TASK 1 : DISCUSSION ON CURRENT ISSUES

Introduction
To nurture is to nourish. Nurturing a child includes all aspects of development such
as social, emotional, cognitive, and physical. A teacher should nurture appropriate growth
and development during the teaching and learning session. According to Gay (2000),
teacher are cultural organizers, cultural mediators, and orchestrates of social contexts for
learning. Based on this statement, being an early childhood teacher also means that we
have to be willing to wear many hats. The teaching profession is a challenging services and
often become the main attraction of media and the public. They tend to give negative
feedback and unpleasant opinions about the profession. Apart from that, school is also
described as an organization that is bombarded with a variety of unexpected workload. This
has affected the reputation of teaching profession. As trainee teachers, we are
already prepared to be flexible according to our task requirements. This may involve
professional tasks from inside and outside the classroom. Today, teachers are not only
teaching in the classroom but teachers today are well rounded and must be capable of
multitasking. The task also includes administrative and management tasks that must be
done from time to time. However, nowadays the task has increase and leading to workload.
Effect of the issues
The Malaysian education system constantly undergoes changes from time to time.
These changes have directly created an impact on teachers workload. The issues that will
be highlighted in this task is the increment of teachers workload in management and
administration. As stated by Syuhada Choo Abdullah in Berita Harian, 2010, (guru
menghadapi tekanan kerana terpaksa menanggung beban kerja berganda arahan dari pihak
atasan). (Osman, 2010) said in his report that there were around 420000 teachers facing
depression due to workload in school. Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin in the report said that a
special committee would be set up to investigate the excessive workload endured by school
teachers throughout the country. During his time as the education minister, he said that the
decision was made after the ministry found out that the teachers in several states are facing
excessive workload.
From the issue chosen, I would like to give a deeper critical review about the
teachers' workload increment as this issue seems has not come to end. According to Hoyle
(1975 ) in his book Leadership and Professional Development of Teachers, professionalism
is the attitude and actions related to work such as working conditions, salaries and wages,
work schedule and many more. Teachers workload is one of the issue that is often being
debated. This issue has started long time ago and until now it still become a topic that is

often being discuss. As a proof, the title of the issue is always in the chest press, in
cyberspace and always being debated during the presentation of issue regarding teaching.
Referring to the Kamus Dewan Bahasa Edisi Keempat, 2007, teachers can be
defined as educators, caregivers and those who teach. Tasks is define as duties of an
employee or a must implemented responsibility. Workload means the number of tasks that
need to be worked out using the process or the system that must be implemented. From the
definition given, it can be concluded that the major task of a teacher is to teach and educate
throughout the learning and teaching session. However, the duties of a teacher is increasing
day

by

day.

In the age of globalization, the use of information and communication technologies has
become widespread and due to this the teacher's task becomes more challenging. Most of
the teachers felt burden to fulfil the unrelated task such as the clerical task that supposedly
done by the staff working in management and administration part.
Syuhada Choo Abdullah (2010) in her report mentioned that teachers have to bear
double workload as they were forced to perform tasks within the same scope over and over
again on the orders of the higher authorities. Teacher were asked to conduct specific
programs from the upper authorities. This finally leading to wastage of time and this will
affect the commitment of teachers in teaching and learning. The extreme burden involving
various issue such as discipline problems, lack of teachers, lack of classrooms, role conflict
can add to pressure leading to depression and it can cause teacher deciding to quit or retire
early from the education field. If this situation persist, it might give negative impact on
Malaysian education system. Besides, the extreme workload can also effects the quality of
the teachers work as they could not handle doubling tasks. Undoubtedly there are still
teachers who can perform very well in managing the task even though it is only a few of
them.
The uncontrolled workload will affect the teachers emotionally leading to depression.
According to Kyriacou (2001), teacher stress refers to teacher that experience unwanted
emotions such as stress, frustration, anxiety, anger and depression due to his duties as a
teacher. From my opinion, stress is a normal physical response to a person that can cause
imbalance emotion. More than that, when a teacher face a work pressure it will also affect
the quality of teaching and the pupils will become the victim. Students are deserved to
accept knowledge from the teachers, but if there are workload the teacher may lost their
focus towards their students. I think, if the teachers could not control his emotions or his
responsibilities they might act outside the limits.

As mentioned in the Code of Ethics of the Teaching Profession, The teacher shall
recognize their obligation to improve their effectiveness as a teacher in every possible way
meaning that as a professional teacher, they must try their best in order to fulfil the
requirement as a teacher and they need to effectively manage their time between the
management and administration work with teaching responsibilities. I admit that the
workload faced by teacher is too much, but we as a teacher should not easily give up. Giving
our all should be our main vision as a teacher. Completing the task demand by the upper
authorities is a must and teaching the pupils is also a must. The education administration
should think of a solution to reduce the burden faced by the teachers nowadays.
Professional teachers portray the characteristics of professionalism and behave with dignity.
They managed to give full commitment in completing the to-do at the school every time and
on time. Teachers must be optimistic and ready to learn from their mistakes.
Conclusion
In conclusion, teacher is a person with lot of sacrifice. They are not immune to the
presence of various issues. Both the upper authorities and the teacher need to take an
immediate action in order to overcome the teachers workload issue. Teachers have to reflect
upon themselves and make possible changes while the upper authorities should provide
effective solution to assist the teachers.

References
Gay, G. (2000). Culturally Responsive Teaching: Theory, Research, & Practice. New
York: Teachers College Press.
HOYLE, E. (1975) Professionality, professionalism and control in teaching. In V.
HOUGHTON et al. (eds) Management in Education: the Management of Organisations and
Individuals (London, Ward Lock Educational in association with Open University Press).
Kyriacou, C. (2001). Teacher stress: Directions for future research. Educational Review,
53(1), 27- 35.
Osman, H. (2010). 420000 Guru Tertekan . Harian Metro.
Syuhada Choo Abdullah, Z. A. (2010). Tugas Guru Bertambah Akibat Banyak Arahan. Berita
Harian.
_____________(2007). Kamus Dewan. Edisi Keempat. Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan
Pustaka, Kementerian Pendidikan Malaysia.