Papers by Dr. Siti Noor Fauziah Abd Rahim
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2011
Social interactions are the everyday give and take conversations that occur depending on situatio... more Social interactions are the everyday give and take conversations that occur depending on situations and purposes. During a typical preschool day, there are countless opportunities for children to interact, communicate and play with one another. A social interaction may include saying “Salam” or asking an appropriate question such as “May I sit here?” The interaction can also be in both verbal and non-verbal (e.g., touch, gestures) mode. Through social interaction, children develop their ability to think, to make judgment, to reason out, to negotiate, to regulate their emotion, to deal with conflicts and so on. Failure to go through this process successfully, a child may face a detrimental problem in their schooling years, peer relationships and their future undertakings. This paper explores the social interactions of thirty-one 6 years old children at selected kindergarten in Klang Valley, Malaysia during instructions in three subjects, Malay Language, English and Mathematics. The non-participant observation (direct observation) method was employed for data collection purposes. The findings showed that children are more likely to engage in social interactions during Mathematics compared to the two other subjects. The paper describes the learning activities and the social interaction behavior that children engaged in during instructions in the three subjects. This paper also suggests direction for future implications into how teachers and educators can make effective and meaningful contributions to enhance children cognitive development through social interactions.
Social Science Research Network, Aug 4, 2016
This paper explores the use of nature elements and nature environments within the school grounds ... more This paper explores the use of nature elements and nature environments within the school grounds in learning activities and its potentials to strengthen children's learning and development in the context of a primary school in Malaysia. Employing a case-study method, one-to-one interview session was conducted with two informants, an 8 and 9 a year old child to explore their learning experiences with and in nature, to understand the perceived benefits acquired through learning activities with and in nature, as well as to discover the contributing factors of the implementations in school. An analysis of these interviews yields two school subjects are dominantly associated with learning activities with and in nature namely Physical Education, and World of Science and Technology (Dunia Sains dan Teknologi). Findings supported that nature elements and settings within school grounds have potentials to increase children's physical fitness, promote social-emotional enrichment, enhance enthusiasm and independent learning, improve academic performance, empower collaborative learning between teacher and students, and foster experiential learning through real engagement with nature elements. According to the informants, contributing factors for the use of nature elements and nature settings in the school by teachers were first, their function as useful learning resources for children's conceptual understanding and task assessment, and secondly the convenience of using them for physical activity and socialization. Finally, implications of this study for primary school education in particular were discussed.
IIUM Journal of Educational Studies, 2016
A soulful curriculum acknowledges and places an importance to life’s ultimate questions and man’s... more A soulful curriculum acknowledges and places an importance to life’s ultimate questions and man’s inner dimension. It pursues a balance and convergence between our inner and outer lives. In Islam, there is no separate discipline of ethics and religion. Islam is founded on the principles of belief and righteous action. In this sense, a meaningful education should not only focus on training the mind to retain and retrieve knowledge per se but to nurture a personality with good characters and behaviours. However, the reality that we are facing today in the education system is the reverse of that. The exclusion of ethical and spiritual dimensions in pedagogical approaches is not only observed in present practices but also in existing references, concepts, and theories in the field of education, philosophy, and psychological literature. Modern theories are inadequate to act as a drive for the transformation of an individual’s personality. Therefore, this paper aimed to explore the pedag...
A soulful curriculum acknowledges and places an importance to life's ultimate questions and man's... more A soulful curriculum acknowledges and places an importance to life's ultimate questions and man's inner dimension. It pursues a balance and convergence between our inner and outer lives. In Islam, there is no separate discipline of ethics and religion. Islam is founded on the principles of belief and righteous action. In this sense, a meaningful education should not only focus on training the mind to retain and retrieve knowledge per se but to nurture a personality with good characters and behaviours. However, the reality that we are facing today in the education system is the reverse of that. The exclusion of ethical and spiritual dimensions in pedagogical approaches is not only observed in present practices but also in existing references, concepts, and theories in the field of education, philosophy, and psychological literature. Modern theories are inadequate to act as a drive for the transformation of an individual's personality. Therefore, this paper aimed to explore the pedagogical approaches reflected from a prominent Muslim philosopher and spiritual master, Mawlana Jalal al-Din Rumi (1207-1273 A.D) towards fostering a balanced and excellent personality through education. The main contributions of Al-Rumi that are of great importance for today's educators are: God-consciousness as the foundation of learning; the need to instill love and compassion through service learning; making learning enjoyable; and emphasis on experiential outdoor learning. Practical pedagogical implications of these were discussed in the light of educational psychology perspectives for educators to integrate these approaches in their teaching and learning activities in the classroom.
