Roszalina Bte Rawi

The context of Malay Language (ML) teaching and learning in Singapore is laden with culture, social etiquette and history. Although the main working language is English, ML is constitutionalized as Singapore’s national language. ML teachers are specially addressed by everyone in the school, with the title “Cikgu” attached. It is within this unique classroom context that my investigation is focused. This research is driven by a deep concern about what effective learning looks like in an ML classroom, what teaching practices support this and what can be done to help ML teachers master these practices so that improvements associated with the latest assessment reform in ML education can spread and be sustained. This reform is Assessment for Learning (AfL) which was introduced into the ML (Secondary) syllabus in 2011. Other than conducting surveys and classroom observations, 20 in-depth interviews were conducted with selected teachers. The interviews aimed to discover the teachers’ habitus and degree to which they internalized AfL concepts and regarded it as important. The study produces an area of new knowledge regarding AfL: the influence of teachers’ early assessment habitus on their current assessment practice. One research implication is the awareness that ML teachers, policymakers and school leaders need to have of teachers’ own assessment habitus and the impact of habitus on teachers’ current classroom assessment practices.

This study focuses on how Singaporean heritage language teachers comprehend and mediate their existing assessment practices in light of assessment for learning (AfL). Although AfL has been studied extensively in the Western classroom context, little is known about how teachers in South East Asian heritage language classrooms, such as Malay Language ones, perceive AfL. In the study, a survey regarding assessment practices of 121 heritage language teachers across 80 schools in Singapore was conducted. 20 in-depth interviews were carried out to investigate factors which affected teachers’ acceptance of AfL. The study produces new knowledge regarding AfL in four areas: the impact of cultural disconnects on AfL practice in heritage language classrooms, the influence of teachers’ early assessment habitus, the significance of moral responsibility as a motivational tool for educational reform and the realization that Singaporean educators deviate from centrally suggested initiatives when the desire to fulfil performance-oriented beliefs about learning is strong. There are several research implications. Firstly, enhancing and sustaining heritage language teachers’ capacity of AfL knowledge is crucial to increase their embrace of AfL practice. Secondly, policymakers and school leaders need to be aware of teachers’ own assessment habitus and the impact of habitus on teachers’ current classroom assessment practices.

The nature of professional development for the sustained implementation of assessment for learning (AfL) is a pressing and perennial challenge. So too is pupil transfer between schools. This chapter explores how cross-phase collaborative learning supports the development of AfL practice. Teachers from a secondary school and its seven feeder primary schools worked together using three principles of AfL derived from previous research to assist analysis of existing practices, to plan developments, and to scaffold discourse. The value of this approach was revealed by data gathered through questionnaires and interviews with teachers in the working group, along with observations of workshops at which participant teachers shared their work with other teachers, who were also invited to complete a questionnaire. It is suggested that AfL, underpinned by the principles of making learning explicit, promoting learning autonomy, and focusing on learning, can act as a pedagogical unifier across age ranges and subjects and thus aid pupil transfer. Recommendations are proposed for teachers, policymakers, and particularly school leaders.