This capacity-building programme for teachers is made possible by our partners, Yayasan Hasanah and Penang Education Council.

In this digital age, it often seems that we can reach one another at our fingertips. But what does it really mean to build relationships with the people around us and to connect with a place? Why is it important to know and to feel a sense of belonging to a place you are in, for the kind of community and society we want to create?

Place-based learning (PBL), a methodology that Arts-ED has developed and continues to refine over the last two decades, attempts to provide a platform for both students and educators to explore the questions above. Since 2017, Arts-ED has been actively partnering with local schools to train teachers in conducting PBL. Experiential and student-centered in nature, PBL encourages the learner to activate or practice learning in an authentic setting in a local site, through engagement with the local environment and community and the issues within – complementing and strengthening knowledge gained in the classroom. Such integrated learning is important to equip our youth with the necessary skills to navigate the dynamic 21st century: collaboration, communication, critical thinking, and creativity, as stated in the Malaysia Education Blueprint 2013-2025. It is also crucial for developing individuals with a strong sense of value, such as being grounded in the communities they are a part of, accepting and respecting others who are different from us, having empathy, etc. 

PBL encompasses four interrelated learning approaches, namely project-based learning, problem-based learning, community-based learning, and inquiry-based learning. It is based on the belief that knowledge comes not only from textbooks and classrooms, but also from different parts of our daily life, our families, and our neighbourhoods. As such, teachers play a pivotal role in facilitating the synthesis of various forms of knowledge in PBL, along with assets and resources at the chosen site, and the community members and organizations that are connected to the site.

Can PBL be done in schools? Should it be done?: A Discussion Forum

On August 7, 2021, Arts-ED organized an online forum for teachers involved in the 2020-2021 PBL capacity-building programme to share their experiences regarding the benefits and challenges in using PBL as a 21st-century teaching and learning strategy in schools. The teachers and another 116 attendees, including educators and officers from the district, state, and national education departments discussed and attempted to answer these questions: can PBL be done in school? Should it be done?

The event kicked off with one teacher each from three schools – SMK Berapit, SMK Abdullah Munshi, and Penang Chinese Girls’ Private High School – presenting their respective projects. The three teachers, who each has more than 20 years of teaching experience, were then joined by the principal of Penang Chinese Girls’ Private High School in discussing the impact of PBL on students’ learning, some challenges faced in the process, and strategies that have been or could potentially be used to overcome those challenges. All the teachers and attendees were then divided into three groups for a more in-depth conversation about the why and how of implementing PBL in schools.

The three groups unanimously agreed that implementing PBL in schools is undeniably challenging. It is time-intensive and requires active collaboration among multiple parties, including teachers in the project team, school administrators, community members, and also parents. These challenges are intensified especially due to multiple constraints embedded into our education system. Yet, there was resounding support for PBL as a transformative pedagogy and keen interest among the participating teachers and attendees alike to develop strategies that can help overcome these barriers. 

Click here to watch recordings of our online forum on 7 Aug 2021: Nurturing 21st Century Skills Through Place-based Learning.

2020 - 2021 PBL Capacity Building Programme for Teachers

The online forum was a culmination of the three schools’ work in Arts-ED’s 2020-2021 PBL capacity-building programme for teachers. A total of 44 teachers from three schools located in various parts of Penang – SMK Berapit, SMK Abdullah Munshi, and Penang Chinese Girls’ Private High School – took part in the programme. Some of the teachers were entirely new to PBL, while others have been involved in Arts-ED’s training for the past few years.

Aimed to provide a practical platform for teachers to learn how to plan, design, and execute a project that cultivates 21st-century learning skills, the programme consists of two parts: a training workshop followed by coaching.

Two to three days long, the workshop was customized to each school’s context to prepare the teachers to draw on the assets and resources in their school’s surrounding community. Teachers experienced a variety of hands-on activities and creative approaches that resembled the kind of experiential and constructive learning that is core to PBL, which they can then incorporate into their lessons as well.

After the workshop, the Arts-ED trainer-facilitator team worked closely with the teachers as they developed their projects, solving problems together as they arose, and observing sessions to give feedback as requested.