Social interactions are the everyday give and take conversations that occur depending on situatio... more Social interactions are the everyday give and take conversations that occur depending on situations and purposes. During a typical preschool day, there are countless opportunities for children to interact, communicate and play with one another. A social interaction may include saying “Salam” or asking an appropriate question such as “May I sit here?” The interaction can also be in both verbal and non-verbal (e.g., touch, gestures) mode. Through social interaction, children develop their ability to think, to make judgment, to reason out, to negotiate, to regulate their emotion, to deal with conflicts and so on. Failure to go through this process successfully, a child may face a detrimental problem in their schooling years, peer relationships and their future undertakings. This paper explores the social interactions of thirty-one 6 years old children at selected kindergarten in Klang Valley during instructions in three subjects, Bahasa Melayu, English and Mathematics. The non-participant observation (direct observation) method was employed for data collection purposes. The findings showed that children are more likely to engage in social interactions during Mathematic compared to the two other subjects. The paper describes the learning activities and the social interaction behavior that children engaged in during instructions in the three subjects. This paper also suggests direction for future implications into how teachers and educators can make effective and meaningful contributions to enhance children cognitive development through social interactions.
Keywords
Early childhood education - cognitive development - social interaction-mathematic-english-bahasa melayu
This qualitative research aims to explore the nature of children interaction patterns during thei... more This qualitative research aims to explore the nature of children interaction patterns during their learning activities. This study involved six 6-year old children (4 boys and 2 girls) from a selected public kindergarten in Malaysia. Employing the case study design method, data was collected using non-participant observation techniques. The findings of this study revealed that there were two types of children interaction during learning activities: children-adult interaction and children-peers interaction. The patterns of children interaction in children-adults interaction comprised; constructive-dialogic and explicit correction while in children-peers interaction, children engaged in three patterns of interaction namely; sociable, creative and non-verbal. Finally, implications of this study for preschool education in particular will be discussed.
Conference Presentations by Dr. Siti Noor Fauziah Abd Rahim
4th UUM International Qualitative Research Conference (QRC 2020) , 2020
The debate about children's decreasing experience of and contact with nature has increasingly cap... more The debate about children's decreasing experience of and contact with nature has increasingly captured researchers' interest over the past decade and has been going on for many years (Fägerstam, 2012). Exploration in natural worlds offers concrete and real learning experiences for young children. The "necessity of experience" as advocated by Edward Reed (1996) argues that primary or first-hand experiences opens people to boundless possibilities for learning, including creative new discoveries. Yet, children today have less opportunity to spend time in nature places than they did 20 or 30 years ago (Hofferth & Curtin, 2006). More importantly, as far the early childhood education is concern, the exploratory studies of children's experiences with nature is scarcely investigated at preschool settings especially in Malaysia. Therefore, this study was carried out to explore the experience of children with nature at preschools in Malaysia and to examine preschool teachers understanding about nature-related activities for young children. A semi-structured interview question is the main instrument for data collection. The participant consisted of two preschool teachers from two private preschools. They were selected through convenience sampling. The data was analysed using thematic analysis procedures where it was read carefully to understand emerging themes. It was then coded, categorized, labelled manually and synthesized for patterns and reduced into themes for the narratives. The results identified three major categories of children's experience with nature at preschools, namely: observing and studying nature elements, using nature elements for nature art activity and nature recreation (playing in nature). The analysis revealed that preschool teachers did not organise nature-related activities very often although they find it very important. The findings discovered some current implementations, perceived benefits and barriers for nature-related activities implementation at preschools. This study recommends the nature-related activities as an effective way to stimulate children's senses, provide opportunity for experiential learning to them as well as to support their social skills. It also fulfilled an existing research gap by describing how children experience nature at preschool settings and preschool teachers' perspectives about it. Ultimately, the outcome of this study envisions a perspective on nature-related activities at preschool as a promising early years experiences to natural worlds by promoting first-hand learning opportunity to children.
Proceedings of 2nd Early Childhood Care & Education International Rendezvous 2016, (ISBN 978-967- 13960-2-5), 2016
This paper explores the use of nature elements and nature environments within the school grounds ... more This paper explores the use of nature elements and nature environments within the school grounds in learning activities and its potentials to strengthen children's learning and development in the context of a primary school in Malaysia. Employing a case-study method, one-to-one interview session was conducted with two informants, an 8 and 9 a year old child to explore their learning experiences with and in nature, to understand the perceived benefits acquired through learning activities with and in nature, as well as to discover the contributing factors of the implementations in school. An analysis of these interviews yields two school subjects are dominantly associated with learning activities with and in nature namely Physical Education, and World of Science and Technology (Dunia Sains dan Teknologi). Findings supported that nature elements and settings within school grounds have potentials to increase children's physical fitness, promote social-emotional enrichment, enhance enthusiasm and independent learning, improve academic performance, empower collaborative learning between teacher and students, and foster experiential learning through real engagement with nature elements. According to the informants, contributing factors for the use of nature elements and nature settings in the school by teachers were first, their function as useful learning resources for children's conceptual understanding and task assessment, and secondly the convenience of using them for physical activity and socialization. Finally, implications of this study for primary school education in particular were discussed.
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Papers by Dr. Siti Noor Fauziah Abd Rahim
Keywords
Early childhood education - cognitive development - social interaction-mathematic-english-bahasa melayu
Conference Presentations by Dr. Siti Noor Fauziah Abd Rahim
Keywords
Early childhood education - cognitive development - social interaction-mathematic-english-bahasa melayu