Staff Publications

Is the world better off because your school is in it? Do you believe schooling has a higher purpose? In Inspiring Purpose in High-Performance Schooling, Mary Anne Heng questions modern-day schooling with its dominant focus on what is efficient and effective in good education and how this is measured. This book critically analyses what really matters in high-performance schooling contexts using Singapore as an example and makes a case for putting purpose at the heart of teaching.

Going beyond good education built on evidence-based and reflective practice and the instrumental questions of the “What” and “How” of education, she argues for a view of education as transformation with a deeper purpose that probes the “Why”. Using Singapore as a case example and Israel as a counterpoint, she moves past the rhetoric of developing passion, curiosity, creativity and other 21st-century competencies in high performance schooling to uncover children’s real experiences of school. Based on research using multiple sources, she analyses surveys with Singapore and Israeli adolescents and in-depth individual student interviews, as well as provides insights from rich discussions and extended field-testing with practicing teachers and educational leaders to inform an urgent call for a new vision in education for the future of education and society—one that celebrates achievement with larger purpose for the wider world.

A valuable academic and resource text for teachers, school leaders, policymakers and graduate students in education programmes, as well as education researchers in the fields of educational leadership and change, curriculum, teaching and learning, and youth purpose.