NIE Working Paper Series

This paper attempts to provide some fundamentals to help readers appreciate the conceptions of creative and critical thinking through a broad scan of the literature and findings within overseas and local contexts. The paper further provides a brief overview of the assessments used to assess creative and critical thinking to monitor how our thinking works. It brings to the fore the essential conditions for promoting creative and critical thinking. Approaches favourable to nurturing creative and critical thinking are discussed: classroom environment, teacher competencies and dispositions, and school-wide initiatives for promoting creative and critical thinking in our schools. We then suggest some recommendations for supporting teachers in their continuing efforts to promote this among students. We also make the case for the need for systematic baseline study to gauge our intervention developments so that we might better inform the Ministry of Education Singapore on recommended future directions.

This paper draws from international literature and local studies in Singapore on low progress students to delineate the present state of local knowledge and practice, and suggest future directions for research and policy. The needs of low progress students vary and they may not perform as well as their peers due to a variety of reasons. According to local research, there is a range of learning orientations, motivations and talents, non-academic capabilities and psychological needs among these students, which should be considered in efforts to level them up. Besides individual factors, this paper also recognizes the importance of addressing both school- and education-system-related factors, as well as broader societal factors that could contribute to low progress. However, for the purpose of a more focused discussion, this paper looks more closely at the contributing school- and education-system-related factors to low progress. These factors can be categorized into areas of curriculum, instruction and pedagogy, assessment, teacher quality and attitudes, and school culture and structure. They are examined for constructive ideas, strategies and practices of which implications can inform and better the teaching and learning of local low progress students. We also seek to prepare students to face the new challenges in the 21st century as well as to fulfil the vision of achieving a student-centric education where each student matters and where education is positioned as a means by which meritocracy is implemented and social inequalities mediated. Therefore, this paper proposes that it is timely to revisit some long-held beliefs and practices, from preschool education to teacher education, from education policy to micro-classroom pedagogies and management, from curriculum to assessment, and from the school level to engagement of community and family as stakeholders.

Bilingualism is becoming more common worldwide, and it remains a central educational policy in Singapore. In this document, we review research related to bilingualism and literacy development and achievement. Following an ecological framework, we outline known factors contributing to literacy achievement and discuss findings from bilingual research regarding these factors. We conclude with recommendations for educational practice informed by the research literature.

This working paper builds on existing work on teacher professional learning communities (PLCs) in both local and international contexts, to examine how collaborative learning can enrich teacher professional development for the actualization of teacher-led professionalism. It also aims to bring together the multiple views and lenses of state, local and international academia, and practitioners into an integrated strategy for the research on PLCs in Singapore schools. In doing so, the paper aspires, through research, to contribute to efforts for reconfiguring teacher professionalism, buttressed by teacher-led professional learning efforts. In response to these aspirations, we propose a 5-year research trajectory for actualizing teacher-led professionalism through mentoring collaborative reflection among teachers in PLCs.

Parent engagement in children’s upbringing and education is crucial for a child’s holistic development. Awareness of the importance of parent engagement in Singapore is high but research is limited. This working paper aims to lay the foundation for a policy conversation about the role of parent engagement in education. It provides a synopsis of international and local literature on parent engagement: its nature, rationales, global trends, benefits and dilemmas. It reviews some influential conceptual models that have influenced both academic work and policies worldwide. It also presents examples of successful parent engagement practices internationally, which may provide inspiration for Singapore’s own initiatives and policies, while cautioning against the uncritical and wholesale transfer of foreign practices. The paper concludes by suggesting future directions for public policy and educational research. It highlights the directions of a system-wide research that we are undertaking in order to support an evidence-based, context-sensitive policy framework on parent engagement in Singapore.

This paper provides an overview of key research conducted locally and internationally in the field of applied cognitive development, particularly working memory and executive functioning from early childhood to mid-adolescence. The focus is on understanding the reasons for low achievement in children, with a particular emphasis on the interaction of domain-specific knowledge, attentional, social-emotional, and motivational predictors of academic achievement. We also focus on research examining the efficacy of interventions to enhance cognitive, social-emotional, and academic skills. We highlight the directions in which we believe future work should proceed given current developments in the field, our own interests and core capacity, and the need to address important educational questions in Singapore. These include the need to develop more sensitive tests of specific cognitive abilities, continued efforts to develop interventions to support the development of both domain-general skills and domain-specific numeracy and mathematics skills, an understanding of individual differences in response to pedagogy and training, and the examination of social-emotional factors (e.g., anxiety) on cognition and learning. Continued collaborative efforts will allow us to address these questions with behavioural, physiological, and neurological data and will provide a deeper understanding of the child’s outcomes in response to the pedagogical environment.

