As UPSR and PT3 have been abolished, the only high-stakes assessment that we have now is SPM – which is an important academic qualification for secondary school leavers to have as they will use it to get into the workforce or applying to further their studies in tertiary education. SPM is also considered high-stakes in which it is used to determine school performance and teacher effectiveness.

In an exam-oriented context, not only is student success being defined by their test scores but teachers are also being defined by their teaching effectiveness solely based on their student’s exam results. An exam-oriented system produces a habit of teachers that prefer to teach-to—the-test, which is a teaching method that revolves around the examination format. Although such teachers have successfully increased the school’s grade point average, this sort of success is only being defined by how well they teach based on the exam format whilst overlooking other approaches to teaching and learning which can develop and enrich a learner’s experience in the school or classroom and even beyond. Some teachers may have even come up with an action research or some form of innovation to increase school’s GPA but at the end of the day those types of action research or innovation were still created by having the examination format in mind.

This teaching routine, whereby Feldon (2007) alluded to it as a ‘double-edged sword of automaticity’, is a concept that states the easier it is for us to teach with a particular method, the more challenging it is for us to change or to develop our teaching methods. Although to be fair, this is impacted by the system that we have, and it’s not due to individual choice even though it may seem like it on the surface. Based on our context, automaticity of this kind gives the upper hand for a school to increase (or maintain) its school grade point average and giving the SPM teacher an image of ‘the effective teacher’ –  it actually does, in automaticity sense. However, having teachers submitting themselves to this kind of teaching, it actually creates a barrier for teacher development.  

Teaching-to-the-test is easy as it becomes a habit for teachers who have been assigned to teach SPM classes for years. However, these teachers, may effectively employ the teaching-to-the-test method, but may have not applied various pedagogical approaches consistently (or do not even bother exploring them) . Professional development requires us to go out of our comfort zone as teachers, and this means having the willingness to explore other ways of teaching our students and not being confined to using teaching-to-the-test method alone which includes exploring unconventional ways of teaching that are not aligned to the examination format – but are effective for student learning. In an exam-oriented system, this is a risky action for the teacher to take, whereas, in the teacher’s professional development sense, this is actually a laudable initiative.

This particular thought piece is not meant to undermine teachers who have put in so much effort to help the school to increase its school grade point average or help students to score an ‘A’. This is more of a critique of the system, rather than the individual teachers who are under the system. This is just to provide a realization that our current implementation of SPM is still exam-oriented and our teaching methods that are aligned to this system actually impede our professional development as teachers. In this case, the system creates the habit. We need to be reminded that there are a lot of pedagogical methods out there that are worth implementing in our classroom, even if we are teaching SPM classes, which can subsequently develop and diversify our teaching methods as well as enhance our skills and career development as teachers.

REFERENCES

FELDON, D. A. V. I. D. F. (2007). Cognitive load and classroom teaching: The double-edged sword of automaticity. Educational Psychologist, 42(3), 123–137. https://doi.org/10.1080/00461520701416173

*This piece is solely the personal opinion of the author and does not necessarily reflect HIVE Educator’s stance.