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Several instruments that measure the teaching, learning, and assessment quality have been developed and published. However, a psychometrically sound instrument to measure teaching, learning, and assessment quality in early childhood care and education that suitable for the Malaysian context needs to be validated. Therefore, this study aimed to validate on teaching, learning, and assessment quality in early childhood care and education instrument, which contains 68 items. The sample comprised 3,498, selected by stratified random sampling from a population of all Malaysian kindergarten teachers. Data were analyzed based on the Polytomous Item Response Theory (IRT) using the Xcalibre software. Samejima's Graded Rating Model (SRGM) was found to be the fit model with the data. Unidimensionality assumption and local independence were tested using the exploratory factor analysis and were fulfilled. The instrument's reliability was overall very good ([alpha]=0.966) and the construct validity was also fairly fulfilled with the value of 58.17% total variance explained. Therefore, this instrument is suggested to be used as fairly to measure the quality of Malaysian early childhood care and education among teachers so that appropriate follow-up actions can be implemented towards the betterment of early childhood education quality.

In this descriptive qualitative study, parental involvement is the partaking of families on the learning and holistic development of children at home and in school on teachers lens and a part of a larger study. Teachers' perspective is imperative in developing a school-facilitated parental involvement framework in the Philippine context. The researcher used document analysis and interview to gather data. Data were analyzed using content and thematic analysis. Results revealed four themes: (1) meaningful home-school communication; (2) collective in-school engagement; (3) structural at-home learning support; and (4) refining teachers' capacity. These results can be used as an input in developing a school-facilitated parenting involvement framework that encompass the contribution of teachers in planning, developing, and evaluating parental involvement programs which future researchers can also use in their studies. It is important that teachers especially early childhood educators should understand parental involvement and recognize its positive effects to the teaching and learning process.

Nursery is a preparation for kindergarten education. This paper deals with the gained competence of the nursery as they move up to the kindergarten program of the K-12 Curriculum in the Philippines. This study reveals that there are similarities and differences in the curriculum programs of nursery and kindergarten; that the nursery children performed very satisfactory in the learning domains on Social and Emotional; Self-Management; Perceptual and Motor; Early Math; Early Literacy; Receptive Language; and Expressive Language; and that sex is not related to the children's ability to learn and develop the skills needed of their age. This is a quantitative-descriptive method that investigated 568 nursery children from the 29 National Child Development Centers or Day-Care Centers in the Philippines. Using documentary analysis, Levene's test, and T-test, the study revealed the similarities and difference in the 2 programs and the levels of competence of the nursery children in the different domains of learning offered by the program showing their ability and the skills which help them move up to kindergarten. This study recommends that there should be a good transition of children from nursery to kindergarten and this can only be achieved if there is congruency of the curriculum offered by the two programs. The skills mastered by the children in nursery program should be enhanced more in the kindergarten program. Since kindergarten is an important developmental milestone for young children, it should offer children an experience to develop their skills, competence and potentials to the fullest and that a balance and holistic development of the children should be ensured.

Parental involvement refers to the amount of participation a parent has when it comes to the schooling of his/her children. Some schools foster healthy parental involvement, but sometimes parents has hesitations if they will involve themselves with their children's education. It has been advocated in Western countries. However, there is a body of literature that examines the significance of social and cultural influences and the effects of parents' involvement in and expectations of their children's development and learning. It is important for schools to recognize the existence of cultural variations in parent involvement because there are differences among parents with diverse background on when, why, and how they are involved in their children's education. Parenting is important in the Philippine society because family is viewed as a center to one's social world. But, social contexts in which Filipino families are embedded have changed rapidly over the past ten years (Ochoa & Torre, n.d.). Children's learning is increasingly moving toward a broader vision of the 21st century learning. As children's educations increasingly occur across a range of settings, parents are uniquely positioned to help ensure that these settings best support their children's specific learning needs. Thus, parental involvement researches remain misrepresentative of parents and the involvement that they have with their children's education (Jackson, 2010). The present study is using a qualitative research design that will investigate existing literatures on parental involvement in Early Childhood Education in terms of communicating from the school, volunteering and participating in school's activities, and learning at home. The study will rely on the analysis of documents in order to gain deeper understanding about parental involvement in the Philippines and propose a School-facilitated Parental Involvement (SPIn) Framework.

