1.0 INTRODUCTION
1.1 Introduction (Identification)
“Education in Malaysia is a continuous effort towards further developing individual potential in a comprehensive and integrated way to create a balanced and harmonious human being intellectually, spiritually, emotionally, and physically based on faith and obedience to God. This effort is to produce Malaysians who are knowledgeable, responsible, and capable of achieving personal well-being and contributing to the harmony and prosperity of society and the country.”
(National Education Philosophy, 2013)
Based on the National Education Philosophy that has been created, everything related to education has a continuous process from all aspects. Therefore, as a teacher, you should always have a sense of responsibility, gain knowledge and skills, and have an attitude that meets the professional criteria. This is supported by Rahimah Ghazali (2013), who states that the duties and responsibilities of teachers are enormous and require meticulousness and concern. In addition, teachers need to understand and shoulder this responsibility with the profession’s knowledge, skills, expertise, attitude, and ethics. She added that the teacher’s work is never finished because the task of educating never ends.
According to Noriati A. Rashid, Lee Keok Cheong, Zulkifli Mahayudin, and Zakiah Noordin (2012), the Primary School Integrated Curriculum (KBSR) and Primary School Standard Curriculum (KSSR) are among the parts contained in the National Curriculum. The Primary School Integrated Curriculum (KBSR) is a comprehensive and integrated education program in content structure, approach, teaching, and learning materials. The goal of KBSR is to develop the potential of each individual as a whole to produce balanced, harmonious, and virtuous people. Knowledge, skills, and values are integrated into all curricular and co-curricular activities. Starting in 2011, KSSR was implemented in stages with Year 1 students. KSSR aims to holistically develop students’ potential to produce balanced, harmonious, noble, critical, creative, and innovative human capital with soft skills to prepare them for facing current challenges and the 21st century.
Noriati et al. (2012) stated that primary education implements and runs KBSR and KSSR. Primary education is an education program provided to pupils between the ages of 6 and 12 to provide a solid foundation in the skills of reading, writing, counting (3M), and reasoning; introduction to the basic concepts of science; vocational skills; generic skills; as well as the application of pure values. Primary education is the basis for developing and expanding students’ cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains parallel to FPK.
In Primary Education, there is a program known as the Remedial Education Program to support the goal of Primary Education, ensuring that students struggling to master 3M basic skills are given special rehabilitation. According to Khairuddin Mohamad, Faridah Alias, and Faiziah Shamsuddin (2013), the Special Rehabilitation Program is a unique program for level one students who have difficulty mastering the basic skills of 3M. Emphasis on the Rehabilitation Program is an important thing that needs to be done to ensure that all students master aspects of literacy and numeracy.
The country also has excellent educational aspirations, and its driving force to make the generation that will inherit the country’s leadership have potent qualities. In line with the Malaysian Education Development Plan (PPPM) 2013-2025, thinking skills must be applied in teaching and learning in schools, including Rehabilitation Education. It is very ironic if remedial students with advantages, strengths, talents, and thinking power are not tested.
Therefore, as a teacher who has the responsibility as an agent of change, research has been done to overcome the issues that have been identified. In Rehabilitation Education, rehabilitation students are given interventions to master skills in stages. The prioritized skills are the basic 3M skills: reading, writing, and counting (Khairuddin et al., 2013). However, the comprehension skills of rehabilitation students are not given much attention. In order to overcome the weaknesses of the study participants, namely remedial students in comprehension skills, the researcher used Peta Bush. The Bubble Map is found in the Thinking Map (i-THINK).
1.2 Reflection on Teaching and Learning
Trainee teachers at the Teacher Education Institute of Malaysia (IPGM) conducted two practicums starting in 2014. The First Phase and Second Phase practicums were each conducted for three months. The First Phase Practicum is carried out in semester five, and the Second Phase Practicum is in semester 7. Practicum is a process and experience that every prospective teacher must face to practice and implement the theories of teaching and learning learned during training at the IPGM campus.
As a Special Rehabilitation Education option trainee teacher, I have interacted and done activities with rehabilitation students. The first interaction made me nervous, and I taught according to my wishes. I have given the classroom rules that remedial students need during teaching and learning,w known as teaching and facilitation. Remedial students have different intelligence compared to mainstream students. However, that is not an obstacle for rehabilitation teachers to implement and apply thinking skills in teaching and learning. Remedial students also have the right to receive thinking training to think at the maximum level that remedial students can achieve individually.
According to Khairuddin Mohamad, Maridah Alias and Faiziah Shamsudin. (2013), remedial students are in Level 1 in primary school: Year One to Year Three. They face learning problems in reading, writing, counting, listening, thinking, speaking, drawing, reasoning, understanding, and recalling. In addition, they also face problems in doing activities or movements that require the use of art muscles. This happens due to several factors such as genetics, prenatal, and environment, which cause the ability of rehabilitation students to receive learning to be meager.
However, research and scientific findings show that humans have the same brain capacity. If reading, writing, and counting can be restored, listening, thinking, drawing, reasoning, understanding, and remembering skills can also be restored with the proper techniques, methods, and approaches. According to Sutanto Windura (2014), our brain can store unlimited information. He stated that, according to Prof. Marg Rosenweig, humans can remember ten new pieces of information in just one second. In 100 years, we have used less than 10 percent of the brain’s capacity.
The word ‘capable’ indicates that the brain has a high capacity to remember but is not used well or in beneficial matters. Therefore, remedial students need to be trained and learn memory ability or, scientifically, the ability and functionality of the existing brain by implementing a learning style such as constructivism that emphasizes existing knowledge and experience. Undoubtedly, knowledge and experience give remedial students excellent thinking power.
Based on the experience of the Phase 1 practicum, the rehabilitation students who have been taught were observed to have significant changes after using questioning techniques that tested the students’ thinking skills. Other effects also show that thinking skills show changes in students’ thinking patterns and that speaking, reasoning, understanding, and recalling skills experience significant changes. In the first month, all students cannot give ideas and are shy to give opinions. After the second month, questioning techniques and thinking tools have changed passive students to active ones in class. This situation triggered the researcher’s desire to study the use of thinking tools in rehabilitation education. This finding has attracted the interest of researchers to conduct research. In the last month, the students are used to activities that test their thinking skills, accompanied by activities that require communication skills and leadership.
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