This paper shares some insights on the pedagogical practices from a project carried out to promote learning among Penan children in an interior school in Ulu Baram District, Sarawak. One significant concern of the project was to explore ways to nurture a favourable learning environment that is psychologically comfortable for these pupils. This concern was addressed mainly by allowing pupils to take charge of their classroom learning activity. Primarily, it was achieved through (a) providing support for independent learning, (b) allowing pupils to check and correct their own work, and (c) allowing pupils to develop their potential individually. By and large, many positive effects of these actions were observed. In addition, this paper also argues for the importance of learner-centred teaching which places understanding and fulfilling interior children’s learning needs as a vital task of the teacher. To achieve this, a “Learn-Practise-Check” framework is proposed to guide the design of learning activities. Finally, this paper concludes that all interior pupils can learn well in schools if their teachers can provide them with opportunities to perform every learning task repeatedly and mistakes are constantly checked for corrective actions.
Culture could be defined as the totality of a person’s way of life. This has to do with everything in an environment including environmental problems and activities. Mathematics on the other hand could be the way we think about things around us or science of pattern and order. For the mathematical instruction to improve the achievement and interest of the learners there is need for mathematics teaching that has the learners’ cultural background.
This book is intended to be a core text for primary school teachers in training, induction and beyond. It is primarily aimed at those who are not science specialists, providing them with an accessible and useful tool to enable them to gain confidence in their ability to teach science successfully. It can also be used by those with a more secure scientific background, to help them develop their science teaching across the breadth of the primary curriculum.
I am a guy who trained as biotechnologist but ended up as half-cooked ethnobotanist before dive in into the world of education as primary school teacher in a rural area