Research Proposal
Recurring Issues of the Malaysian Primary School’s
Music Education
by Ong Joee 1001956278
IN385 Final Year Research Project 1
Semester of January 2022
not well-grounded; lack of factual details about music education in Malaysia
Background
stands for?
Music Education is a widely discussed topic worldwide. In Malaysia, music was not included
as a subject in primary school during the first national curriculum, the KLSR. Music
education was only included when the next curriculum came along in 1982, the KBSR. Since
then, our primary school education has gone through a new curriculum called the KSSR in
2011, and the music curriculum and syllabus has changed along with it. While the curriculum
of the subject has been revised, issues and challenges in Malaysian primary school’s music unclear
education are still present. Debates and discussions about these issues and challenges can be
found reported on different sources of media. Need more research about issues and challenges as the "problem"
-- get citations or some facts from the annotated bibliography below
This paper will explore and compare the issues of primary music education in public schools
of Malaysia. A compilation of issues in Malaysian primary school’s music education will be
made, and then analysed to find out the recurring issues.
Purpose of Study be more specific? teaching challenges? difficulty or consistency in curriculum design? student
learning due to multi-racial or cultural background? lack of qualified music teachers?
The objective of this study is to observe the challenges of primary music education in the
public schools in Malaysia from 2000 to 2021. This paper aims to find the common issues
over the years and to explore what are the possible factors causing the issue.
Besides that, the paper will explore the factors that cause the issues of primary music
education in the public schools in Malaysia from 2000 to 2021, such as school facilities,
prerequisite to enrol into teacher training, support from school’s administration and
government, technological support, budget allocated for music education, and parental
this needs to be elaborated in the background: to present the "problem"
support.
citations are needed
Research Scope
In this paper, only the issues of music education in Malaysian public primary schools will be
discussed. This includes the Sekolah Kebangsaan (SK), our national schools, and Sekolah
Jenis Kebangsaan (SJK) which are vernacular schools. The SJK schools are divided into
SJK(C), which are the Chinese schools, and SJK(T) which are the Tamil schools. Both of
these will be included in the study.
this is too broad and rather vague as reseach scope. Be specific
Any discussions of challenges faced by the public primary schools in Malaysia including East
Malaysia will be considered. This paper will focus on the available literature from 2000 to
2021.
Key Questions
1. What are the recurring issues in Malaysian primary school’s music education
between the year 2000 to 2021?
2. What are the social, economical, and political factors that contribute to the
recurring issues faced in the Malaysian primary school’s music education?
What is the significance of finding out these "issues and factors"? A more meaningful question to ask is:
What solutions are you exploring in order to address these issues and factors?
These "solutions" would be research objectives for the key questions.
In other words, think of the impact of your research project that would benefit the readers. So who are your
target readers? Most likely the music teachers/educators, right?
Research Methodology
Secondary research method will be used for this paper, which is collecting existing data in the
form of texts, images, and audio or video recordings. of what? teaching approach? materials?
The sources to be analysed come in the form of journal articles, books, news websites,
podcasts, recorded interviews, and forums. The available data will then be carefully read
through to understand the recurring issues and challenges of primary music education in
public schools of Malaysia.
Next, the secondary data collected will be cross-analysed to further understand what are the
factors that go into causing these issues in the Malaysian primary music education.
iv. Annotated Bibliography
Journal Article
1. Abdullah, Mohd Hassan. “MUSIC EDUCATION IN MALAYSIAN PUBLIC
SCHOOL: IMPLEMENTATION ISSUES AND CHALLENGES.” JURNAL
PENDIDIKAN BITARA UPSI 1, no. 1 (June 2007).
This article talks about the challenges and issues of implementing Music Education in
the Malaysian public school. Besides that, Abdullah listed out the importance of music
education and the reason why music education should be important, and relates it to the
Malaysian government objectives of education principles. Abdullah also elaborates on the
challenges and issues, placing an emphasis on Malay culture and religion. He talked about the
controversy of Muslim and music and gave suggestions on how to deal with such issue
should it arise in your classroom. While this article does address a few issues of
implementing music education in Malaysian public schools, a lot of emphasis is given to the
religion side rather, thus making the paper a little misleading from the title.
