Book Chapters

This critical review aims to examine how English language assessment practices take place in the transnational world today. Much research has been conducted to investigate the impact of transnationalism on Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) teacher education. However, critical reviews examine how transnationalism issues in relation to English language assessment practices have remained relatively unexplored. To fill this gap, this critical review evaluated 52 papers published in international refereed journals and book chapters between 2000 and 2021 to focus on transnationalism and English language assessment practices. The findings of the review are presented in three parts. The first part provides an overview of the current English language assessment practices in the transnational world with a focus on emerging trends and challenges. The second part summarizes the theoretical and methodological approaches adopted by existing research on transnationalism and language assessment. The third part presents suggestions for future research directions. The findings are hoped to shed light on the understanding of key issues of English language assessment in relation to transnationalism.

Educational inequality is a complex and persistent issue in Singapore. Like elsewhere around the globe, teacher quality has been the focus of policy and a lever to address educational disparities and needs in Singapore’s contemporary education reforms. Discussions around teachers’ role in addressing inequality, inequity, and culture are further complicated by the ideas of multiculturalism and meritocracy as propagated by the state’s discourse and mandated school curriculum. Despite Singapore’s top educational performance and impressive economic growth, social and educational inequity remains a highly contentious topic. Moreover, the extent of social mobility and issues on recent migration bring questions about inclusion and exclusion in the multicultural society into very sharp relief. Against this backdrop, this chapter examines local research on teaching for equity, justice, and/or diversity and discusses the complex and emerging teaching practice to advance educational equity in Singapore. To this end, this chapter attends to three tasks. First, this chapter reviews the theories of teaching that recognize systemic inequity, promote justice, and sustain cultural pluralism and further argues that such teaching contributes to building a truly multicultural, inclusive, and equitable society. Second, this chapter discusses Singapore’s education system, including the principles of multiculturalism and meritocracy and how they shape teachers’ work. Lastly, a review of existing research on teaching for equity, social justice, and/or diversity in Singapore reveals the challenges encountered by teachers, but more importantly, the possibility demonstrated in local educators’ practices as they work within and against the system. Implications for teacher professional development are discussed.

Discussion is valued for the role it can play in the development of academic skills and higher-order thinking. It is also highly valued for its potential in citizenship education and in particular its contribution to the development of civic competencies and democratic dispositions. Well-facilitated discussions allow for students to engage with diverse views in a safe environment and practise the skills needed to be concerned and participative citizens. There are various understandings of what discussion means both amongst scholars and practitioners. Discussion is sometimes referred to as a “structured conversation” or as “shared inquiry”. Inquiry and discussion are intimately connected. The Singapore social studies syllabus recommends that social studies be taught via an inquiry approach that pushes students to ask questions, exercise reasoning and construct their own understandings of concepts and issues. Students need to interact with others, exchange views and defend conclusions in this inquiry journey. Hence, discussion, whether it is strongly guided by teachers or driven by students, plays a key role in the inquiry approach. Discussion is pedagogically valuable, but it needs to be well-facilitated for its potential to be adequately realized. This chapter explores the affordances and constraints of discussion in social studies and examines the role that discussion can play in an inquiry approach and in citizenship education.

Future work will likely be characterized by the need for workplace innovation and workers’ continuous learning. Both can be partially or wholly addressed through work activities and interactions. Responding to changing requirements of occupational practice and workplace practices involves initiating and enacting work-related innovations. Through these processes, employees’ work-related learning will arise concurrently and interdependently. As workers initiate and enact innovations, the legacies include their learning through them. Even when innovations are initiating by others, the implementation process realizes learning through adapting them to workplace needs. Hence, these co-occurrences and interdependencies are central to both learning and processes through which occupational, workplace and work practice changes are enacted, remade and transformed. Understanding further how employee-driven innovations coalesce is, therefore, central to advancing understandings and practices for future work and working age adults to remain employable and innovative in future work. Drawing on findings from an investigation of how innovations in small to medium size Singaporean enterprises are initiated and enacted, the scope and legacies of different kinds of innovations and their developmental potential comprising workplace activities and interactions are delineated. Three kinds of innovations (i.e., Strategic, Workplace practices, and Procedural) have been identified that shape employees’ potential zones of development. Each has specific characteristics associated with their initiation, authorization, enactment and adoption, and learning potential. These three zones of potential employee-development are advanced as a means of elaborating: (i) the interdependence of innovations and employees’ learning, (ii) processes through which innovations and learning co-occur, and (iii) how such processes can be supported in workplaces through workplace practices, on the one hand, and the practices and engagement of employees, on the other.

The importance of feedback in journal peer review process necessitates looking at the concept of feedback literacy for authors and reviewers/editors involved in the publication process. Through a systematic process of paper selection and analysis, we review 33 papers published from 2000 to 2022 pertaining to feedback literacy, focusing on specific issues in relation to types of reviewers’ feedback and authors’ responses to reviewers’ feedback from feedback literacy perspective as well as professional development opportunities to develop the feedback literacy of those new to the peer review process. This study contributes to existing knowledge of publishing in peer review journals for educators and institutional administrators in educational and applied linguistics domains who are engaged in doctoral education and professional development of staff new to publishing in peer review journals. This study will be of interest to researchers in the field of developing feedback literacy of authors and reviewers/editors.