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Migration to a new country can be very difficult for adolescents as they are also experiencing a critical transition into adulthood. The current study investigates cross-cultural transition issues facing Iranian immigrant adolescents living in Malaysia. Data were gathered from individual interviews with 100 Iranian adolescents (ages 14-18 years), who have lived in Malaysia for between 2 months and 5 years. Descriptive phenomenology qualitative research was used to explore the impact of the migration process on Iranian adolescents. Analysis revealed five major themes regarding participants’ life experiences in Malaysia: (a) initial expectations; (b) differences in ethnicity, religion, and beliefs; (c) communication barriers; (d) differences in personal evaluations; and (e) psychological issues. The results of this study clearly show that migration for Iranian adolescents in Malaysia is a time of unexpected challenges that may not be experienced by other migrant adolescents in other countries. Our findings contribute to the literature on the unique experiences of Iranian adolescents living in Malaysia and also build on the current research on adolescents who have recently immigrated. In addition, our results further uncover the process of immigration for individuals who are moving from a monocultural society (such as Iran) to a multicultural context (such as Malaysia).

Despite numerous studies in increasingly popular online mental health service, the nature of the relationship between online counselors and their clients, particularly in the email modality, deserves more attention. To enhance the knowledge in this area, this study was conducted to explore whether the online counseling relationship could be developed using email communication. Six qualified counselors and 59 clients volunteered to participate in the study. Using a qualitative approach, we collected data from two focus groups, individual interviews with participating counselors, 206 email interactions, and counselors’ journals. To identify themes, we employed a grounded theory method. The emergent themes suggest that counselors describe the e-counseling relationship as having the following five features: initial establishment of a virtual relationship, structuring, text reinforcement, the development of a text relationship, and termination of the process. Each feature reflects a different level of relationship and different characteristics. Implications for future studies are also discussed.

One barrier for people with disabilities to obtain employment is negative perceptions of employers. As a result, many disabled people are underemployed. However, a small fraction of employers is willing to hire youth with disabilities. This paper presents the views of employers who hire youth workers with disabilities from vocational secondary schools leavers in Malaysia. Semi structured interviews that lasted for one and a half hours were conducted with three employers from service industries. Keywords or phrases were extracted, clustered, and interpreted into themes. The analyzed data were confirmed with the participants to ensure trustworthiness and reliability. The findings showed that the employers did recognize youth with disabilities as workers. The views of employers against workers were focused on the strengths and weaknesses in terms of personality and employee skills. The strengths of youth workers with disabilities in personality are hardworking, responsible, compliant, honest, and social ability. However, youth workers with disabilities have low self-confident, and are very sensitive, and easily influenced by negative elements. The employers realized that the youth workers with disabilities did master the basic work skills that fulfilled the employers’ needs. Nevertheless, they needed monitoring while working and repeated learning process if new training was given to them. The findings reported here were based on a pilot study of a larger research project. This study provided a conceptual framework of the findings. This pioneer study is expected to provide significant contribution in employment implications to youth with disabilities, and to reduce negative perceptions among employers in Malaysia.

Using a pre-post and control group design, we examined the effect of a career education module on career development among a group of 122 community college students in Malaysia. The effect of gender and the interaction effect of gender and career education module on career development were also investigated. MANOVA analyses showed significant differences between the experimental and control groups in terms of career planning, self-efficacy, and career maturity. However, no significant interaction was observed between strategies and gender on the three career development constructs. Our findings are consistent with most career education studies that used secondary school samples.

Gender differences with regard to academic performance remain one of the more challenging issues in educational research. Gender disparity in education has traditionally focus on the under participation of girls and still is in some parts of the world. In a number of countries, including Malaysia, gender disparity in basic and higher education are in favor of girls both in terms of participation and performance. The dual purpose of this paper is to address and to understand the nature of the issue by analyzing the trends of student participation and performance; and secondly, to seek whether student engagement and burnout are possible factors contributing to school dropout and low achievement. There are evidence in the literature to show student engagement and student burnout accounted for gender differences in school performance. The results of the analysis of secondary data reflected a trend that shows girls outperformed boys in national examinations across school levels and types. These trends are confirmed by results of a survey of the level of student engagement and student burnout on a sample of students aged 12, 14 and 16 which seems to suggest that boys are less engaged than girls, and experience more burnout. The findings are discussed in the context of developing support for students, particularly boys, to be more engaged, and less burnout in school and in learning.

