Unleashing Students’ and Teachers’ Voice and Choice in the Learning of Mathematics and Science

This study examined the perception of Malaysian secondary school students and teachers on the reversal of the national policy on teaching and learning of mathematics and science in English (PPSMI) in 2009. A total of 14 secondary schools were selected throughout the nation and the population sample under study consist of the following: 314 secondary school teachers with 154 math and 160 science teachers; 1311 pupils involving a total of 35.2% secondary one students, 49.8% secondary two whilst 15% were from secondary three. This study employed a purely quantitative research design which entailed the use of two questionnaires for both students and teachers respectively. The results revealed that approximately three fifth of the students expressed their desire to continue learning mathematics in English as compared to approximately half for the learning of Science. Based on ethnicity groups, results showed that there exists a significant relationship (at the 0.05 level) where 79.4% of Indian pupils indicated their preference to continue with the policy as compared to 72.2% and 45.9% for Chinese and Malay pupils respectively. With regards to the teachers’ preferential rate to continue the teaching both the subjects in English, results revealed that 54.4% of the Math and 54.5% of the Science teachers indicated a positive response indicating they would like to continue teaching in English language. A further analysis indicated that 75% of the math novice teachers would like to continue with this policy as compared to 41.9% and 52.4% for experience and very experience teachers respectively. This relationship was significant at the 0.05 level. The findings also exhibited that 70.3% of Science novice teachers also indicated a positive response compared to 61.7% and 41.7% for experience and very experience teachers respectively. This relationship was also significant at the 0.05 level. It is hoped that findings from this study may be able to highlight some new perspectives in relooking into this policy for future research (such as the perspective of novice teachers) which were not previously considered in earlier studies.