History Of The Holistic Development Of Individual

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Integrated approach is the one of the element in the principles. It means an approach where knowledge, skills, and values are combined to integrate the physical, emotional, spiritual, social and intellectual aspects. There are four ways that bound to it which are skills cohesion, element-across-the-curriculum, infusion and integration. English is the medium of language in Science and Mathematics subject. Students are able to learn two things in one time and it will make them to learn the subjects very conductively. They also will master the English language faster when there is more exposure in subjects they are learning. The government wants our citizens to master English as it becomes the world language now and it has a lot of importance in our future life. So, skills cohesion is one of the examples in this situation that is being implemented in the school curriculum. Next, infusion is another ways that compile in the integrated approach. In details, it is a various knowledge of areas and subjects that covers in the curriculum. Some of the basic calculation in Mathematic is used in the Science subject. For example, the volume of water needed in a day for plants to grow up may vary to the type of plants and the climate around it. The learning theory that is being applied in these two ways is Cognitive theory. Jean Piaget is the founder of this brilliant theory and he believes that children are not empty containers to be filled with knowledge as required by the traditional pedagogical school but they are active learners and young scientist who are always creating and testing the world. Hence, the curiosity that procrastinates on their mind when they are learning new knowledge will lead them to be a great thinker. Do not be surprised when the children could ask the teachers such a mind-boggling question because they are developing their knowledge further.

Lastly is integration of two elements in a curriculum. Co-curricular activities are informal activities that are being carried out outside the classroom time. It existence becomes a fundamental key to shape the children personalities and behavior. The formation of clubs, societies and uniform bodies will help a lot to shine out their talents. For instance, they will learn something new from the club they joined like The Green Environment Club. The teacher will give a lot of input on how to preserve the environment and of course, the students can apply the tips when they are at home. This indirect learning also will help them to appreciate our lovely Earth to a better environment. Experiential learning can best describe the situation above. Carl Rogers stated that children will learn faster when they experience first what they are learning rather than they only know the facts on that knowledge. There are four elements that implies in the learning cycle of this theory which are action, experiences, reflection and insight. As much significant learning is acquired through doing, the learning that is facilitated in a right way will give a good impact when the student participates responsibly in the learning process. Children will gain an increase in personal involvement, stimulation of feelings and thinking as well as self-initiation and self-evaluation.

The second principle is the holistic development of individual. Each of us are created with unique, beautiful and various kind of talents and personality. Hence, teachers must understand students’ behavior and try to be one of the closest friends to sharpen the existing talents they have. According to the Oxford Online Dictionary, holistic means a chiefly philosophy that is characterized by the belief that the parts of something are intimately interconnected and explicable only by reference to the whole.In order to develop the individual potentials, the pupils need a holistic development to enable them to be multitasking children. The development of the children must cover all aspects like physical, emotional, spiritual and intellectual. For instance, a child that has potential in playing hockey, he or she also needs a guidance to be a professional hockey player. He or she has a fit body, so it is just a physical way of approach to pick out their talents. The child needs other supports in emotional, intellectual and of course in a spiritual way. The teachers play a prominent role here where they must give the essential knowledge on the good skills to play hockey, how to control the feeling when they are facing their enemy in a real court as well as the time management in academic and co-curricular activities. This second principle is also in line with the KBSR purpose which is to realize the importance of Health, Science and Technology. Albert Bandura’s theory of Bobo Doll experiments is one of the implementation that goes in the holistic development of individual. Social modeling that compiles in relation to motivation, ideas and actions can be seen in this principle. The pupils will imitate and learn something from what they see from the teacher’s behavior, the way he or she speaks and what they deliver when they teach those children.

