Abstract

“One size fits all”; a statement that precisely describes the Malaysian current education system where the school system and the curriculum are centralized under the Ministry of Education (MoE). Hence, teachers are prescribed by the ministry with the curriculum, syllabi, textbooks and materials for them to use in class. In other words, it can be safely concluded that the current education system is purely centralized as teachers act as implementors of the curriculum provided by the MoE. Without devaluing the importance, benefits and success of the centralized system of education, there is however undeniably a need to review the role of teachers in curriculum development to ensure that the curriculum is able to produce competent students and that are able to compete in the global world too. In order to achieve this, a change in the teacher’s role is required and one of the ways that can be done is by providing more autonomy to teachers in curriculum development. Unlike the current system, teachers should be given more autonomy to decide among others, the content of curriculum, materials to be brought into class and methods of evaluating and assessing students. Nevertheless, it must be noted that transforming a 52-year-old tradition is no easy feat. Many factors must be addressed namely teachers, parents, students, curriculum decision makers and the MoE. Hence, the purpose of this study is to propose a framework that can be used as a guideline to transform the current practice of a centralized curriculum to a decentralized one by involving teachers in the process of curriculum development.