In many countries and regions, education authorities have shown interests in promoting new education initiatives or innovations. With the hefty investments, they are keen to see that their initiatives are well received by the various stakeholders, namely, national leaders, district-level leaders, school leaders, teachers, students and their parents, and can be successfully scaled and improve learning. However, are the perspectives and expectations of policymakers and practitioners with regard to education innovations and their scaling necessarily the same as those of the researchers? Some of these stakeholders may expect a linear model of scaling, i.e. innovations can be translated into ready intervention packages which can be replicated mechanically by all the practitioners and consequently uplifting learning outcomes within the nation. Others may expect extensive adaptation to be allowed for any education innovations accepted for scaling. This chapter describes an eco-logical model for scaling that allows for a productive tension due to the differences in stakeholder perspectives. Based on scaling practices and considerations that operate in Singapore, the lessons about how scaling can be advanced at the systems level, which may be relevant for school districts, regions or countries similar in size to Singapore, are drawn. The paper also attempts to distil underlying scaling principles that can provide some directions to help analyse or shape scaling strategies across a hierarchy of much larger scale levels.

In Singapore, there have been numerous calls for education to prepare individuals for participation in innovative economic processes, increasing in magnitude especially since the launch of Thinking Schools, Learning Nation around the turn of the century. The economic imperative has always been, and will probably remain for the foreseeable future, a prime existential driver of policy in Singapore, However, an argument exists that for education, more intrinsic purposes ought to be considered: in addition to being a more ethically defensible position, the non-trivial problem of predicting the future based on past events may pose too great a risk to policy planning, especially when changes take many years to see results. With makerspaces in education, there is great temptation to jump on the bandwagon, and deploy this cultural technology with little critical appreciation. In light of our knowledge from the deployment of computing and information technologies, it might be wise to consider carefully how makerspaces ought to be deployed. In this paper, I will expand on the foregoing arguments, to also make some recommendations on curricula and instructional principles for the wise deployment of makerspaces for high educative value.

With an increasingly diverse Singapore population, there is a need to consider if Singapore teachers are sufficiently equipped with the relevant skills and knowledge to cater to the needs of a more diverse student population. A literature review was conducted to examine and learn from the experiences of other countries and education systems. The literature review identified three major approaches to teaching culturally diverse students through culturally relevant education: multicultural education (ME), culturally responsive teaching (CRT), and culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP). This paper provides a summary of each approach, and its implications for teachers, their practice, as well as for teacher education. Finally, the paper will look at the implications for Singapore’s multicultural society.

This working paper addresses the potential of educational neuroscience in educator training and continuing professional development. The authors offer four critical factors regarding the utility of educational neuroscience for educators. First, the foundations and history of professional educator development in educational neuroscience are considered. Second, a review of existing teacher educator training programs purported to represent neuroscience approaches is considered. Third, a review of the empirical learning science literature is considered. Fourth, a rationale for including more intensive brain literacy training for educators is provided by comparing the impact standard teaching practices and brain literate teaching practices have on children. Finally, five recommendations for the development of brain literacy in Singapore are offered for administrators and policymakers to guide future policy and practice decisions.

This paper traces how Education and Career Guidance (ECG) strategies have been conceptualised and implemented within Singapore schools in response to the fast-changing demands of the future economy. From the big picture outlining Singapore’s policy towards ECG, the review delves into vocational psychology research to understand what challenges students face in making career decisions. It argues for the widening of focus on career theory and practice in Singapore from one currently emphasising students’ decision-making ability to students’ ability to adapt or cope with the demands of the ever-changing world of work. A selected list of implementations of ECG practices and resources in other countries is provided to inspire design of possible interventions, and explore what else our school system can do to promote students’ career awareness, career development skills and school success.

Low academic achievement can threaten educational and social equity. Using the lens of self-determination theory, we discuss how supportive learning environments that satisfy the needs for competence, relatedness, and autonomy can help low-progress learners enhance self-regulatory skills (i.e., metacognition) and become more fully immersed in the learning process. We identify ways in which teachers’ deficit thinking of low-progress learners can hamper the uptake of pedagogical approaches necessary to satisfy these needs. We close with recommendations for school and classroom practice that could satisfy students’ basic psychological needs and enable them to progress academically.

With the prevalence of online communication in recent years, many teacher professional development (TPD) activities occur in blended learning environments which combine face-to-face (FTF) co-located experiences with online experiences. However, many scholars point out that blended learning environments need to be thoughtfully designed in order to integrate FTF learning with online learning experiences, and that there seems to be a lack of designs that pertain specifically to in-service teachers. Professional development is crucial for inservice teachers who are at the forefront of learning and teaching in the classroom. To impact student learning, deepening content knowledge and upgrading pedagogical skills are pivotal to teachers’ professionalism. Building professional development communities through blended learning environments is a core strategy for teachers to grow their professionalism, considering the multitude of demands faced by teachers, especially in Singapore. With the aim of designing more supportive and sustained TPD communities through blended learning environments, we undertook a review of the literature. This review has resulted in a five R conceptual framework. We synthesised from the literature the observation that the design and development of sustained blended TPD communities involve multifaceted and complex issues. Such communities would need to hold strong relevance for their members, encourage close relations between members, enable rich reifications of artefacts, be well recognised by important stakeholders, and lastly, be equipped with structural, digital, and human resources.

