Mukhlis Abu Bakar

Makalah ini membincangkan dapatan kajian tentang pembelajaran kanak-kanak tahun akhir dalam program empat tahun pendidikan Islam hujung minggu. Dalam program ini, kanak-kanak berusia 5-8 tahun menghafal ayat-ayat al-Quran dan mempelajari kaitan nilai dan amalan Islam dalam kehidupan harian mereka melalui aktiviti yang bersesuaian dengan umur. Pembelajaran dalam program ini boleh dianggap holistik kerana ia mampu merangsang pemikiran (kognitif), perasaan (afektif) dan refleksi (spiritual) – tiga dimensi yang saling melengkapi dalam proses pembelajaran agama kanak-kanak ini. Perkongsian mereka tentang apa yang mereka pelajari menunjukkan wujudnya interaksi antara dimensi-dimensi pembelajaran ini. Interaksi sedemikian, seperti yang dihujahkan dalam makalah ini, boleh membawa kepada pengalaman pembelajaran yang transformatif sedang program ini bertumpu pada pemerolehan worldview Islam terhadap kehidupan.
This paper discusses the findings of a study on children’s learning in the final-year of a four-year weekend Islamic education program. In this program, children aged 5-8 years memorize the verses of the Quran and learn the relevance of Islamic values and practices in their daily lives through age-appropriate activities. Learning in this program can be considered holistic because it is able to stimulate thinking (cognitive), feelings (affective) and reflection (spiritual) – three complementary dimensions in the process of learning the religion. The children’s sharing of what they learn indicates the existence of interactions between these dimensions of learning. Such interactions, as argued in this paper, can lead to transformative learning experiences as the program focuses on the acquisition of an Islamic worldview of life.

This paper reports on one particular finding which emerged from a Singapore study of young Muslim children attending the last year of a four-year Islamic education weekend program. The program provides the 5–8-year-old young learners with a learning environment in which they not only memorise Qur’anic verses but also learn the relevance of Islamic values and practices in their daily lives through activities which are age-appropriate. Learning in the program is perceived to be holistic in that it recognises the roles of thinking (cognitive), feeling (affective) and reflecting (spiritual) as complementary within the learning process. Children’s account of what they have learnt suggests the emergence of the interplay between these learning dimensions. Such interplay, as argued in this paper, may lead to transformative learning experiences even as the program itself is concerned with a particular outcome (i.e., convergence with the Islamic worldview).

Siblings play an important and reciprocal role in each other’s literacy development. The younger sibling’s exposure to the older sibling’s literacy activities creates the opportunity for many shared literacy experiences. Gregory (2001) calls this bidirectional and reciprocal learning relationship a “synergy” where siblings act as adjuvants in each other’s learning, i.e., older children ‘teach’ younger siblings at the same time develop their own learning. This paper presents data from two contrasting pairs of siblings who display a very close relationship through shared activities as playmates. Close in age (one in Primary 2, the other in K2), the younger sibling is exposed to the academic and literacy activities of the older sibling, spurring his/her interest to participate in the same activities. Differences in the dynamics of the pairs’ reciprocal relationship seem to be shaped by three factors: the parent’s expectation of the level of involvement the older child plays in his/her younger sibling’s literacy learning, the literacy competence of the older sibling, and the gender make-up of the sibling pair. Differences such as these in the home literacy experience with siblings, it is argued, may impact differently on reading activities with peers in the classroom unless teachers embrace the different cultural resources that children take with them to school.

