Hairon Salleh

The advent of the Knowledge Age has brought many challenges to countries around the world in every aspect of life, including learning in teacher education. With regards to this, there is widespread agreement on the promotion of educational themes such as higher order skills, teaching for understanding, constructivism, authentic problem solving, and lifelong learning. In the same vein, there is increasing recognition for teachers to teach in ways that are appropriate to prepare students for the Knowledge Age, and thus the need to re-evaluate the learning structures for pre-service teachers. This paper summarises an inductive research study of four final-year pre-service teachers (Diploma in Education) to look at how engagement in an action research project during the teaching practicum influences their pedagogical practice and beliefs towards professional learning.

In Singapore there is increasing recognition for teachers to be lifelong learners as the pace of change, and obsolescence, in knowledge increases. This is understandable as changes in education require changes in the way teachers learn. However, schools are often not the best places for lifelong learning, especially when teachers have to squeeze for time to meet a myriad of deadlines and complete multiple workloads. This seems to be the main obstacle for engagement in teacher learning. Yet, schools are the best places for learning because learning takes place in day-to-day activities. Within this context, a case study research was embarked to understand how action research provides a response to the aforementioned issue. The study describes the learning journey of a collaborative action research project between a Science teacher and an NIE lecturer to investigate how teaching using memory skills influence pupils’ learning. The case study highlights two themes. First, the challenges in attempting to understand how students learn. Second, how action research contributes to teacher learning.

The notion of educational change is no longer new among practitioners, policy-makers and academics in education. Although much has been said and debated in relation to educational change, along with the increase in our understanding of it, the voice of teachers, parents, principals and pupils are, however, rarely heard within the Singapore context. This paper seeks to provide the platform for part of the voice, specqcally teachers, to be heard by describing a qualitative research study that was conducted on 19 school teachers from three primary schools in Singapore with regard to educational changes. From the findings of the research, the author will present a conceptual proposal in response to current educational change challenges.

Since the turn of the 21st century, the concept of distributed leadership situated within the context of school improvement has risen in importance. This is due to the growing demands on schools from a wide range of stakeholders within education contexts that are increasingly becoming more complex. Educational contexts are increasingly getting complex insofar as the changes accompanying educational reforms are characterized by intensity, rapidity, fluidity and uncertainty. Policymakers and the public are demanding greater public school accountability in the hope of improving academic and non-academic school outcomes, as well as decreasing the achievement gaps (Heck & Moriyama, 2010) through improvements in teaching and learning. It is therefore understandable that contemporary school leaders use up more time and energy in managing increasingly complex relationships, and resort to distributed leadership where leadership decisions are delegated and shared to other staff members beyond the purview of school principals.
In the Singapore context, delegation or sharing of leadership decisions to middle managers such as department heads (HODs) or subject heads (SHs) has been a common place for more than two decades, especially that pertaining to instruction. In this sense, distributed leadership is closely tied to instructional leadership insofar as the former allows instructional leadership practices to be delegated or shared to other staff members beyond school principals or vice-principals. The link between instructional leadership and distributed leadership has been observed (Lieberman & Miller, 2011; Spillane & Louis, 2002; Timperley, 2005). Hence, instructional leadership practices become more dispersed across the school organization, making it more effective to bring about enhancements in teaching and learning. However, over the last decade, leadership decisions pertaining to instruction have been delegated and shared to teacher leaders. This is a result of the growing demands placed on schools so much so that administrative decisions have to be passed on from senior to middle leaders, which result to middle leaders delegating or sharing their decisions on instructional matters to teacher leaders. These teacher leaders include Senior or Lead Teachers (STs and LTs), Subject and Level Reps, and Professional Learning Community Team Leaders – all of which are involved in making leadership decisions on instruction.

Since 2015, the MLS Course Facilitation component of the programme, which has to do with help participants develop reflective practice knowledge and skills so as to use it to deepen their learning in the MLS has been of interest to both the Programme Leader and the Associate Dean, Leadership and Learning, GPL. The initial interest was borne of out two main events or thinking. First, the strength of the MLS programme has always been its self-directed and self-organization in learning, which is consistent with principles of adult learning theory, and more so with principles of social theory of learning. Second, the demands on manpower and man hours have the tendency to be high due to the number of reflections per participant. This study was motivated by these two ideas or thinking.