News Archive

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The Master of Education (MEd) (Curriculum and Teaching) programme has been an enriching and perceptive experience as the programme provided a useful pit stop for me to reflect and to hone my craft as an educator. The interactive programme design, based on andragogy principles, allows me to customise and take ownership of my learning, creating opportunities for deep conversations with a diverse group of like-minded educators. Being exposed to these diverse perspectives allows me to have a deeper understanding of curriculum and assessment principles, its history and development as well as the different ideologies and policies that underpins the Singapore education system.

Understanding the principles of curriculum design also allows me to better understand and appreciate the differences in curriculum structures, which is particularly relevant in my transition as an educator from junior college to secondary school and in subject, from English to Economics. The deep conversations and close mentorship during the MEd programme also provided much food for thought in my work now as a curriculum designer for the school’s co-curriculum framework and programmes. Such discourse and interactions also gave me the confidence and perspectives to lead my teachers in school-based curriculum and co-curriculum development even as I made the transition to teach in a secondary school. I am currently looking at how Solow’s taxonomy can be used for peer-and-self assessment to develop self-directed and collaborative learners, in a technology-rich environment. This is particularly relevant now as we look at the roll-out of the CCE 2021 curriculum and the Personal Digital Learning Programme.

Being the recipient of the the ASCD Gold Medal is a great privilege and provides affirmation and confidence for me moving forward to carry out my plans for co-curriculum development. The prize would also not have been possible without the support of the wonderful faculty and fellow educator friends in the MEd course as well as my family, especially my wife. I thank ASCD and NIE for the affirmation as I continue embarking on my self-discovery as an educator.

Q: What do you think are urgent issues in the area of curriculum development in your own field of specialisation?

I believe that the constant challenge in curriculum development is to design a differentiated curriculum that meets the diverse needs of the learners while ensuring that the skills and knowledge that students acquired are relevant for them to be future-ready. I think the Singapore Education System has done a great job, evident in the PISA and TIMSS educational rankings as well as the high employability of our graduates.

There are, however, several urgent issues that the education system and schools must address moving forward as we prepare for the technological and socio-economic changes that are upon us. I would like to focus on two of them. The first is the digitalisation of the workplace and by extension, schools. Schools must make use of the affordances of technology to inculcate digital literacy and skills in our students. The COVID-19 pandemic provides fresh impetus and urgency for teachers to adopt innovative pedagogies and tools, such as Zoom and the Student Learning Space (SLS) to engage our students. While the pandemic highlights how versatile and resilient our teachers and students can be, there is a need to take a step further to re-examine how our curriculum can be revamped to better support these new modalities of teaching and learning as well as review the content, the skills and knowledge that our students will need.

The second issue that we urgently need to examine is how the curriculum needs to move away from “what” to learn to the question of “how” to learn. With the VUCA world upon us, content knowledge is made obsolete at an increasing pace and students need to have the aptitude to learn, re-learn and unlearn in order to remain relevant. This is why the development of self-directed and collaborative learners who are able to learn independently and think creatively is so important. This has long been touted as an educational outcome for our students but we still have some way to go. In the 2018 PISA Global Competence study, Singapore students came up tops in the overall rankings but fared below average in the category of self-perceived cognitive adaptability. The indicator examines the ability of students in adapting their thinking and behaviour to novel situations. This perhaps highlights the tendency of our students to focus on the “right answers” amidst an examination-oriented culture that rewards accuracy and compliance. As we move towards equipping our students with the tools to navigate uncertainty, the curriculum will also need to be revisited to provide more opportunities for students to experiment, more opportunities for students to fail and more opportunities to develop their voice, as we move to a curriculum that facilitates heutagogy, where the teacher takes a back seat and students take the lead in designing their learning experiences and content.

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One for the Photo Album: 31st Annual General Meeting (30 May 2020)

Here's a quick snap from our 31st AGM - held online!

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The 31st Annual General Meeting will be held on 30th May (Saturday), at 10.30am, using Zoom Online. A step-by-step procedure on how to log on will be provided to all attendees before the AGM.

The programme for the AGM is as follows:

10:00am:   Registration for the AGM

                 (Your attendance will be recorded as you sign in for the AGM)

10:30am:   AGM - Confirmation of Quorum

10:35am:   Breathe with Me - Mini workshop by Dr Cheah Yin Mee

11:00am:   Annual General Meeting

                 - President's Address

                 - Presentation of the Annual Report of the 15th Executive Council

                 - Confirmation of the Minutes of the 30th Annual General Meeting

                 - Treasurer's Report for 1st January to 31st December 2019

                 - Resolution for Change in Constitution

                 - Election of Members of 16th Executive Council 2020-2022

                 - Election of two Honorary Auditors for 2020

                 - Any other business

12:00pm   End of the AGM

Catching Up with the Winners of the ASCD Gold Medal and Book Prizes 2019

We caught up with the winners of this year's ASCD Gold Medal and Book Prizes and asked them for their reflections. Here's what they had to say:

• ASCD Gold Medal winner Emen Low Xiankai
• ASCD Book Prize for Best Capstone Project Sharon Yap Ching Ling
• ASCD Book Prize for Best Dissertation Adrian Tan Kok Wui

ASCD Gold Medal winner Emen Low Xiankai

Q: Please describe what you do now and how the course has helped you with your work. How have the prizes helped you or contributed to your professional development?

I will always be grateful to the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) for recognising my efforts in the Masters of Education (Curriculum & Teaching) course. I have benefited in so many ways from the thought-provoking lectures, developmental tutelage and riveting discussions with peers. Allow me to focus on my professional development in the following two ways. 

