Journal Articles - Singapore Journal of Education

I don't think that the late Dr Ruth Wong has really left us. Physically, yes. But, in spirit, she is very much with us, in the sense that many of us are still guided by some of her seminal ideas. Unfortunately, many of her ideas could not be implemented during her lifetime, for she was too far ahead of her time, but, with patience and perseverance, it might yet be possible to advance some of her valuable ideas.

The curriculum of a teacher training institution should aim primarily at providing its trainees with the necessary repertoire of knowledge, skills and attitudes to enable them to perform effectively both in and out of the classroom. Such knowledge, skills and attitudes are needed for the tasks the trainees are expected to perform once they have qualified as teachers. The expectations may come from school principals, teacher educators and Ministry of Education officials. Understandably, these three groups will see the work of a teacher from their respective standpoints–the consumer's, the trainer's and the employer's – and their expectations of teachers and consequently the training programme may be somewhat different. Moreover, the trainees themselves may have their own expectations of the training programme with regard to their professional, academic and personal development. It is readily appreciated that the expectations of school principals, as consumers, and teacher educators, as trainers, are of immediate concern as they are more directly involved in the training of teachers.

With a population of approximately 850 million living in an area of 9.6 million square kilometres, or the size of the United States of America or Europe, China's efforts to provide mass education since 1949 can only be described as impressive. Whether it is formal education or non-formal education, as educators in non-communist countries categorize education systems, China's education of the masses must be seen in the light of its role of “social reconstruction”. The vital role of education in accelerating economic growth is only a means to bring about reconstruction, not an end in itself as in other developing countries.

Classroom-based research is seen as a natural growth of the conscientious teachers' normal teaching activities: a conscious effort to find alternative ways of teaching and a systematic and objective approach to their verification. It is proposed that the concept of sampling is fundamental to the issue between traditional and action research. It is argued that a re-orientation to sampling-over-time-at-one-spot rather than sampling-overspace-at-one-point-of-time may lend localized educational research with greater relevance to the teachers' concerns for what happens in their classrooms. An example of how a primary school teacher used classroom-based research to improve pupil performance in Mathematics is illustrated.