Since our country, Malaysia has gained independence in 1957, our national

education system had undergone a lot of changes towards the development and
enhancement in the education area.

Generally, Malaysian nowadays is dealing with major challenges in order to prepare

a good and quality education system ( Kementerian Pendidikan Malaysia, 2010). Therefore,
in October 2011, our Ministry of Education had launched a comprehensive review about the
education system in Malaysia in order to develop a new National Education Blueprint that is
in line with our developing country (Ministry of Education 2013, 2012).
YAB Dato Seri Najib bin Tun Abdul Razak (2012) said that, in order to meet our high
aspirations amidst an increasingly competitive global environment, we cannot stand still. Our
country requires a transformation of its entire education system. Thus, in order to fulfil the
aspiration, teachers need to play their role as the agents of change in the successful
transformation of the Malaysian school curriculum.
The teachers play an important role in order to implement or change something that
relate to the curriculum. Without the total and active participation from the teachers, the aim
of the curriculum is hard to be achieved. Generally, the participation of teachers in the
process of changing the curriculum at every school is different. There are a lot of challenges
that need to face by them and they need to find the most effective ways to overcome it.
As the agent of curriculum change, teachers act as practitioner. They must
implement their knowledge and experience to make sure that teaching and learning session
becomes effective and meaningful. As our curriculum nowadays has integrated the ICT in
every lesson, they should know to use the computer in order to gain the interest of the
pupils. The use of ICT is not only in the classroom, our curriculum itself, Primary School
Curriculum Standard (KSSR) require them to use ICT into maximise for example, key in the

achievements of the pupils into the system. Thus, every teacher should know how to use the
ICT.
They have to implement adapt with the new curriculum even they have a different
demography background, abilities, motivation, attitude, knowledge and skills. Before this, our
curriculum is based on the Integrated Curriculum of Primary School (KBSR) which focused
on the three skills such as reading, writing and counting. But, now, as the curriculum had
changed into the Standard Curriculum of Primary School (KSSR) which focuses on 4 skills
which are reading, writing, counting and reasoning (Kementerian Pendidikan Malaysia,
2014) . Besides that, there are a lot of changes happen between the KBSR and KSSR.
Thus, to help the teachers to gain the knowledge and also master the skills in their
subject such as English in school, our minister of education had introduced the pre-service
training those who wants to be a teacher. In 2007, the minister had made teaching
profession is only for those who have a degree. There are two initiatives that take place in
that process. Firstly, Institut Pendidikan Guru (IPG) offer Program Ijazah Sarjana Muda
(PISMP) to the SPM pupils and secondly, to the teachers who are in service, they will
receive an incentive from the government to pursue their studies so that they can reach to
the degree level (Ministry of Education 2013, 2012).
Personally, the quality pre-training service is preparing to help them and teacher-tobe have a strong foundation for them to teach the pupils as they can implement their
knowledge and skills from what they had learned in the teaching pre-service training. For
example, an English teacher-to-be will receive all the knowledge and skills in the teaching
pre-service training. They will learn how to deal with the new curriculum effectively.
Thus, the teachers need to learn how to implement the KSSR in the teaching and
learning process. The roles of the teachers are to equip themselves with the information and
knowledge about KSSR because they need to run the KSSR curriculum.

Besides that, to act as the agent of curriculum change, the teachers must have the
knowledge and professional skills in their field of education in order to make sure the
transformation of the curriculum is effective (Mizell, 2010). Teachers are leaders. They are
the king in their classroom. This is when the teacher need to play their role as a decision
maker. The teacher must be able to discriminate between dependant and independent
sequences, to task a more complex learning into its simpler component and to diagnose
pupils in terms of the component already possessed and those which remain to be acquired
(Hunter, 1979). This means that the teacher must possess the decision making power. They
need to able to distinguish which are proper and which are not, which is effective and
ineffective. They need to be able to do decision making so that they will do the correct
decision in selecting the teaching materials, selecting the approaches, methods, strategies,
and many more. This will ensure that the lesson that they conduct will suit the pupils need
and level.
English is our second language and to learn to master it, it requires time, efforts and
interests. Thus, teachers must play their roles as an analyst. They need to do much reading
to know how to analyse their pupils and themselves. According to (Tyler, 1949) teachers are
sociologists. They do analysis on contemporary society (knowledge, skills, attitudes that will
help people to deal effectively with the critical problems of contemporary life). The teachers
need to know their pupils levels, pupils backgrounds, pupils interests, and many more in
order to make the lesson really an effective lesson. The teachers also need to analyse in
many aspect. They need to analyse the curriculum, the method they use, the pupils, and
even themselves. They need to understand all of that, and even many more unmentioned
aspect in here to really help to improve our curriculum.
As for the teachers, they need to have the time, efforts and interests towards their
profession because they are the agent of curriculum change. It is their roles to make sure all
the pupils can have a better understanding and they can use the English language in the
correct way. Thus, focussing on English teachers, they need to master the English before

they teach the pupils and to measure the quality of English teacher, our government have
tested all the English teachers using the Cambridge Placement Test (CPT) (Ministry of
Education 2013, 2012).
Another role of the teachers as the agent of curriculum change is as a researcher.
The teachers must be innovative and creative. They can develop both aspects through
exploring all the things surround them. In KSSR lesson, the creativity and innovation must be
portrayed through the pupils work. Thus, the teachers need to play their role to stimulate the
pupils to be more creative and innovative so that they can develop their thinking skills to the
highest level they can achieve (Syed Ismail Syed Mustapa and Ahmad Subki Miskon, 2013).
The teachers should be innovative and creative in their teaching process. For
example, instead of asking the pupils to extract the main point from the passage by
underlying it, they can ask the pupils to develop a main map. It is more effective for the
pupils to learn and they also can learn in the fun and meaningful ways.
There are many roles of the teachers. Thus, they need to take the responsibility and
the opportunity to strengthen the curriculum and it will lead our education system expose to
the global education. Besides teachers, the school should also be prepared to change
according to the time as our country is developing in advance technology, thus, the facilities
should also need to upgrade. In addition, as the trend of curriculum change happens rapidly
nowadays and it is expected to be in line with the global education requirements all of the
stakeholders, not only the teachers should play their roles as the agent of curriculum
change.

REFERENCES

1. Kementerian Pendidikan Malaysia. (2010). Pembangunan Pendidikan 20012010. Malaysia: AG Grafik Sdn. Bhd.
2. Hunter, M. (1979). Teaching is Decision Making. Elizabethtown: The
Continental Press, inc.
3. Kementerian Pendidikan Malaysia. (2014). Kurikulum standard sekolah
rendah (KSSR) - perbezaan KBSR dan KSSR. Retrieved from Laman Web Rasmi
Bahagian Pembagunan Kurikulum: http://web.moe.gov.my/bpk/v2/index.php?
option=com_content&view=article&id=311&Itemid=477&lang=en&limitstart
=7
4. Ministry of Education 2013. (2012). Malaysia Education Blueprint 2013 - 2025.
Malaysia: Kementerian Pendidikan Malaysia.
5. Mizell, H. (2010). Why professional development matters. United States of
America: Learning Forward.
6. Syed Ismail Syed Mustapa & Ahmad Subki Miskon. (2013). Guru dan cabaran
semasa. Puchong: Penerbitan Multimedia Sdn. Bhd.
7. Tyler, R. W. (1949). Basic principles of curriculum and instruction. Chicago and
London: The University of Chicago Press.

THE ROLE OF TEACHERS AS AGENT OF CURRICULUM

CHANGE