Let the Pupils Take Charge: Pedagogical Practices that Promote Learning Among Penan Children

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.