In response to the rapid process of globalisation and knowledge-based economies alongside the transformational development of information and communication technologies (ICT) in our life, several frameworks have been developed to address competencies or skills required for success in 21st century society and workplaces. In line with such demands, learning, teaching, and assessment of 21st century skills have become urgent; however, assessment of 21st century skills is still in its infancy and one of the weakest points in current efforts to integrate these skills in the school curricula. Thus, assessment reform clearly needs more attention in policy and practice. To that end, this paper aims to focus on the potential and pragmatic assessments of 21st century skills. This paper consists of 4 sections. Section 1 discusses the necessary characteristics for 21st century skills assessment which determine the types, criteria, and purpose of the tests. Section 2 summarises different assessment methods—self-ratings, others’ ratings, portfolios, situational judgment tests, performance tasks, computer and gamebased assessment—along with their advantages and limitations. However, given that today’s young generation of learners are digital natives, growing up with computers, video games, and social media, it is important that this paper focuses on technology-based assessment. In this regard, Section 3 is dedicated to technology-based assessment, comprising computer-based and game-based methods. It presents examples of each in assessing 21st century skills. Lastly, in section 4, the paper proceeds to outline the major challenges that need to be addressed in employing different methods to assess 21st century skills. It also offers suggestions and implications in terms of policy, practice, and theory for researchers, educators, and policymakers who wish to assess 21st century skills in classroom.

This working paper reviews the literature on metacognition and suggests ways of acquiring metacognition in student learning. In Singapore, metacognition has been a key feature of the Mathematics and English Language curricula and is postulated to gain more prominence in the teaching and learning of Mathematics and English Language in the state’s schools in the 2020 syllabuses. This paper locates the relevance of the concept of metacognition within the broader context of future economy and the imperative of developing in students the 21st century skills (e.g., problem-solving, critical thinking, communication and collaboration, adaptability, and digital literacy skills). Current concerns about the challenges of “future” learning and economy may be addressed by the concept of metacognition. Metacognition, according to Flavell (1979), is about “one's knowledge concerning one's own cognitive processes …” (p. 906) or simply “thinking about one’s thinking”. Helping students to become aware of themselves as learners and to take control of their learning process through concepts linked to metacognition are possible ways of preparing learning at school and beyond, and for the future. In this regard, this working paper introduces the components of metacognition and outlines the ways in which students’ metacognition is measured. In meeting the challenges of the future economy that involve solving unimagined problems in new contexts or domains, this paper also discusses the importance of domain-specificity and domain-generality of metacognition in education, and reveals the current inconsistency which researchers have in defining the two terms. The paper concludes with a brief summary of metacognitive strategies used in four different domains—(a) language and literacy instruction; (b) learning of Mathematics; (c) learning of Science; and (d) learning of humanities subjects—which teachers can draw upon for classroom-based learning and beyond. Implications for policy, practice and future research are also discussed.

The importance of adolescent literacy is well established, and in the wake of worldwide concerns with literacy rates, many nations have turned their attention towards effective literacy instruction and strategies. Moreover, with the development of digital literacy, the idea of being able to read and write has extended to being able to understand many types of information. In Singapore, there is an increased emphasis on adolescent literacy, particularly with the upcoming revised curriculum, designed to equip students with 21st century skills through a more student-centric education. This includes equipping students with the ability to use technology, to gather and share information as well as to collaborate, solve problems and present information through multiple information sources. Even though Singapore ranks highly on international literacy tests such as PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) and PIRLS (Progress in International Reading Literacy Study), there is still a need to understand how best to prepare students for the future, impacted by new forms of digital literacy and social media. In addition, there is a need to understand how young people with diverse backgrounds can be supported with literacy practices. By reviewing external and local research, the dual purposes of this working paper are to depict adolescent in- and out-of-classroom literacy practices, and to outline key factors contributing to effective adolescent literacy instructions. Current issues and future directions are discussed globally, and then locally in relation to the social, cultural, linguistic and emotional needs of young learners in Singapore. Future directions and recommendations are also discussed.

There is increasing attention to, and acceptance of, that providing high quality early childhood intervention in a timely manner enhances the development and well-being of young children and their families. This paper covers the important topics in intervention and special education provided for young children from birth to six years old, as well as describes the local early childhood intervention system in Singapore. Based on a review of both local and international literature, this paper first provides an overview of the local early childhood education and early intervention landscape. After that, a brief summary is provided on the evidence-based practices in inclusion of children with developmental or special educational needs, identifying special needs in early childhood, personnel preparation and professional development, transitioning from early childhood to formal schooling, and family engagement and collaboration. Linking the findings from the literature to the local context, recommendations for advancing early childhood intervention services in Singapore are provided under each topic as well as summarised at the end of the paper.

Singapore aims to build a flexible and diverse education system to help students discover their talents, realise their full potential and develop a lifelong passion for learning. This national aspiration is grounded in the Singapore education system’s recognition of individual differences in learning and implementing a strategy in which we seek to lift the bottom while not capping the top. Just as all learners need a supportive learning environment with adequate challenge, so do gifted learners. This paper synthesises and critiques research evidence on understanding and educating gifted learners to inform policy and practice in Singapore. The paper includes elaboration on the differentiation of learning environments to develop gifted learners.