Ng Pak Tee

In an engaged learning paradigm, learners are responsible, strategic, collaborative and energised through the learning process. As the Singapore education system changes rapidly to respond to an emerging global economy in a knowledge age, school leaders have to be engaged in learning, especially in the areas offuturing, knowledge creation and innovation. This article describes how the Future School project of the Leaders in Education Programme attempts to engage school leaders in deep learning and provides some pointers as to how engaged learning can be achieved in leadership programmes.

"In 2009, a project-OER 13/09 LEL Building an Evidence-base for ITP in NIE: A Formative Project-was funded to initiate a program of research activities that seeks to achieve a rich and contextualised understanding of the nature, substance and professional impact of student teachers' learning within NIE's ITE programmes." -- p. 3.

This study examined the pedagogical practice of an initial teacher education course from the diploma programme in the National Institute of Education and how it contributed to student teachers’ professional growth in terms of pedagogical knowledge and skills, and professional identity as a teacher. This study made use of videographic data of 11 lessons of the course over an entire semester, and end-of-course focus group interviews with the student teachers and the lecturer who conducted the course. The findings have important implications for pedagogical practice in teacher education.

In the Singapore education system, e-learning is fast becoming the next frontier for schools. E-learning has the potential to add great value to education, allowing modes of learning that have never been possible in the traditional classroom context. However, before we hail e-learning as the definitive step forward in education and plunge headlong into it, educators have to understand e-learning and its implications in school leadership, management,curriculum, resources and pedagogy. While a well thought through approach will bring great gains to a school, blindly plunging into it may bring great pains because the process of change can be fraught with subtle pitfalls. Using the Organisational Change Model, this article provides a framework for schools to systemically and systematically consider the issues related to the implementation of e-learning in schools and the process of change. It argues that school leaders should consider the goals, business, culture, processes, and enablers(working tools) seamlessly and coherently in order that e-learning could be anchored in the school to bring real sustainable benefits.

Since 2009, the PI and her team have been building an evidence-base to help inform policies on, and practices of initial teacher education (ITE) programmes in the National Institute of Education (NIE) and early career professional learning of local teachers in five research projects. Building on and extending the team's earlier work on ITE and early career teacher learning, this project intends to characterise the impact of experience—both cumulative and episodic—on career-long development and sustainability of Singaporean teachers. Understanding teacher career development and sustainability beyond the early career phase will become more important as the age of Singapore’s teaching force increases, in line with the nation’s demographic trends. This project aims to contribute to the chain of evidence linking ITE with subsequent within-career experience to understand whether and why teachers’ professional identity, competence, and commitment change over time.