The effect of ethnic relations course on the students perceptions towards ethnic relations among first year students of one public university in Malaysia

Malaysia is a multi-racial country and unity is an important agenda for the country's political, social and economic stability. The Malaysian prime minister enhanced this vital agenda with his "One Malaysia" concept that alert the Malaysian citizen to have a high sense of responsibility towards building a united nation. Every citizen should have high tolerance attitude among them. The Malaysia Ministry of Higher Education has taken stern action in realizing this concept of unity by introducing a course known as Ethnic Relations. The course should be taken by every students in private and public universities. A study was conducted on first year students perceptions towards ethnic relations in Malaysia mainly between the Malays and the non Malays which consists of Chinese, Indian and other ethnics. The sample of the study were 320 first year students of one of the public university in Malaysia who register for Ethnic Relations course in the first semester for the 2009/2010 session. Questionnaires were given to the students before the implementation of the ethnic relations module and after their completion of the course. The aspects of questionnaires are culture, identity, stereotype, interaction, prejudice and plurality. This is an action research and data was analyzed by using mean. Before the implementation of the module, from the mean it was found that there was a difference of perceptions between the different ethnic related to the aspects of culture, identity and stereotype. The findings will be discussed later in the paper. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.