Preliminary Study in Emerging Competence Domain: Synergised Computational Thinking (CT) Skills and Brain-Based Learning (BBL) in TVET Curriculums

Abstract

Recently, Malaysia’s higher education curriculum in Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) has become popular especially in the education sector. There are strong relationships between government, industries and educational institutions in addressing and tackling the country’s skills challenges among university graduates to achieve Malaysia’s mission for high-income status by 2020. According to recent studies, the stakeholders failed to fulfil the job vacancies in their industries due to the lack of skilled university graduates, even though they are from the TVET institutions. The 11th Malaysia Plan foresees the increment of job vacancies that require the TVET-related skills in 2016 – 2020, however, some institutions are not able to produce graduates with TVET-related skills that met the industry demand. This study shows that most of the existing industries are directly or indirectly related to Information and Communication Technology (ICT) which are the third-largest economic catalyst in Malaysia. Based on the study conducted by National ICT Association of Malaysia (Pikom), 10% of new employees in ICT sectors are successfully accepted by the industries while the remaining 90% requires additional or extensive training before they are ready to work in the industries. These conditions happen due to the University’s failure in producing graduates with TVET-related skills that can support the rapid evolvement of ICT sectors.