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Click This study aimed to determine the level of transformational leadership practices by school principals in the national primary schools in the district of Kinta Selatan, Perak, Malaysia. The four dimensions of transformational leadership studied were individual consideration, intellectual stimulation, inspirational motivation and idealized influence. The study also looks at the level of teachers’ job satisfaction as well as the relationship with the practice of transformational leadership by the national primary school principals’. The respondents consisted of 275 teachers employed in 12 national primary schools in the district of Kinta Selatan, Perak. The data obtained was analyzed using SPSS version 20.0. Descriptive analysis and Pearson Correlation Coefficient were used to analyze the strength of the relationship. The results showed that the practice of transformational leadership by school principals’ in the district of Kinta Selatan, Perak was moderate and the job satisfaction of primary school teachers’ was below satisfactory with a significant relationship between the level of transformational leadership and job satisfaction. The implication of this study is that the school principals should ensure that their leadership performance is always kept high to have a significant relationship with the job satisfaction of primary school teachers’.

School leaders are key factors in implementation of information and communication technology (ICT) in schools. They need to understand the capacities of the new technologies, to have a personal proficiency in their use, and be able to promote a school culture which encourages exploration of new techniques in teaching, learning and management. However, there is less information about the current status of ICT use by Malaysian school principals. This paper investigated the extent to which secondary school principals use computers in Malaysia and determined factors related to level of computer use by principals (cultural perceptions and leadership style of principals). Initial report also highlighted analysis of a baseline data gathered from 520 secondary school principals in the state of Selangor and Wilayah Persekutuan, Malaysia. Findings indicate that school principals are using computers for instructional and administrative purposes and they have moderate competency in computer applications and spent a few times a week working on their computers. Also, cultural perceptions and transformational leadership contributed significantly to the level of computer use by principals. It is anticipated that the data obtained from the study will open new lines of inquiry about the crucial roles of school leaders in the adoption of ICTs and will contribute to decisions about future developmental needs because more will be known about their preparedness for change. Hence, policy makers must design professional development programs, such as leadership studies, in order to teach the components of transformational leadership; idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation and individual consideration to future administrators.

Socio-economic status (SES) plays a significant role in influencing students’ achievement and school's performance. Previous studies showed comparatively that students of high SES background will perform better than students from low SES background which subsequently affects on the overall performance of their respective school. However, the relationship between these two aspects cannot be viewed in the context of the Ulu Lubai National Primary School, which is located in the remote corners of Limbang Dictrict, in Sarawak, Malaysia. Hence, the focus of this article is to investigate the fundamental efforts and factors that contribute towards driving this school to be one of the high performance schools in Malaysia. This is a case study which applies interviews, observations and document analysis in gathering data. This school is honoured with many awards at the district, national and international level as a result from the determination and commitment given by the headmaster and teachers as well as the parents and local communities. In this article, the view from the headmaster, teachers and the local community were highlighted from the perspective of their collaborative efforts and visions which relatively provides a finer insight to the previous findings on the importance of communities’ involvement to enhance the school effectiveness and excellence.

Online learning allows flexibility in learning and accessing materials according to student needs in terms of time and techniques. Similarly, compared with traditional courses, online learning provides interactive materials that allow easy access to information and feedback from others. However, not all students are interested to engage in online learning (Norwati & Zaini, 2007), especially those students who are engaged in courses that require a face-to-face learning environment, such as engineering. Diaz and Cartnal (1999)claim this situation relates to learning styles. Students with different learning styles would have different perceptions and commitment towards online learning. This article aims to identify the learning styles of engineering students, and their perceptions towards online learning. Data were collected by using a questionnaire with two domains. The first section is the learning style domain that uses the learning style inventory (Kolb, 1984). The second section includes student perceptions towards online learning, which was adapted from O’Mally and McCraw (1999). The participants of the study consisted of 136 first year engineering students studying in a public university in Malaysia. The respondents have different learning styles, and most of them were identified as assimilator learners. In addition, the respondents tend to have a positive perception towards the effectiveness and related advantages of online learning. No significant relationship was observed among the perceptions towards online learning of students with different learning styles. Thus, learning styles have no influence on the perception of engineering students towards online learning.