Firstly, in my decade of service in public education, I have remained humbled by the vast expanse of challenges our learners face, and how our deliberate curricular and pedagogical decisions will either help or hinder our learners to overcome these challenges. In the course of my study, I have been inspired by the vast array of research that calls into question routine practices, and urges us to reimagine our expectations of schooling; in fact, my key research interest remains the interlocking nature of teaching, learning and assessment, and how these may be highly leveraged to offer a more equitable schooling experience to underprivileged individuals and families.

Secondly, I remain fascinated by the diversity that characterises our schools. I am keen to explore the impact of diversity (e.g. ethnicity, nationality, social class and gender) on the way curriculum is experienced by both learners and teachers. Whether it is the cultivation of future-readiness or values that typify our citizens, I am curious to explore how our standardised curriculum may continue to evolve in order to better serve an increasingly complex diversity of learners and teachers. In this vein, going forward, I am determined to work on research that will help clarify the future value proposition of public education in Singapore.

 

My achievements in education may not be attributed to my efforts alone. I will always be indebted firstly, to my supportive family who never turned a deaf ear to my rants, secondly, to the fiercely passionate peers and colleagues who broaden my worldview, and lastly, to the highly energetic and authentic learners who fuel my imagination. It gives me immense pleasure and pride to be able to give back to the community that continues to nurture me as an educator. It is my daily mission to do the right thing, and to do things right.

ASCD Book Prize for Best Capstone Project Sharon Yap Ching Ling

Q: Please describe what you do now and how the course has helped you with your work. How have the prizes helped you or contributed to your professional development?

I am an Academic Mentor at the School of Life Skills and Communication (LSC), at Singapore Polytechnic (SP). In addition to teaching, I support my school and colleagues in curriculum and teaching design and development matters, and in professional learning.

I found NIE’s MEd (Curriculum and Teaching) course tremendously helpful to my work as it greatly broadened and deepened my notions of the complexities that characterise and underlie teaching-learning relationships, curriculum and assessment design, and professional learning. I hope that it will translate into a greater ability on my part to make insightful contributions to dialogue and wiser decision-making to respond to both everyday work and novel disruptions.

Receiving the ASCD book prize was a pleasant surprise! I am still making sense of its implications, but I suppose it does make me think more seriously about whether my critical inquiry ideas could be realised.

 

Q: Can you briefly summarise your dissertation and your critical inquiry project which won prizes?

My critical inquiry project seeks to theorise or construct a frame through which to understand how students and teachers in the context of an SP institutional programme dynamically co-construct “trust” in a bi-directional relationship, and the importance of “trust” in students’ educative experience.

“Trust” is interesting because it is not a singular or unitary construct. Indeed, it is a very slippery one in the sense that different disciplines define, study and construct it differently, there are controversies over how “trust” is built and broken, it can shift with time and depends on who is doing what in a “trust” relationship. In our context, we do not know if “trust” is even the “same thing” to students and teachers (some research indicates it is not), or whether our teaching-learning relationships should more appropriately be viewed through lenses of “distrust,” “mistrust” or “lack of trust” than “trust,” with its normatively positive implications.

My project thus aims to construct an understanding of what might be going with students and teachers in their human agency in relationship-building, and hopefully add to our collective wisdom to cultivate rich and enduring experiences for our learners.

Q: What do you think are urgent issues in the area of curriculum development in your own field of specialization?

I feel we face challenges in how curriculum should be reimagined and redesigned for “optimal” or “effective” learning in a constantly shifting education landscape of competing discourses and narratives of urgency that value certain modes of living/learning, such as greater digitalisation. How can we critically contemplate the beliefs and assumptions underlying the demands placed on us to act, yet shift our paradigms quickly? To what extent should we shift, or should we shift in other directions? I think these are some of the crucial questions we must continue asking as we make sense of how the world is changing, and exert our own influence in shaping the way we think about and take action on it.

ASCD Book Prize for Best Dissertation Adrian Tan Kok Wui

Singapore ASCD President Mrs Tan Wan Yu, with two of the award recipients	ASCD Gold Medal winner Low Emen Xiankai, receiving his award

Winner of ASCD Book Prize for Best Captstone Project Yap Ching Ling Sharon was not present to receive her award	Winner of ASCD Book Prize for Best Dissertation Adrian Tan Kok Wui, receiving his award

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Teachers' Conference

Aside from enhancing teacher development through workshops, ASCD Singapore started to support the Teachers’ Conference, an initiative of the Ministry of Education. With its beginnings in 2001, the Teachers’ Conference is a biennial event for teachers to deepen their pedagogical skills and together, share teaching practices as a fraternity.

ASCD Singapore first sponsored a speaker for the Conference’s keynote address in 2004 and has continued to contribute $10,000 to the event. As it is able to access renowned overseas educators and trainers due to its affiliation to ASCD International, ASCD Singapore also plays a key role in helping to reach out to these experts, to share their knowledge with Singapore teachers at the Conference.

Such speakers have covered wide-ranging topics: from the critical role that the teacher plays in nurturing the spirit of innovation and enterprise among students; to creativity; the organisational implications of computer-supported activities; as well as social-emotional and character development. Eminent speakers, to name a few, have included Gary Marx, the President at the Centre for Public Outreach, Vienna, Virginia; Frans Johansson, author of "The Medici Effect"; researcher Dr John Seely Brown and Professor Maurice J. Elias from the Psychology Department of Rutgers University.

Professor Maurice Elias (centre), with Soo Kim Bee and Tan Wan Yu

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About 30 delegates attended the ASCD Affiliates' meeting	Ms Yeo, with Mr Ronn Nozoe, ASCD Interim Executive Director