Norhaida Bte Aman

Teacher cognition which includes teachers’ beliefs, attitudes and knowledge have a significant impact on their instructional practices (Borg 2003) – whether they employ the traditional approach which includes explicit grammar teaching followed by repetitive drill and practice, or if they value teaching grammar through communicative activities which focus both on form and meaning. This study explores the complex relationship between the beliefs and practices of teachers from primary schools in Singapore. The primary focus of this paper is to look at how instructional strategies are reflections of teacher beliefs on grammar instruction.

"The purpose of this project is to provide a detailed and systematic account of the language acquisition and development of Malay in Singapore. The project began by examining how children acquire colloquial Malay, the language to which they are exposed at home and in the speech community before they are taught the standard, formal language in school. The project tracked the children's development as they begin their long journey of receiving formal education in the pursuit of knowledge."-- [p. 1].

This study explores the complex relationships between teacher beliefs and practices in developing children's literacy skills among preschool teachers from eight centres. Teacher belief is defined broadly as assumptions about students, classrooms, curriculum and the academic material to be taught. Using a 5-point Likert scale, teachers were asked to fill out a questionnaire and rate their commitment to teaching, the efficacy of the school management in planning early childhood programs, parental support, student needs and teachers' instructional focus and self-report on the various classroom pedagogical strategies they employ in the classroom. The quantitative data on teacher beliefs is then linked to observed classroom practices and the quantity and quality of classroom materials used. It was found that where the perceived objective of preschool education is primary school-readiness, classroom observations show that the curriculum is assessment-driven, and the nature of tasks and assignments given to the children is repetitive and classroom instruction didactic, with focus on developing basic literacy skills. Teaching materials generally include workbooks, worksheets and very little curriculum time is given to shared-book reading, extended discourse as well as the connectedness of the lessons to the real world. The findings have practical implications for early childhood teacher education and training as beliefs are a major determinant of behaviour as teachers make classrooms decisions and the outcome of these beliefs is the children's literacy acquisition.

Research into child language development in Singaporean context has been sporadic and focused mainly on the acquisition and development of English. However, such research can provide important information on typical and untypical paths of linguistic development in English and Mother Tongues, thus enabling educational practitioners to understand the needs of different cohorts of children undertaking home-school transition. It is even more important at the current moment when a large percentage of the pre-school population in Singapore is undergoing a language shift of immense proportions. The present Project is a first step in this direction.

"The Sociolinguistic Survey of Singapore 2006 (SSS 2006) is a survey of language use and users in Singapore to update the one last done in the 1970s by Kuo (1976). The main research question of SSS 2006 is: who speaks what language to whom in what context with what attitude with what level of fluency and to what end?"-- [p. 1] of executive summary.

The current study reports a quantitative investigation of the linguistic landscape (LL) in Singapore’s Chinatown. The database of the study comprises a total of 831 instances of signs in the form of photographs that were collected in Chinatown. The study finds that English dominates the LL while Mandarin Chinese is ranked as the second frequently used language. The study also identifies significant differences in LL features between top-down and bottom-up signs. Specifically, these differences include what languages are used; monolingual, bilingual and multilingual compositions; code preference; and forms of Chinese scripts. The present study suggests that English now dominates the linguistic landscape of Chinatown. Even though many scholars have described the sociolinguistic situation in Singapore as being ‘English-knowing’, the data shows a shift towards being ‘English-dominant’, suggesting a gradual but sustained dilution of its multilingual ethos. The study also complicates our understanding of the dominance of English in multilingual societies such as Singapore, where a competing dominant language (Mandarin Chinese) may be seen to continue to exert considerable influence on the dynamics of English-dominant language use but, at the same time, whose main function is shifting towards the symbolic rather than communicative.

The expanding literature on teachers’ beliefs and perceptions relating to their classroom practices suggests that teachers’ pedagogical beliefs are a major determinant of the choices they make in the classroom concerning curriculum, pedagogy, classroom management and relating to students (Orton RE, Curric Inq 26(2):203–217. doi:10.2307/1180040, 1996; Pajares MF, Rev Educ Res 62(3):307–332. doi:10.3102/00346543062003307, 1992; Vartuli S, Early Child Res Q 14:489–514. doi:10.1016/S0885-2006(99)00026-5, 1999). It thus follows that a deeper understanding of teachers’ beliefs will be helpful in developing and implementing new programmes and effective in-service education (Richardson V, Anders P, Tidwell D, Lloyd C, Am Educ Res J 28(3):559–584. doi:10.3102/00028312028003559, 1991). Towards that end, the focus of this chapter is on the relationship between teacher beliefs and classroom practices in two Singapore kindergarten schools, with a particular focus on early literacy education.