Employability of vocational school leavers with disabilities has been often an issue at the national and international levels. The purpose of this study is to identify the employability and working patterns of vocational school leavers with disabilities. The survey involved 99 school leavers with disabilities who have had previous vocational training at a vocational school for special needs. Data were collected using a set of questionnaires and were statistically analysed. Chi-square test was also used to identify the difference between types of disability with job fields which are relevant to their vocational skills. The result showed that 69 school leavers were employed with 24 of them are currently working in the area related to the skill trained in the vocational school. The chi-square results showed a significant difference between school leavers’ type of disability and the employment gained based on their trained vocational skills. Employability of school leavers with disabilities has reached almost 70%, but unfortunately most of them were not employed based on their vocational skills from school. Improvements can be made by reviewing appropriate job market which suits with the type of disability.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the use of the Online Project-based module (m-PAT) to cultivate positive values among students. Evaluation was made to the positive values used in this study based on the six constructs of Contextual Development Model for Positive Youth Development namely competence, confidence, connection, caring, character and contribution (6C’s). The learning approach used by m-PAT is project-based learning which is applied as a School Based Assessment activity for Physics subject. A mixed method case study design was employed, where the findings of quantitative data were confirmed using the findings of qualitative data. A total of 42 Form 4 students were chosen based on purposive sampling from a secondary school in Klang Valley, Malaysia. The data were collected through questionnaire, student reflection, students’ online learning activity and discussion, interviews with the students, as well as teacher’s checklist after each participant generated a physic-learning blog by using the m-PAT as a platform. Quantitative data were analysed descriptively in form of mean scores and standard deviations to observe the distribution of students’ feedback on the constructs being studied. Qualitative data were analysed using thematic analysis related to the constructs being studied and confirmed by teacher’s checklist. The results showed that m-PAT was able to cultivate all positive values of 6C’s among the participants of the study. Overall, the findings has important implications for contributing to a new approach in learning which integrates the use of information technology and communication via project-based online learning as well as making it possible for the cultivation of students’ positive values especially in relation to the use of the Internet. Further research with a larger number of participants is needed to support the present findings.

A study was carried out to test the effects of a 2-week structured intervention program on academically challenged students’ career development. A quasi-experimental study was designed using pre-tests, post-tests, and a control group approach to examine the effects of the intervention program. Data were collected from both the experimental and control groups. The test was carried out on eight schools in the state of Kedah in Malaysia. Eight school counselors were trained to facilitate the assignment to the experimental groups and to collect data. A total number of 335 students with low academic achievement participated in this study. This number included male (43.6 %) and female (56.4 %) students who were aged 15–16 and a half. Modes of measurement used consisted of a career planning inventory (measuring career planning skills), an academic learning motivation scale (measuring attitude toward academic learning), and an academic study skills test (measuring academic study competencies). Analysis was performed using t-tests and the multivariate analysis of variance to examine the differences in the mean scores. The results show that the sample’s career academic score improved significantly from the pre-test to the post-test. A simple regression analysis was also performed to see the effect of the intervention program on the three dependent variables, which revealed that the career intervention program has positive and significant effects on the three variables. However, further studies on the career program for academically challenged students are highly recommended to support the present study.

This study examines whether there are changes in the levels of integration of people in the state of Selangor (Malaysia). Data was collected from 744 respondents and analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics and interpreted using integration model. Integration was found to be at the third level that is level with the Chinese groups scoring the lowest in all the three domains, the Malays achieving the highest score in the cognitive domain, whilst the Indians receiving the highest score in the affective domain. Although the level of integration is rather high, there are areas which need to be improved.

The paper reports a survey to investigate the influence of contextual aspects on students’ career planning and development. A set of questionnaire was used to collect data from 1,436 Form Five students from 22 Technical/Vocational schools in Malaysia. The results show that contextual factors have influenced the choice of students’ career decision. Other findings show that the contextual factors such as lack of role models in the family and lack of career information received at home influenced the respondents’ career choices in technical fields. The paper concludes that parents should play significant role in providing career information at home.

Teaching values in modern schools is a new phenomenon. Malaysian national curriculum at both primary and secondary school levels ensures that students develop desirable attitudes and behaviors based on human, religious, and spiritual values. The inculcation of the values is made possible through various subjects and non-academic subjects and students’ activities. However, knowledge about values education remains limited because there is no measurement device to assess the extent of values teaching in school. To fill this gap, the present study was designed to develop and examine the psychometric properties of an instrument measuring values teaching schools. Using data from 400 high school students, the study developed and validated a measure called Malaysia School Values Scale (MSVS) tailored to high school students in Malaysia. A robust analysis of Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) in Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) provides a rigorous analysis of the model power in relation to construct and content validity, confirming the dimension and analyzing the fitness of the data collected in the hypothesized model. This paper provides insight construct and content analysis using the CFA approach to consider the 15 school values constructs. To achieve the intended research objective, the 15 school values were explored. The results provide evidence that the MSVS achieved sound psychometric properties. The overall reliability value of Cronbach’s Alpha was acceptable. The CFA results showed that the goodness-of-fit indices for the hypothesized model were as follows: x2 (182) = 627.269, p = 0.00, x2/DF = 3.409, GFI = 0.852; AGFI = 0.814, CFI = 0.92; IFI = 0.921, RMSEA = 0.077. Each of the indices was above the threshold value. Results imply that MSVS is a valid measure to describe the school values among high school students. However, more studies are recommended to further validate the scale.