The Philippines and Malaysia are members of ASEAN who respond to the challenge of EFA goals and Work Plan on Education 2016-2020, particularly on Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target 4.2: "By 2030 ensure that all girls and boys have access to quality early childhood development, care and pre-primary education so that they are ready for primary education." In response to this, the Philippines Department of Education (DepEd) through its K-12 Program, has made Kindergarten Education mandatory in the Basic Education Curriculum which paves way to the formulation of the new Kindergarten Curriculum Framework. On the other hand, the Ministry of Education (MOE) in Malaysia has also come up with its revised Kurikulum Standard Prasekolah Kebangsaan or National Preschool Standard Curriculum (NPSC) to meet new policy demands under the 2013-2025 Malaysia Education Development Plan (PPPM) and current needs. This paper takes cognizance on the role of curriculum as one of the significant components of the Kinder program as it compares the National Curriculum Standards of the two countries for the Kindergarten program with the aim to look into its developmentally appropriate curriculum features for better child growth, learning and development. Using Documentary analysis and NVivo, themes are identified and categorized from the interview and FGD of the kindergarten teachers, parents and principals from the selected government kindergarten school-respondents. Consequently, this study reveals some points of similarity and difference on kindergarten learning domains, teaching-learning processes, and issues in the current implementation of the Kindergarten program. The paper recommends that action be taken by the different program stakeholders in order to address quality delivery of the Kindergarten program.

This study is focused on conceptual paper and the purpose of this study is to conduct an empirical investigation into the Malaysian Preschool institutions, focusing on measuring their technical efficiency and productivity changes. This study is to examine the nature of productivity changes by means of bootstrapped Malmquist TFP indices. The study use a Three-year set of panel data (2009-2012) for analyzing the performance of 8307 KEMAS Preschools classes during the implementation of the (Government Transformation Program) GTP 1.0. The study considered all KEMAS Preschools classes operating in the sector. The input and output data were manually extracted from the Malaysia's Ministry of Rural and Regional Development (MRRD) and all KEMAS Preschools. Non-parametric DEA models are employed to estimate efficiency and productivity changes of the institutions. Thus, this study is expected makes significant contributions to the literature of efficiency and productivity changes in Early Childhood Care and education institutions.

The education development and changes that have taken place either within the country or globally has made Civic and Citizenship Education (CCE) in the school system becomes important. However, often times this subject has been taken lightly by students as well as teachers and deemed as not important because this is a nonexamination subject. This situation results in knowledge, skills and civic values not being able to be assimilated by students. Due to this factor, a study was conducted to review the effectiveness of the 3E Gallery (expose, explore, excite) in order to foster a sense of love for the diversity of cultural heritage through CCE. The study involves 24 students from Form 2 Aspiration (K8), a rural school in Pahang, Malaysia. The initial review and analysis was conducted through interviews, observations and analysis of students' achievement of school-based Assessment. It was found that they were not interested in this subject because they were not clear of the needs to learn the subject. To change the paradigm, an effort through the learning approach 3E Gallery was carried out. This method is designed to build an active learning method that helps students understand their roles and responsibilities as responsible members in various social groups. With this method, students was introduced the skills of translating information and have the opportunity to experience the exploration into each gallery which was built by them. The finding shows that this activity produced a sense of excitement for the students to express love for the national arts heritage. The achievement in this subject has also increased after this learning approach was being applied. This reflects that the action taken in the action research study is timely and effective.

Background and purpose: China is among the countries putting great emphasis on strengthening early education programs to ensure a solid learning foundation for children. The present study is based on a qualitative research design to examine the role of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teaching in promoting educational quality in the context of early childhood education in China. It focuses on investigating the effectiveness of EFL teaching in enhancing the educational quality of early childhood education in the education system of China. Method: The semi-structured interviews were conducted to assess the parents' perception regarding the impact of EFL programs on the quality of education being offered in early childhood centres in China. The sample for the survey was selected from the parents of children enrolled in early childhood education centres in China offering EFL teaching as a part of their curricula. The data collection focused on the student's cognitive development and overall quality of education. Findings: Most of the participants emphasized the significant impact of early EFL education on their children's cognitive skills. They regarded EFL education as a robust tool to lay a strong foundation for future academic achievements and cross-cultural understanding of their children. Conclusion and Implications: Thus, parents in China regard early EFL education as crucial for the cognitive development and educational foundation of their children. The present study offers significant pedagogical implications regarding the inclusion of EFL instructions in enhancing the early language acquisition experience of children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explored multicultural pedagogy in pre-school education and how it plays an important role in strengthening the social interactions among children. The Multicultural Pedagogy approach in teaching children has established the multi-ethnic (PERPADUAN/Unity) pre-school. It is a qualitative study with data drawn from observation and interview sessions aimed to identify strategies in nurturing social interaction among multi-ethnic children. Through purposive sampling, a teacher with twenty-five children and parents from various ethnicities were selected. This study revealed that practising multicultural pedagogy reflects the diversity of ethnics strengthening social interaction. The teacher exposed the children to the cultures of every ethnic group to ensure they have understood other cultures from different ethnicity. When the children are exposed to the elements of different cultures, a sense of acceptance and tolerance attitude can be fostered. This strategy nurtured national integration, encouraging interactions among multi-ethnic children, stimulating acceptance and tolerance between children and creating a school environment that reflects the diversity of ethnicities. Core multicultural elements have been found in the PERPADUAN/Unity School. Overall findings from the current study provide new evidence illustrating how multicultural pedagogy implemented strengthens social interaction in early childhood education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]