Week 4 Part 1- Mini Research Journal Report.

Assalamualaikum and hye to readers.

Few days back, I've wrote a post on SPSS, which you can read here. so, this post is a continuum from the last one, where in this post I'll reflect on writing a mini research journal report, based on the data from SPSS. what we have to do? me and my partner, helmi have to write a journal report based on our finding before. the survey i mean, the one that we carried out using google docs (form). that journal report should contain the abstract, introduction, literature review, research approach, findings, discussion, recommendation and conclusion, and lastly references. please take a look at part of our complete journal below:

1.0 ABSTRACT

The research was done to identify the level of 21st century skills in the respondents from TESL UKM- IPG. 19 students from TESL UKM-IPG responded to the survey. The survey was conducted by Salina Sayang binti Kamal Arifin and Mohd Helmi Syazwan bin Mohd Zaki. The skills involved in the research are the skills in 21st century skills, which also can mean the skills needed to remain knowledgeable in the 21st century. For examples, critical thinking skills and communication skills. From the survey conducted, a few recommendations had been made to enhance the skills in the students.

2.0 INTRODUCTION

21st century skills are the skills that increasingly demand creativity, perseverance, and problem solving combined with performing well as part of a team. 21st century skills do not only includes ICT skills, but also other soft skills like communication skills and critical thinking skills. 21st century skills can be divided into four categories; ways of thinking (creativity, critical thinking, problem-solving, decision-making and learning), ways of working (communication and collaboration), tools for working (ICT and information literacy), and skills for living in the world (citizenship, life and career, and personal and social responsibility).

3.0 LITERATURE REVIEW

21st century skills are not unknown terminology to talk among people all around the world. It vibrates and propagates through all regions and makes it
very important to acquire these skills. Community in the academic field, students and teachers especially, should master these skills. Classroom teachers need to be familiar with these skills and integrate them throughout the curriculum. What are 21st century skills? Based on the U.S Secretary of Education Arne Duncan (2009) referred to 21st century skills as "skills that increasingly demand creativity, perseverance, and problem solving combined with performing well as part of a team." As to wrap up, 21st century skills means, how well students can do with knowledge and applying what they learn in authentic contexts. Their choicest or most essential , vital part of some idea or experience involves strong communication and collaboration skills, expertise in technology, innovative and creative thinking skills, and an ability to solve problems.
In applying these skills to the youngsters, some difficulties are emerging and creating a barrier in achieving it. Especially in Malaysia, we are focusing more on the exam result rather than acquiring these skills. The problem arises by the critics, they argue by saying, “21st century skills as a meaningless term and distraction from the more important work of teaching core context and these types of higher-order skills cannot be measured in reliable, cost-effective, or scalable ways”. (Elena Silva, The Phi Delta Kappan, Vol. 90, No. 9, May, 2009). Not to forget, Malaysian now live among the first class mentality people, so, they will see these problem as a global one and they tend to criticize it when these skills is implemented in Malaysia. How to solve this particular problem? In resolving this, government should convince and win the citizens hearts. We have to open our eyes widely as we are living among the first class mentality people and it is hard for them to accept anything or almost everything when it comes to something that is not reliable and ambiguous. They will not accept these skills easily when they are not seeing the result and consequences after these skills being implemented.
Government should really convincing the citizens and disseminating the „21st century skills‟ ideas so that it can be accepted by our citizens.
The implementation also can be really unmanageable when the teachers are not trained well by the professional in carrying these skills. Once these skills is running on track, it will be obstructed when the teachers could not deliver the teaching lessons and make the students master these skills and as the consequence, watering down the objective of the 21st century skills. To make matters worse, students are leaving schools without mastering one of these skills neither communication skills nor expertise in technology. So, this problem has to be fixed. Teachers should be sent to some courses and trained well by the expertise and professional so that they will be running straight right on the track. This should be done before these 21st century skills are implemented in schools. Students have to be trained well by the teachers because “skills for the future also were recommended long ago by John Dewey, who proposed an education "grounded in experience," in which students interact with the ever-changing world”(Gohnson and Reed 2008, 1 3).
Last but not least, another problem is the lacking of programs in 21st skills is the lacking of programs of introducing and educating the students about 21st century skills. As a result, students, especially in the rural area are not aware of these skills, and can not master them. For now, one program known for developing 21st skills is the establishment of “Smart Schools”. Smart school is a learning institution that has been systematically reinvented in terms of teaching-learning practices and school management in order to prepare the children for the Information Age (Yassim, 2010). Basically, smart schools are introduced to prepare the students with enough knowledge and skills to confront with the Information Age, a time where nothing else is valuable except knowledge. There is a phase in the implementation of smart schools, known as “making all schools smart” phase. This phase is a continuous process to acculturate the use of technology in education to ensure quality teaching & learning, effectiveness of school administration and management and teachers‟ ICT competency (Yassim, 2010). In this phase, all schools in
Malaysia will gradually undergo revolutions and change is smart schools. There are four primary objectives of this phase. They are:
1. To produce a knowledge society that is critical, creative, and innovative.
2. To produce technology savvy individuals for the Information Age.
3. To bridge the digital divide.
4. To cultivate life-long learning based on ICT.
From all of the above objectives, we can conclude that all of them are more towards benefiting technology as 21st century tools. Besides, there are no specific criteria for the students to enter those smart schools. There are no limitations on which students have the right to enroll in those schools. In my opinion, there should be continuity for such programs. If providing another program is quite costly, maybe Ministry of Education can provide a new curriculum which contains the same elements as the smart schools‟ curriculum.
To conclude, all of the problems above should be solved by all parties which include government, students, teachers, and society as well. This is very important to produce a better generation with vast knowledge and critical thinking. In Vision 2020, it is stated that “The challenge of establishing a scientific and progressive society, a society that is innovative and forward looking, one that is not only a consumer of technology but also a contributor to the scientific and technological civilization.” This means that Malaysia also is very committed in producing knowledgeable citizens, those who can contribute more to the country.

4.0 RESEARCH APPROACH

For the research to be completed, a spreadsheet survey on 21st century skills was created using Google docs. The survey, which consists of 10 questions were sent to 38 trainee teachers from IPG Dato‟ Razali Ismail and IPG Sarawak via their official Gmail account. But only 19 trainee teachers respond to the survey. The survey mainly focused on two aspects; the respondents‟ opinions on 21st century skills, and the respondents‟ self 21st century skills. For the respondents self 21st century skills, they were asked to rate their own skills. Four scales were given; 1- poor, 2-moderate, 3-good, 4- excellent. From the respondents self-rating, we can conclude on how they think about the soft skills in themselves. All the data gained from the survey was analysed in frequencies using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) 19.

you can read more on this link.

what i have gain from this week's assignment?

1) how to write a journal. i mean, the exact way to write the journal, the formats, the fonts, spacing, margins and etc. all have to be right.

2) how to discuss about something.in this journal report, i have to discuss on the findings(data). they all have to be analysed one by one, without making any single mistakes. because one mistakes may affect the whole report. so, i've to try my best not to do any mistakes when discussing on the data.

3) teamwork. still the best. you can't work alone. this assignment requires  a lot of attention and i cant make it alone. that's why i need my partner. thanks alot to mr helmi syazwan. :))

that's all for this update. will update on other assignments later. till then, bye. and have a nice day ahead. thanks for reading!