United We Stand, Divided We Fall A Model of Virtual Collaborative Community to Support National Education Agenda

The national education transformation agenda has put a clear aspiration and direction on the involvement of parents and communities in education. This has been apparently stated in the Malaysia Education Blueprint 2013-2025 through the ninth pillar which stated the strategies to encourage mutual partnerships with parents, communities, and private sectors. Apart from the hard work of all parties, leadership styles and communication are also among the key elements that need to be addressed to realize this aspiration. To ensure its sustainability, the nature of this collaboration needs to be flexible by considering certain limitations caused by unstable situations, including the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on Joyce Epstein's model, this quantitative study aims to confirm the dimensions and constructs in the model of virtual collaborative community in education. An instrument consisting of six dimensions of collaborative community which contains 30 questionnaire items were used. The dimensions are, i) parenting, ii) communication, iii) volunteering, iv) learning at home, v) decision making (leadership), and vi) smart partnership. The survey data was collected from 246 respondents using a quantitative approach through questionnaires, which were later analyzed using the AMOS version 22 software. The finding shows that all six proposed functions for community involvement variables are significant. Finally, a model of virtual collaborative community to support national education agenda was successfully developed (CFI = 0.931: PCFI = 0.802; PNFI = 0.752; RMSEA = 0.064).