Fullan’s 6Cs in Attaining Quality Education among 9-Year-Old Students in an Urban Poor Primary

School English Classroom

Aliza Alexander Selvaratnam Salim

Quality education comprises literacy, numeracy, and life skills that satisfies basic learning needs and
enriches the lives of learners and their overall experience of living (UNESCO, 2015). The recent
emphasis in the world of education on the 21st century learning and teaching strategies is profound in
achieving quality education by equipping learners with knowledge, skills, values, and attitudes to face
the real world. Teaching in an urban poor primary school with students from low socio-economic
background and broken family is a challenging journey. Such most often display cognitive delay, poor
social skills and intense antisocial behaviour. On top of that, teaching a foreign language such as
English to students with low proficiency in their own native languages requires effective interventions.
By the end of their primary education, almost 43% of the students fail to communicate and read
simple English. This action research was conducted by implementing the Fullan’s 6Cs (creativity,
collaboration, communication, citizenship, character education and critical thinking) in a 9-year-old
English lesson in an urban poor primary school as an intervention to improve students’ English
proficiency and implicitly attaining quality education. The intervention took place for a duration of 6
month after the first Literacy and Numeracy Screening (LINUS) in March 2017 with 20 students as the
participants. The participants’ English proficiency progress was gauged and observed along with their
character development. Based on the pre-LINUS, post-LINUS and final year examination results, the
participants have showed 85% progress in both their reading and writing assessments. Their character
development was observed through a Character Education Checklist throughout the intervention
duration. Participants displayed more prosocial behaviour such as respect, empathy, and resilience.
The Fullan’s 6Cs is proved to be a comprehensive 21st century learning and teaching strategy that
focuses on the development of a learner especially within an English classroom context.

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