Other than that, life-long learning is also one of the significant elements in the KBSR principles. As we know, school is a place where the formal education occurs between a teacher and students. Classrooms complete the teaching-learning process with the aids of books, additional notes from the teacher, teaching aids like video and flashcards as well as brief and compact explanations from the teachers themselves. Furthermore, teachers’ role is vital in inculcating and nurturing the knowledge and reading cultures in their pupils. The process of learning occurs since we were born to this world until the day we meet the Creator. There is no time restriction in searching for new knowledge. Instead, the process of learning still happens after the pupils graduate from the school. In additional, the world nowadays really hunger for educated people in various field and to fulfill the needs, we must go farther steps ahead to be the person that can conquer what the world need. For example, technologies really influence Man’s life in these millennia. Technologies can change someone life by its revolution around the world. It also brings up many pros and cons to the human as it can ease their life as well as destroy them to the fullest. For instance, internet has make our daily life becomes easier with the online shops, "virtual banking transactions" and even buying groceries and daily needs through Tesco Online Shop. On contrary, cybercrime also may happen because everyone wants to be rich people and it can happen to anyone, anywhere and at any time.

The last principle goes to one education for all. As we know, every child who is a citizen of Malaysia is eligible for free education. The free education is starting up from 7 years old up to 17 years old. In fact, if there are parents who do not send their children to school, they will be prosecuted and imprisoned. So, every student will follow the same curriculum with the same schooling level although they are in different type of schools. The learning areas of KBSR cover in developing Communication, Man and His Environment and Individual Self-Development. Communication emphasize on basic skills such as Malay Language and Chinese Language. Man and His Environment stress on spirituality, values and attitudes like Islamic Education and Moral Education. Both subjects aim to nurture and enhance pupil’s talents and potentials to enable them to become knowledgeable, religious, devout and noble in character and responsible persons. The Living Skills subject aims to provide pupils with opportunities to acquire technology-based knowledge, basic practice skills, entrepreneurship and self-management. The Art and Health Arts education provide opportunities for pupil to involve in various art activities and an emphasis is given to stay healthy and active. Lastly, co-curriculum is conducted out of the school timetable and is based on planned physical activities that cover three aspects which are uniformed units, societies and clubs and sports and games.

Hence, in order to produce 21st century learners, teachers must understand, stick and adept to the KBSR principles. Learners can be defined as a beginner or someone who is learning something. According to American Association of Colleges and Universities, (2007) to make 21st Century learners are successful, it must include knowledge of human cultures, physical, and natural world, intellectual and practical skills, personal and social responsibility as well as integrative learning. Twenty-first-century learning involves enabling today's students to be academically competitive in global situations; good citizens within their community, country, and world and effective within their workplace. It means that education must engage new technologies, equip students with rigorous academic coursework, and foster innovation and creativity. Some of the characteristics of the 21st Century learner are technologies addicts, interdependent, learner-centered is emphasized, adaptable, data- rich, high in self-esteem and always developing critical thinking, Social and Emotional Competencies.

Social and Emotional competencies is the skills necessary for children to recognize and manage their emotions, develop care and concern for others, make responsible decisions, establish positive relationships, as well as to handle challenging situations effectively. Holistic individual development is related to this important element. Besides, children nowadays become technologies addicts. Media devices like I-pad, tablets, smartphones and other electronic devices just engage nicely in everything they do. This characteristic leads to Civic literacy, global awareness and cross-cultural skills, Critical and inventive thinking as well as Information and communication skills. The teachers must always keep on updating the latest thing happens around so there is no misunderstanding happen between the teachers and the learners. Besides, learning-centered also is emphasized in this learning process. Teachers become the facilitators or coaches to them, not a provider of information. Students also equipped with data rich. Active learning is the main focus in it as there is no more text-book driven but research-driven is being stressed. Other than that, 21st century learners also must be adaptable with the world. Multiple literacies are aligned to live and work in a challenging new millennium. Teachers should not stick with the old literacies anymore (3 R’s –reading, writing and maths) instead; teachers must broaden the ways to feed the world needs. Lastly, interdependent is also a key that lead to this type of learner. Teacher is no more a judge and everybody can help each other to give the best results. Self-motivation, peers and public audience can give comments and share their meaningful thoughts together to get the best ideas. They can easily interact in social media like Dropbox, educational websites and forums.

. KBSR approach is for the primary school students. Hence, it involves young learners that range from 7 to 12 years old. These 21st century young learners are very keen and enthusiastic, curious and inquisitive, very outspoken and has clear views of thinking and they really rely on spoken word as well as the physical gestures to convey and understand meaning. There are six ‘R’ keys that involve in learning session which are Readiness, Receiving, Recording, Recalling, Reviewing and lastly Rest. However, each of the children has different styles of learning and teachers must know to differentiate the children behavior as well as knows to apply the right teaching methods to them. Children have three styles of learning which are visual, auditory and kinesthetic learners.

