Wong, Hwei Ming

“This LES report is a synthesis of 14 Instructional Core (IC) studies that fit the inclusion criteria. $3,655,921 was awarded to the studies through the NIE Education Research Funding Programme (ERFP) in the 3rd tranche (2013–2017) of funding from MOE. Six of the 14 selected studies were Tier 1, 7 were Tier 2, and 1 was Tier 3 (Figure 3) (See Annex A for a detailed explanation of the selection criteria).”--Introduction.

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in Singapore has resulted in the adoption of home-based learning (similar to remote or distance learning’ worldwide) due to periodic school closures in Singapore. The media and academia have diverse views on the effectiveness of this alternative mode of education. This study draws data from teachers’ interviews and students’ focus group discussions of an ongoing large-scale baseline study on mother tongue education to reveal teachers’ and students’ perceptions of home-based learning. Findings showed that the participating teachers generally mimicked physical lessons online during home-based learning, and they faced difficulties in monitoring students’ tasks online. Though students enjoyed the freedom of doing their learning tasks at their own pace, they were concerned with the lack of teachers’ support and the social-emotional support from peers. With the feedback and reflections from teachers and students, it was observed that despite the availability of technology and online infrastructure, teachers need readiness for transiting between physical teaching and online instruction, whereas students need readiness for self-directed learning. From students’ feedback, it was also noted that parents need readiness for educational technology and support for their children. To better prepare teachers, students, and parents for home-based learning, it is recommended that the developers provide more dedicated resources that take into consideration the different characteristics (e.g. orthography) of each language subject. Parents should also assume a greater role in monitoring their children’s learning on behalf of the teachers for better effect in home-based learning.

Assessment in Singapore has generally been summative in nature, placing much emphasis on high-stakes examinations as one of the defining pillars of the Singapore education system. In a rapidly changing and globalising world, the Ministry of Education has been changing its assessment mode to include alternative and formative assessments for learning in order to shift away from the examination-oriented mind-set and make more room for creativity and critical thinking. Self-assessment and feedback as part of strategies for assessment for learning will engage students to deliberately reflect on what they are learning and how they are learning it while they utilise the feedback from teachers to enrich their understandings of their own learning and improve their performance.

Student success in the 21st century requires not only the mastery of basic classroom-type knowledge and skills but also the ability to engage in higher-order thinking, reasoning, and real-world problem solving. This will enable our students to become productive workers and responsible citizens who can also actively participate in lifelong learning. A number of researchers in the United States and Australia have systematically examined the authentic intellectual quality of the teachers’ assessment tasks/assignments and student work in response to the tasks/assignments (e.g., Newmann & Associates, 1996; Luke et al., 2000; Lingard & Ladwig, 2001). These studies have shown that when teachers design and use highintellectual quality assignments that demand higher-order thinking, in-depth understanding of knowledge, elaborated communication, and making connections to students’ lives beyond school, students produce higher quality intellectual work. This paper reports the preliminary findings from teacher-moderated judgments of written assignments or assessment tasks and student work in Singapore. The teachers’ assignments/assessment tasks and student work were collected from 36 Singaporean schools across four major subject areas: English, Social Studies, Mathematics, and Science at the Primary 5 and Secondary 3 levels. Subject-specific panels were formed by a group of experienced teachers. They were trained to understand the authentic intellectual standards and to use the scoring rubrics collaboratively prior to their actual scoring of the teachers’ assignments and student work. The paper will report the outcomes of the statistical comparisons of authentic intellectual quality of the teachers’ assignments and that of related student work across subject areas, grade levels, and streams.

"The Ministry of Education in Singapore commissioned a study of classroom assessment practices in P1 and P2 in 2009 in order to establish a "baseline of practice" to compare future efforts to improve classroom formative assessment. ... The study establishes a 2009 baseline of assessment practices in P1 and P2 classrooms that can be used in future comparisons of the implementation of new methods that emphasize assessment for learning (AfL) in classrooms. "-- [p. 2].