Journal Articles

Singapore’s strong performance in international benchmarking studies - Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) - poses a conundrum to researchers who view Singapore’s pedagogy as characterized by the teaching of facts and procedures, and lacking in constructivist learning principles. In this paper, we examine the impact of different curriculum innovations on critical thinking as measured by the Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Assessment - UK (WGCTA-UK). This includes two innovations that are subject-specific and short-term, one that strongly infuses the arts into the curriculum throughout the whole course of study, and the innovation of the Integrated Programme (IP) which allows academically stronger students to skip the GCE ‘O’ Levels and enter directly into the next level of education, with the time previously allocated to exam preparation now spent on greater breadth in the academic and non-academic curriculum. This paper takes the sociocultural approach to investigate the contexts, process and outcomes, reports the state of critical thinking, and sheds light on how critical thinking is being promoted. Through our analysis, we find support for the claim that only curriculum that is rigorously designed to foster critical thinking competencies will reap the intended student outcome.

The purpose of this study was to examine the development of 21st Century Competencies (21CC) through the secondary school band program. The researcher used ethnographic research methods to document the lived musical experiences of students from a high performing secondary school band in Singapore, captured the voices of the participants through extensive focus group discussions and informal interviews, coded and analyzed the data using the Singapore Ministry of Education’s (MOE) 21CC framework. Findings provide empirical support for MOE’s (2010, 2014) initiatives to developing 21CC through music and the arts. Three interrelated themes–performance, peers and patience–emerged as specific enablers of the school band to nurture 21CC. These enablers, however, may paradoxically be impediments for the development of 21CC; an awareness of how these enablers may sometimes be hindrances is necessary to optimize 21st Century learning through the arts.

In order to prepare students for the 21st century, it is important to foster critical thinking in students. This paper explores the teaching of critical thinking during mathematics lessons at the primary level in Singapore. It suggests lesson features of primary mathematics lessons that could further encourage students to think critically, which include the kind of tasks used, the use of Socratic questioning by the teacher, supportive behavior of teachers as well as communicating assessment criteria to students. The identified lesson features have been enacted in a Primary 4 mathematics classroom. In this paper, students' work showing elements of critical thinking in a lesson on the topic of decimals are presented and discussed.

Nonlinear Pedagogy is an exploratory approach to teaching and learning Physical Education that can be potentially effective to help children acquire relevant 21st century competencies. Underpinned by Ecological Dynamics, the focus of Nonlinear Pedagogy is on the learner and includes the provision of less prescriptive instructions, and guided discovery which serve to develop greater autonomy, competency and relatedness in the learning process. This paper describes a study that examines the factors that contributed to motivation, enjoyment and the development of 21st century competencies in Primary School Children. 133 children were taught over 7-weeks to play a modified tennis game either with a Nonlinear Pedagogy or Linear Pedagogy (i.e., more teacher-centred) approach in a Singapore school. While findings from the IMI questionnaire showed that there was no difference for the subscales measured, student and teacher interviews indicated that the Nonlinear Pedagogy approach created a learning environment that facilitated perceived competence, autonomy and relatedness, thus potentially enhancing intrinsic motivation and enjoyment during practice. Nonlinear Pedagogy encourages teachers to create representative learning designs through the inclusion of a variety of modified games, the freedom to choose, an emphasis on exploration and problem-solving and can be relevant to develop 21st century competencies.