinds of teaching and learning envisioned by the transformers. There, student teachers on
teaching practice can then be sent to these schools and will have the opportunity to observe
experienced teachers working with the transformation effort in mind. There will be sharing
of teaching practices and student teachers will have the opportunity of listening to commen-
taries from experienced teachers about the difficulties and rewards of teaching in new ways
(Feiman-Nemser 2001). Moreover, they can also work and try out the new roles that will be
required of them as teachers. They can be assimilated to the new ways through their own
capacity to form, experiment and interpret their own practices.
Second, teacher educators need to start developing teaching and learning exemplars such
as videos, CD-ROMS and written materials of ‘good teaching’, or ‘good class management

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and discipline’ to show student teachers what they are not yet able to practice in reality. These
paraphernalia come with their own limitation as they cannot completely depict the correct
enactment of a class teaching (Wilson and Ball 1996). Nevertheless, it would be a start.
Lastly, teaching institutions should consider establishing some kind of developmental
school, rather like the Laboratory Schools situated in the University of Chicago in America.
The early laboratory schools housed in the University of Chicago were envisioned by John
Dewey to challenge traditional and conservative attitudes about education. The schools were
not only committed to delivering new and different experiences for students in the classrooms
then, but were also as an avenue to assist in the preparation of prospective teachers. Today,
these laboratory schools have become ambitious learning communities with both teachers
and students engaged in shared learning and inquiry (Harms and DePencier 1996). If similar
institutions can be developed in Malaysia, it can be a site for teacher education to develop
resources and at the same time provide opportunities for student teachers to meet and examine
new ways of practice. In addition, such visionary laboratory schools can be ‘trail-blazers’ to
lead the way in improving the science and art of teaching in the standards-based era.
It is to be noted that these ideas are not entirely new (and definitely not exhaustive) and
some will have existed in teacher education in Malaysia although they may not have been
documented and presented for public perusal. Therefore, teacher educators need to boldly
experiment with various path of inquiries (some of which are suggested here), document what
has been done, replicate studies, and discover what others are doing in teaching institutions
around the country.

6 Conclusion

The MTS suggests that change is taking place within the teacher education system in Malay-
sia. There is an urgent need to transform the teacher education system to prepare the country
to compete in the globalised arena. Cambodia, the Philippines, Singapore and Hong Kong
have formulated various goals and have initiated diverse perspectives in their teacher educa-
tion reforms to compete in the increasing complex and differentiated global arena. However,
efforts of transformation come with their own issues and concerns. For example, Cambodia’s
reform in teacher education is aimed at producing lasting changes in teaching in the classroom
as well as the management of teacher education. However, policy makers are sometimes hin-
dered by the lack of transparency, accountability and meritocracy, which still prevails (Tan
2007). The Philippines announced its teacher education reform agenda to address the dif-
fering educational variations in the 1980s and according to Guzman (2003) has not stopped
reforming the system since. However, each period of reform not only adds depth but also
complexity (Guzman 2003). Singapore has focused their education reform on curriculum
changes and has attempted to move control of education from a central administration by
decentralising decision-making power to the schools. What needs to be seen is if the govern-
ment led reform matches with site-level initiatives to create the needed reforms in teaching
and learning (Ng 2007). Hong Kong has embarked on an ambitious competency framework,
which has resulted in rumbles of discontent among teachers about added workload, and
teachers have experienced helplessness when they are confronted with the need to change
and the added work pressure (Tam and Cheng 2007).
Similarly, the use of the MTS to improve teacher quality will not be spared of issues
or concerns. Some educators may see the application of standards to teaching as restrictive
whilst others may question whether the standards can adequately measure a complex event
such as teaching and reduce it to mere numerical scores (Serafini 2002). Critics may argue that

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the standardisation of teaching impedes the creativity, autonomy and flexibility of teachers
to respond to individual student needs. Standards may force teachers to conform to specific
teaching practices over other approaches (Serafini 2002; King 1994). Furthermore, whether
the Malaysian stakeholders and the public will see the MTS as a guarantee of teacher quality
and whether it can change their perception of the teaching profession remains to be seen.
What is apparent is that the MTS sets out to represent an image of accomplished teaching
practice put forth by the TED that has designed the teaching standards.
The aim of teachers moving through the actions embellished in MTS is to achieve high
teaching competency, and to do so, teachers must align their practice with the standards.
Although the goal to achieve is apparent, the impact of the MTS on the teaching profession
remains unclear as there is currently very little evidence associated with the MTS. What
can be postulated with some certainty is that the transformation will challenge the teaching
profession in many areas, and teacher education will be one such critical area. How to help
student teachers better conceptualise and develop professional knowledge in an area that
has not been carefully studied is no less challenging than building a viable unified teacher
preparation program. Nevertheless, the MTS has the potential to affect teaching and teacher
education programs in very positive ways.
Although challenges have been raised, and they are by no means comprehensive, there also
exist implications for improving the way teachers are trained. Teacher educators can decide
to remain in the periphery and not make any significant effort to respond to the transforma-
tion challenge or teacher educators can take this opportunity to change boldly and be guided
with new ideas of what is possible. The current enamour with competency-based standards
in Malaysia can work in favour for teaching institutions. It offers opportunities for teacher
educators to break with the past and reformulate new methods, investigate new ways of doing
things and explore new kinds of teaching. Teacher educators must also start to share the same
goals, standards and knowledge base for the successful engagement in improving teacher
learning and practice. Just as student teachers have a lot to learn, so do teacher educators
have a lot to re-learn. Teacher educators will need to work through the standards and begin to
reflect and critique their own practices from different perspectives. They must courageously
make appropriate changes and decision for the training of their graduates.

Acknowledgements The author would also like to thank the editors and reviewers for their constructive
feedback and comments which have helped towards improving the writing of this article.

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