2.
Ariffin, Ummu Rahmah Binti. “SENARIO PENDIDIKAN MUZIK KBSM
SEKOLAH-SEKOLAH DI NEGERI PERAK.” Persidangan Pendidikan Muzik Malaysia
2005 (MusEd’05), 2005.
In this paper, the author focuses on the first curriculum that introduces music
education in Malaysia, KBSM. However, the paper only covers high schools in the state of
Perak, and no other states in Malaysia. The author covers what is included in the KBSM
curriculum, which includes traditional music and western music. While this paper focuses on
high schools, this paper is useful in conducting the research as the author also wrote about the
perception of society in Malaysia towards music, and how that can be a challenge to music
education. Besides that, the author mentioned how a superior’s order might interfere with the
usual music lesson.
3.
Chan, Cheong Jan, and Juriani Jamaludin. “Stress in Music Teaching: Identifying the
Level and Sources of Stress in the Context of Malaysian National Primary Schools”
PERTANIKA JOURNAL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES & HUMANITIES 18 (1), (2010): 81–92.
This article discusses the stress experienced by primary music teachers in the state of
Selangor in Malaysia. There were 6 main stressors, which are ‘student characteristics’,
‘teacher characteristics’, 'administrative procedures’, ‘social support’, ‘facilities and
equipment’ and ‘music syllabus contents’. Each of these stressors were elaborated in more
detail, and this would be a good reference point for the topic of issues and challenges in
Malaysian primary school music education.
4.
Shah, Shahanum Mohd, and Mohamad Adam Masumi. “Teaching Traditional Music
in Malaysian Schools: Considering the Cultural Context.” International Journal of Learning
and Teaching 8, no. 1 (2016): 69–76.
This article talks about how traditional music is taught, and it focuses on a Malay
gong ensemble called the Gamelan. The ensemble was explained briefly. The authors
collected the data in this paper through an interview format. The questions were centred
around the challenges of teaching Gamelan to the students, the syllabus of teaching Gamelan,
teaching approach, repertoires, and expectation for the students. In the Discussion part of the
paper, a possible approach to teaching the Gamelan was given. Aside from that, issues and
challenges of teaching Gamelan were mentioned. This article also has survey respondents
answer questions about teaching traditional music.
Blogs
Thong, Wee Hing. “Vernacular Schools: The SJKC and SJKT.” weehingthong, November
12, 2020. https://weehingthong.org/2020/11/12/the-sjkc/.
In this blogpost, the author refers to a news website discussing the percentage of students of
different races in the different types of vernacular schools in Malaysia. The blogpost also
debated over the reasons why parents do not want to send their children to SK schools. This
paper refers to this article for the type of national schools in Malaysia.
Free Essay
Ltd, All Answers. “The History of Education in Malaysia.” UK Essays. UK Essays,
December 31, 2021. https://www.ukessays.com/essays/education/the-history-of-education-inmalaysia-education-essay.php.
There is some useful information about the Malaysian Education Curriculum found in
this essay. This website mentioned the change of the curriculums and the years it changed, as
well as the subjects that changed along with the curriculum. Aside from that, the essay gave
simplified information about the activities held in schools.
News Article
Mustafa, Zulita. “Getting in Tune with Music Education: New Straits Times.” NST Online.
New Straits Times, August 8, 2018.
https://www.nst.com.my/education/2018/08/399244/getting-tune-musiceducation#:~:text=MUSIC%20education%20bestows%20many%20benefits,hour%20slots%
20in%20primary%20schools.
The author of this article discusses how the change of curriculum has an impact on
music education in Primary Schools, and how as a domino effect, it will affect music
education on tertiary level as well. Aside from that, the importance of music education is
emphasised, and examples of how music education is beneficial was listed. Issues of music
education in school were also discussed, as well as the career path to become a music teacher
in Malaysia.
In general, the background needs to be associated logically with the following purpose of study,
scope, research questions and objectives, methodology. You probably want to write down
the keywords that will connect all of these. Otherwise, the proposal looks rather vague and broad
with little factual information. The keywords and specific details could be obtained from the annotated
bibliography.