Despite the challenges brought by the pandemic, all three schools successfully planned and implemented their PBL projects, by incorporating them into the curriculum or co-curricular activities, or as a special project. The projects focused on cultural assets in their schools’ surrounding neighborhoods, specifically traditional trades and places of worship. Some also sought to redefine the meaning of “place”, encouraging students to connect to the communities they are a part of – from family to the school community – at a deeper and often more critical level.

1. SEKOLAH MENENGAH KEBANGSAAN BERAPIT

2020-2021 was the first year SMK Berapit participated in Arts-ED’s training programme. After exploring the multiple traditional trades operating nearby the school, a team of four teachers decided to focus on the paper effigy trade based in Berapit New Village. The well-known trade is part of a network of artisans and service providers that is integral to the practice of cultural and religious rites among Chinese communities in nearby towns and beyond.

Implemented as a special project outside of class time, this PBL project drew on the subjects of Mathematics, History, and Chinese Language as students explored the cultural significance of the trade to the community. Eight Form 2 students conducted interviews, learned to do parts of the paper effigy-making process, and used creative means to process and synthesize the data they collected, culminating in an exhibition open to the whole school.

2. SEKOLAH MENENGAH KEBANGSAAN ABDULLAH MUNSHI

Building on previous PBL projects they conducted in the surrounding community, 10 teachers – those with prior knowledge of PBL and others with no experience at all – have planned and are carrying out two PBL projects this year. Both projects are integrated into co-curricular activities and conducted during designated time periods.

The first project, titled “Kampung Dodol: Dah Kenal Makin Cinta (Dodol Village: to know is to love)” brings Form 4 Arts Stream students to explore the role of a mosque and a tombstone traditional trade in an urban Malay village neighboring their school.

The second project, “COVID Fighter”, takes a more school-based approach. It aims to understand the impact of COVID-19 on their school community from different perspectives as students interview parents, teachers, and their peers.

3. PENANG CHINESE GIRLS’ PRIVATE HIGH SCHOOL

2021 marks the fourth year of Arts-ED’s partnership with Penang Chinese Girls’ Private High School in PBL. For the first time, all teachers in the school participated in the training workshop, resulting in the ideation of five PBL projects in total.

Some of these projects were entirely new, such as a science garden, a mural about the school’s history, and a project in the new subject of Aesthetics Studies that allows students to research and develop a new design for their school’s sports uniform.

Others were continuations of past projects. After the 2019 Home Science project where students studied the making of traditional soya sauce and innovated their own sauce, the latest iteration of the project, which is still based on the same traditional soya sauce factory, seeks to investigate the trade from a climate geography angle.

Another project, which focuses on rice, has the unique opportunity of working with the same group of Social Science students across 2020 and 2021. Building on their understanding of the various functions of rice in their own as well as others’ families and cultures, this year the students take a more critical look at their daily food consumption, connecting the usage of rice at an individual and family level to its supply at a macro level.

Resilience and Creativity in the Pandemic and Beyond

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought numerous challenges to the 2020-2021 PBL capacity-building programme, and generally to teaching and learning in schools. It has shed light on important questions worth contemplating by all educators: what is the role of relationship-building in engaging our students in authentic learning? How can we cultivate their capacity to participate fully and actively in our communities and society?

In the face of all these challenges and the sense of urgency to rethink our approaches to education, we are heartened by many participating teachers’ commitment to continuous pedagogical innovation to improve students’ learning, as well as their own personal and professional convictions in the value of PBL. As we look to the future, whatever our relationship with the coronavirus may be then, we are excited to continue working and learning alongside passionate educators we have met or will meet.

Further Resources:

• To watch an introductory video about our Place-based/ Community-based Learning approach, click here.

• To watch the recordings of our online forum on 7 Aug 2021: Nurturing 21st Century Skills Through Place-based Learning, click here.

• To watch a video on the overview of Arts-ED's PBL Capacity Building Programme for Teachers, click here.

• To access our PBL Project Case Studies by our Malaysian local school teachers, click here.

Reported by: Ooi Win Wen | 19 September 2021