An auditory learner is a learning style that use hearing as a major focus when they are learning. It is easy to discover the characteristics of these types of learners. They never stops talking, always telling jokes and tries to be funny, a good story teller, and has good memory- can repeat what is said to them accurately. These essential features really reflects on their major advantages. However, these group of people also has poor handwriting and poor perception of time and space, has ten excuses for everything, and a little bit bossy. This happens because they do not really focus when the teacher use visual aids like flash cards, charts, graphs and visual directions. They think there is no use of doing what the activity asked by the teacher instead, they love to engage with the visual learners. Besides, they also become a ‘warrior’ compared to the other learners when it is related to songs. They know all the words in it. Low performance on group intelligence tests also defined them as a group of auditory learner.

There are a lot of teaching methods that can be used in handling these types of learners. Firstly, teach them to talk through tasks. Give brief explanation to the class on a task and ask the auditory learners to repeat the instruction. It is very effective especially in attracting their focus on the learning. The teacher also must allow him to spell out loud the syllables. Encouraging oral response would be good because they will keep interacting with the teacher and maintaining their focus throughout the learning session. Furthermore, the way teacher speaks and stressing the words when talking also would alert them. Ask him to name punctuation marks as he reads to develop an awareness of their function. Other than that, play a lot of rhyming and blending games in the learning process. For instance, "spelling bees" games would draw their attention to respond in the class. Their response is very fast for this type of approach and allows him to think out loud to encourage oral response. Teachers also could use neurological impress method which is pointing out to the words while reading to them. Promote him to use color cues and markers to attract them. Visual learner can best suit them in a group work.

The second type of learner is the Visual learner. Visual learner is a person that involves in the processing of visual stimuli. They like to look books and pictures as they stays with a book not just manipulating books on and off the shelves. Be careful, they also alert in seeing something in very details such as how you style yourself, why there is error in the typing and even miscellaneous thing like the button lost on your shirt. Other than that, they tend to use phrases like "Let's look at it differently" or "I would like to get a different perspective" or "See how this works for you". Besides, Visual learners also very demand on tidiness and neat environment. They just love to see things are orderly organized. If someone put up a mess, they would turn out to be very angry. Nevertheless, they also have some disadvantages in certain things. This group of people cannot get the directions orally by the other person. Instead, they will find a paper or something to draw the directions or maps to ease them. Last but not least, the learners would probably have speech problems. Furthermore, if there is any group discussion or group work, the Visual’s will be the one who will keep quiet in the group. They rarely talk to in class or may responds in as few words as possible.

Hence, the suitable teaching method for the teachers in handling them is by using a lot of visual directions and demonstrations. They would love the learning process if matching games, charts or graphs is being used. They will participate more and active in question-answers session. Number frames and abacuses is the best technique to attract them in learning Mathematics. In addition, always allow the child to work with rulers and number lines to develop their interest on the math concepts. Color coded systems will give the best result in them. This is because their brain and eyes will surely catch something that is fancy and colorful.

According to Wikipedia, Kinesthetic learning is a learning style in which learning takes place by the student carrying out a physical activity, rather than listening to a lecture or watching a demonstration. The learner love to move all the time, being active in class – touch and feel everything, rubs hands on walls as he moves. On contrary, they are classified as hyperactive. Teachers need to use concrete objects as learning aids. The learning process must involve lots of writings, movement exploration, have the children to tap out numbers, syllables and others. For example, teacher can use number lines on the floor to attract the child attention in learning. Children will use heavy objects on the line for more physical interaction.

In conclusion, I personally feel that the implementation of KBSR principles in developing 21st century learners has a lot of good effects. The thorough and well-planned principles in a school curriculum will give a huge hint to the future generations of our citizens. Hence, here is the main and important role of teachers to deliver these 21st century competencies through the right pedagogical technique, motivations and professional sharing with the students. As Mahatma Gandhi saying, "Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever." Teachers really plays prominent role in developing the future learners with the actual modesty and the teacher itself must not stop learning. Once you stop your learning process, you will lost your passion towards the teaching career.