The effectiveness of teaching and learning history based on multicultural towards national integration in Malaysia

摘要

This study was conducted using a quasi experiment to determine the effects of teaching and learning history in regards to national integration in the multicultural society of Malaysia. The three multicultural perspectives used in the teaching and learning process contain culturally historical perspectives that are related to the aspect of cultural understanding, ethnic historical perspectives that are related to racial tolerance and national historical perspectives which include the Malaysian identity. The respondents for this study were multiracial students of the Malay, Chinese and Indian origin from two different schools in Selangor, Malaysia. 81 students were assigned to the treatment group while 80 students were at the control group. The experiment was conducted over 15 weeks. The pilot study showed that the items used in this study have a high level of reliability on the Cronbach alpha index, between 0.80 and 0.96. The findings showed a significant difference(p<0.05)between treatment group and control group for every aspects that was studied including gender and race. For the treatment group, the finding showed the highest mean for racial tolerance (mean=4.32) compared to cultural understanding aspect (mean=4.28), Malaysia identity aspects (mean=4.27) and national integration aspects (mean=4.26). Moreover, MANOVA test showed a significant difference for all aspects based on gender and race. The cultural understandings, racial tolerance and Malaysian identity perspectives showed a high correlation with national integration. The regression analysis showed that the cultural understanding is 55%, the highest contribution compared to the other perspectives, such as Malaysian identity 11% and racial tolerance 2.5%. The implication of the study revealed that a multicultural based approach to History in schools was positively accepted by multiracial students. Thus, it could be adopted as a teaching model to promote unity among this multiracial society and in the long run to achieve the “One Malaysia” vision.