Working Papers

This article discusses initial findings from the Panel 6 Life Pathways Study of the Centre for Research in Pedagogy and Practice, National Institute of Education-Nanyang Technological University. Particular focus is aimed at measuring initial results using Mixed Model Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) of the longitudinal panel studies conducted on a stratified random sample of Secondary School students in Singapore. Three constructs are analyzed, namely: Existential Aspirations, Construction of Political Society and Political Interest. Implications on policy and practice are outlined in the article.

This inquiry interrogates linkages between civic capital broken down into beliefs, dispositions and agency with the notion of the school as a civic community. Using data generated from a longitudinal study on a stratified random sample of two cohorts of students belonging to the primary and secondary levels of the Singapore education system, this paper attempts to establish meaningful relationships between the students’ conceptions and practices of civic capital with their perceptions of an active civic community in school.

Five epistemological belief dimensions were identified from a survey study of a sample of 1068 practicing Filipino teachers from 14 primary and secondary Catholic schools. The dimensions of epistemological beliefs of this sample— identified as Authority/Expert Knowledge, Learning Effort, Learning Process, Fixed Ability, and Innate Ability—differed from previous studies that employed Chan & Elliott’s Epistemological Beliefs Questionnaire (EBQ) possibly due to differences in socio-cultural contexts. For future investigations of teacher epistemology for Philippine samples, a six- factor model of epistemological belief dimensions is proposed, which suggests an additional hypothesized dimension labelled “Access to Knowledge” that requires empirical confirmation. The relevance of the study’s findings and their implications on the participating schools were also discussed, especially in relation to staff professional development programs.

In this paper, Kamaludin Bahadin invites audiences to journey with him in a unique pedagogical space as he theorises himself as a teaching subject caught within a range of discourses, each vying for supremacy. In a culture where classroom practice and pedagogy assume a single, all consuming purpose, i.e of preparing students to solely pass the tests, he seeks to challenge the primacy of such a commonly held belief among Singaporean pedagogues by asking what should be the driver(s) of classroom instruction? This paper attempts a reflexive turn towards interrogating his own pedagogical premises with the aim of reimagining his future pedagogy despite dominant “educational” discourses. Central to reimagining pedagogy is the notion of teacher identity. Through his own lived-in experience he attempts to show how educational governance, one that instrumentalises assessment and test scores, play a leading role in subjectifying teachers like himself and in the process also shaping their professional and personal identities. He argues that when teachers subscribe to identities that draw on extrinsic factors at the cost of ignoring the inner voices or personal convictions that led them to pursue a teaching career in the first place, the result could lead to emotional and professional dissonance.To facilitate documenting how his ‘coming to know pedagogy’ has changed, he will reference personal journals kept during a six-month Management and Leadership in Schools course completed in 2011 and the write ups on his philosophy of pedagogical practice, which was a requirement for competing for the ‘Most Outstanding History Teacher of Singapore in 2009 award. Written over a period of four years, these assignments, which express his person

Reading is an important outcome leading to academic success in life. Young children with undetected phonological processing deficits; difficulties in naming letters, poor vocabulary and poor recognition of sight words and who do not benefit from early literacy intervention are disadvantaged. Recent developments see the rapid rise in using technology as a powerful tool in helping early literacy learners in reading and writing skills. The authors find it timely thus to undertake a localized investigation on the effects of using computer-based intervention to support young children identified with reading difficulties. This exploratory study included the selection of thirty (30) participants from the Learning Support Programme (LSP) especially designed to cater to students with reading difficulties. The experimental intervention uses Earobics©; an interactive software programme in addition to the current LSP programme.