This paper presents findings from a study which explored the lived literacy experience of Malay families in Singapore. The research strategy was one of multiple case studies. The research approach was ethnographic and the data set reported in this paper includes the data collected from the field of two of the sites. Data analysis show that participant parents, regardless of their background, value their children’s educational success, want their children to do well in school, and correspondingly see themselves as supporting their children in one way or another. The evidence, however, demonstrates a variation in familial perspectives and needs and a considerable distinction in how families of different background define literacy and which literacy they consider worth transmitting to the children. These in turn affect the way they foster their children’s acquisition of literacy. The focal children from the two families thus come to school with particular cultural resources and repertoires of literacy practices that position them in particular ways with respect to the curriculum to which they have to adapt. These conclusions draw on Bourdieu’s notion of cultural capital which explains how individual’s access to certain cultural signals (such as attitudes, preferences, tastes, and styles) either enables or limits their entry into high status social groups, organizations, or institutions such as schools. These views present an alternative to the cultural deficit thinking that blame students, their families, and their culture for their academic failure.

This chapter reports on research conducted in Singapore that revisits a two-year study on the lived literacy experience of eight Malay children who were preschoolers when the researcher first met them. 12 years on, the researcher reunited with two of them who were then young adults. Employing a sociocultural approach to literacy, this chapter wades through data from both phases of the study in an attempt to answer the question: How do the children navigate between languages during their childhood, what are the challenges they face to be biliterate in school-sanctioned ways, to what extent these relate to school outcome, and what are the different language and literate identities they assumed or embraced in the process? Implications for schooling and education are discussed.
Bab ini melaporkan tentang kajian yang dijalankan di Singapura yang meninjau semula kajian dua tahun tentang pengalaman literasi yang dilalui lapan kanak-kanak Melayu yang menuntut di prasekolah semasa pengkaji pertama kali bertemu dengan mereka. 12 tahun kemudian, pengkaji bertemu semula dengan dua daripada mereka yang ketika itu mula melangkah ke alam dewasa. Menggunakan pendekatan sosiobudaya terhadap literasi, bab ini menelusuri data daripada kedua-dua fasa kajian dalam usaha untuk menjawab soalan: Bagaimanakah kanak-kanak bernavigasi antara bahasa semasa zaman kanak-kanak mereka, apakah cabaran yang mereka hadapi untuk menjadi dwiliterat mengikut cara yang dibenarkan sekolah, apakah cabaran yang dihadapi oleh kanak-kanak ini, sejauh mana ia berkaitan dengan pencapaian di sekolah, dan apakah identiti bahasa dan literasi yang mereka dukung dalam proses itu? Implikasi terhadap persekolahan dan pendidikan dibincangkan.

Buku yang diedit oleh tiga orang editor ini meneliti tulisan dan sumbangan Masuri S N, seorang penyair dan penulis Singapura.

This chapter reports on research conducted in Singapore that revisits a two-year study on the lived literacy experience of eight Malay children who were preschoolers when the researcher first met them. 12 years on, the researcher reunited with two of them who are now young adults. This chapter wades through data from both phases of the study in an attempt to answer the question: What does it take to be literate in school-sanctioned ways, what are the challenges that children face, and to what extent these relate to school outcome? In the process, the author attempts to link the experiences of these three children with his own literacy trajectory within his own sociocultural and sociolinguistic spaces, and tease out the similarities and differences between them. The author’s biographical narrative provides another layer of meaning to the relationship between cultural capital and school outcome, and between structure and agency.

The ideologies underlying Singapore’s language-in-education policy drive home the message that students should feel some form of emotional connection to their mother tongue. At the same time, English is privileged leading many to index it with education, upward mobility, modernity and prestige. Singaporean parents are cognisant of these ideologies and play an important role in mediating their children’s affiliation to the respective languages and influencing their language use patterns. This study seeks to obtain a sense of how parents of 8-year old children struggle with competing ideologies when enrolling their children in one of two Islamic religious education programmes: English-medium Kids aL.I.V.E. and Malay-medium mosque madrasah. Parents of 35 children from the two programmes reported on their use of Malay and English, and their children’s proficiency in, and use of, the two languages. Their reports suggest that the children were equally proficient in both languages but English was their dominant language. Parents were highly supportive of the language medium of the respective programmes, but irrespective of which language they supported, many were strongly affiliated to Malay citing reasons that mirror the state ideology that calls on its citizens to stay rooted in their ethnic heritage through their mother tongue.