While other countries participating in the Teacher-led Learning Circles for Formative Assessment project (T3LFA) have already held their first learning circles, the project has just commenced in Malaysia.
In Malaysia, the national-level project is coordinated by the National Union of the Teaching Profession (NUTP) committee members with an EI-appointed national researcher - Associate Professor Dr Zuwati Hasim from Universiti Malaya.
NUTP has worked closely with EI and the national researcher to achieve the aims and objectives of the project, holding meetings to plan the project and to discuss core learnings from circles that had already begun.
The T3LFA project in Malaysia involves six facilitators and thirty primary school teachers who are teaching at different types of schools across the country. These schools are known as the national school and the national-type school. The national-type school is divided into two further categories - the Chinese school, and the Tamil school. These schools are differentiated based on their medium of instruction which means that there are three different types of primary schools represented through teachers involved in the project in Malaysia.
In ensuring positive and productive outcomes of the learning circles, a briefing session and a refresher course on formative assessment were held on the 8th of April 2023 at the NUPT Headquarters in Kuala Lumpur for six selected learning circle facilitators. The first briefing session was delivered by the NUTP representative, Ng Ngai Leong. In the briefing session, the project facilitators were given a presentation that clarified their roles and responsibilities.
Dr Zuwati followed this briefing by delivering a refresher course that defined core terms, introduced facilitators to different types of assessment, and explained the varied purposes of assessment. Facilitators were then reminded of the core tenants of formative assessment.
The session ended with a planning session, in which the schedule for the consequent series of learning circle workshops and tutorials was agreed upon by all in attendance. The national researcher, Dr Zwati, reported that all facilitators were looking forward to meeting the participants for the first learning circle workshops that were to be held on the 13th of May 2023.
Photos from the briefing session and refresher course in Malaysia are available here.
Want to find out more? Continue to keep up to date with the project in Malaysia and across our six other project countries by visiting our dedicated project page.