Rising Political Conciousness: Transformative Learning Among Educated Urban Malays in Malaysia

• Main Author: Kamis, Mazalan
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English; English
• Published: 2002
• Subjects: Political science - Malaysia.; Transformative learning - Malaysia.
• Online Access: http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/9331/1/FPP_2002_23.pdf; http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/9331/

The purpose of this study is to explore the nature of perspective transformation in the aftermath of the economic and political turmoil of the late 1990s in Malaysia. The study is guided by the following research questions: (1) What triggered the perspective transformation among the selected individuals, (2) How did the process of perspective transformation occur among the selected individuals, (3) What facilitated the process of perspective transformation as experienced by the selected individuals. The researcher conducted a case study on Malaysia's tenth General Election (GE) in 1999. Ten participants were interviewed in this study. They consist of educated Malays with an average age of forty years old, married with an average of four children, and living and/or working in the Klang Valley. The participants were selected using the snowballing sampling technique. They were chosen based on the following criteria: (1) changing political party membership, (2) voting against one's own party, (3) applying to register as a voter, which was never done before, despite eligibility, and (4) being actively involved in election campaigns. The primary data collection technique used in this qualitative case study was the interviews. A question guide was developed and refined for use in the interviews. The interviews were taped and conducted in a mixture of languages, Bahasa Melayu and English, as such mixture is common among the urban educated Malays .The taped interviews were transcribed verbatim.