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All students should have equal opportunities to pursue education. When the COVID-19 pandemic began, almost all teaching activities had to be switched from the traditional face-to-face format to digital platforms. Although it is now the post-pandemic period, many online teaching and learning practices have been maintained. It is, therefore, crucial to ensure that teachers are doing their best to make online teaching inclusive, and an instrument assessing their practices is essential. This study aims to develop this instrument and validate it. Referring to relevant works and universal design for learning (UDL) guidelines, we developed an instrument that consists of five domains: affective, behavioural, cognitive, competence and awareness. Through expert assessment of face, content and construct validity, a pilot study, and data analysis of 505 respondents teaching in different educational levels from primary schools to higher institutions in Malaysia, using exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and correlational testing, the findings show that the instrument has high validity and reliability in assessing teachers' practices in delivering inclusive online education. While the instrument has implications for policymakers and researchers, it needs further validation in the context of different countries. Necessary amendments might be required to make it more context specific. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ICT in the Malaysian education system serves as a tool to accomplish the National Education Blueprint 2015-2025. Under this blueprint, privileged groups such as the aborigines or Malaysian aboriginals will be given equal opportunity in education. However, a specific classroom teaching method is required to maintain the aboriginal students' focus and attention on their learning experiences due to their unique paradigm of learning. This study used the Partial Least Square (PLS) and Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) tool to examine the factors influencing personalised learning and digital self-learning ICT literacy module. It also measured the impact of personalised learning and digital ICT literacy module among secondary aboriginal students. This study involved 92 aboriginal students who participated in a transferable skills and ICT programme held in a public university in Malaysia. Results show that personalised learning positively supported the use of a digital ICT literacy module as a teaching and learning approach. Therefore, this study suggests that the digital ICT literacy module is an adaptive educational resource for personalised learning to meet the learning needs of aboriginal students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Malaysia is a multi-ethnic country in which the government gives preferential treatment in education, employment, and ownership to its majority ethnic group: Bumiputera. However, affirmative action policies in the current Malaysian context should work according to John Rawls’ Theory of Justice by being based on income rather than ethnicity. Certainly Malaysian Government should be praised for giving freedom to the Chinese and Indians to select their preferred school and this is partly consistent with Amartya Sen’s view of freedom; however this article argues that these communities are apparently given constraint freedom of choice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An important element of Malaysia's affirmative action regime has been to expand tertiary education access and upper-level occupational opportunities for the Bumiputera beneficiary group. However, the momentum of change has dwindled in recent years; Bumiputera representation in managerial and professional positions remained fairly static across 1995-2005. This paper provides a framework for conceptualising affirmative action and outlines Malaysia's affirmative action programmes in education and employment. It compiles evidence of affirmative action outcomes from official publications and various surveys, and derives new information from census data. Tertiary education quantitatively burgeoned from the 1990s, but the growing importance of educational quality adversely affects Bumiputera graduates, who predominantly enrol in less regarded domestic public institutes. In addition, Bumiputera continue to rely heavily on the public sector for employment in managerial and professional positions. The findings demonstrate a critical need to arrest the quality decline in public education and to judiciously modify affirmative action programmes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the features of Malaysia's affirmative action policy. Prevalence of Malay notion that preferential treatment is part of their special rights; Historical account of the implementation of affirmative action in the country; Role of the initiative in the expansion of Malay participation in the economy and higher education; Impact of affirmative action on ethnic integration, economic competitiveness and the aim to achieve a knowledge-based economy.