Tujuan – Kajian ini bertujuan untuk meneliti perbezaan gender dalam sokongan pembelajaran, keterlibatan murid di sekolah dan pencapaian. Kajian ini juga meneliti sejauh mana keterlibatan tersebut berperanan sebagai perantara kepada gender, sokongan pembelajaran dengan pencapaian akademik. Metodologi – Kajian ini menggunakan model keratan rentas yang melibatkan hubungan gender dengan keterlibatan murid di sekolah, sokongan pembelajaran dan pencapaian akademik. Sampel kajian adalah seramai 2,359 remaja lelaki dan perempuan berumur 12 hingga 16 tahun dari sekolah harian di kawasan bandar dan luar bandar. Instrumen Keterlibatan Murid di Sekolah dan Sokongan Pembelajaran digunakan untuk kutipan data. Kedua-dua instrumen telah diterjemah ke dalam bahasa Melayu untuk meninjau sejauhmana keterlibatan murid di sekolah dan persepsi mereka terhadap sokongan pembelajaran daripada ibu bapa, guru dan rakan sebaya. Kesahan dan kebolehpercayaan instrumen menunjukkan nilai tinggi. Analisis inferensi korelasi Pearson dijalankan untuk menentukan hubungan antara pemboleh ubah. Analisis model persamaan berstruktur (SEM) dilaksanakan untuk mengenal pasti peranan keterlibatan murid sebagai perantara gender dan sokongan pembelajaran terhadap pencapaian akademik. Dapatan – Dapatan kajian menunjukkan bahawa tidak terdapat perbezaan gender yang signifi kan dalam keterlibatan murid di sekolah, sokongan pembelajaran dan pencapaian akademik. Keterlibatan murid di sekolah merupakan perantara dalam hubungan gender dan pencapaian akademik. Keterlibatan murid di sekolah juga adalah perantara bagi sokongan guru, sokongan ibu bapa dan sokongan rakan sebaya terhadap pencapaian akademik. Kepentingan – Dapatan kajian ini meneguhkan teori mengenai peranan dan sumbangan keterlibatan murid di sekolah, dan sokongan pembelajaran untuk meningkatkan pencapaian murid seperti mana kajian yang dilakukan di Barat terhadap konstruk yang dikaji. Dapatan kajian ini membantu menyediakan cadangan intervensi untuk meningkatkan sokongan pembelajaran dalam kalangan remaja.

School engagement is a relatively new concept in education. However, studies have demonstrated that the concept is useful in predicting students’ academic achievement. The present study was conducted to examine Malaysian students’ school engagement status and to understand the factors that influenced their engagement. The survey method was used to collect data with a questionnaire measuring the level of students’ engagement in three psychological domains (cognitive, affective, and behavior). The influential factors were measured by learning about the ecological factors affecting the students’ academic engagement, including their teachers’ teaching practice and the support they received from teachers, peers, and parents. A total of 311 (male and female) participants between the ages of 12 -16 years from form one, form two, form three, and form four in a school in Selangor were selected using a random sampling procedure. Data was analyzed using descriptive and correlational analyses. The results showed that male and female students exhibit significantly different levels of engagement. Female students have a higher level of engagement than males. Teachers’ teaching practices and the support students received from peers, parents, and teachers were positively correlated with students’ engagement level. Although the results of the study support the findings of previous studies, further studies are suggested to verify the present findings. Implications for schools and parenting practices are also discussed.

This study examined the effectiveness of Multiple Stress Management Intervention (MSMI) on academic performance and mental health among undergraduate students. Sixty students were randomly assigned to either a stress-management training group, or a non-training control group. During the 8-week period, sixteen 2-hour session interventions were conducted for the experimental group. Results indicated that there is an increase in the academic performance and mental health measures in the experimental group. This study implies that stress management could be learned and coping skills could be acquired.

The paper reports a proposal to evaluate a career module program on community college students’ self-efficacy, career maturity and, career planning ability (aspects of Career development). A quasi-experimental study is designed based on a pre and post test plus control group model. Sixty participants from community college population will be selected using purposive sampling method; 30 will be assigned to an experimental group and the remaining 30 will be assigned to a control group. Data will be collected using three set of questionnaires. Pre-test and post-test scores for both groups will be compared to examine the effectiveness of the module.

The paper reports a validity and reliability study on a newly developed Moral Value Inventory for Muslim Adolescent (MVIMA). Analysis of data using 107 subjects showed a high general relialibity (.95), and the nine sub-scales (patience, gratefulness, humility, respecfulness, positive regard, honesty, love, tawakal, sincerity and taqwa) shows reliability value ranging between .72 to .84. The convergence validity for the sub-scales were significantly correlated (.36 to .72; p