Tan, Aik-Ling

Biological knowledge for citizenship rests at the nexus of two important concepts -scientific literacy and citizenship education. Scientific literacy, the ability to make sense of and hence decisions related to scientific issues, operates under the broad construct of citizenship. Citizenship education is defined by UNESCO as "educating children, from early childhood, to become clear-thinking and enlightened citizens who participate in decisions concerning society". As society moves further into the 21st century, many of the challenges facing 'sustainable societies' require scientifically literate citizens to participate at multiple societal levels. At the international level, many of the UN Sustainable Development Goals adopted by the world community have a scientific grounding in biology. This suggests that global citizenship education must take cognizance of biological knowledge. Through the theoretical lens of scientific literacy, pressing biological issues of food security, nutrition, biodiversity decline, and climate change are discussed in the chapter, making explicit the importance of biological knowledge for responsible global citizenship. These issues affect citizens at the community and individual levels through decisions linked to matters like food waste, diet, body mass index, and choice of food. Various learning approaches have been used to incorporate these matters into science curricula, such as through real-world learning.

Singapore students boast stellar performance at international benchmarking studies such as PISA and TIMSS. One of the major contributors to the consistently good performance in mathematics and science is the quality of our science teacher education in Singapore. Through a consistent, systematic and continuous system, there is a seamless transition of pre-service teacher education to continuing professional development of science teachers in Singapore. This pathway of science teacher education is important as it enables science teachers to be kept abreast of changing educational innovations. Quality of science teachers is ensured from the first step of recruitment. Prospective teachers undergo a stringent selection process before they are admitted to the National Institute of Education for their pre-service education. Factors such as strong governmental support, resource availability, high quality professional development opportunities that are responsive to changes in educational landscape, and presence of a structure to allow planning and tracking of professional development trajectory ensures quality professional development. As such, science teacher education in Singapore is a compact model that is responsive yet stable, flexible yet structured, bespoke yet inclusive, varied yet focused, and specialized yet accessible. This paper will discuss science teacher education and professional development in the light of the larger Singaporean education landscape. It will also present challenges and way ahead for science teacher education and professional development in Singapore.

Plants are fundamental to the existence of our green planet, but the understanding of plants and the willingness to understand them is deficient. Teachers, students and curriculum developers are mindful of the lack of knowledge and ability to notice plants in our environment. In Singapore we are facing a paradox in plant science education. Known as a garden city, and having a hybrid of an orchid as our national flower, many of our citizens ironically remain blind to what are growing and cultivated around them. Our pupils are not able to name the common plant species. They would prefer to dwell in the air-conditioned comfort of their homes and learn through the computer or the television rather than to have a walk in the forest. Further, our educators merely set limited plant contents in Biology syllabus, and teachers are reluctant to bring plants to the classroom. In this review, we reflect plant science education in Singapore based on the current syllabus at the primary, secondary and junior college levels. We also list a few case studies of specific terms in plant science using various science textbooks and questions from national exams to allow a greater understanding on how plant science is taught and tested. Finally we propose suggestions to improve plant science education in Singapore.

Participatory action research is an empowering approach to advance research with participants. This paper describes and discusses the process and outcomes in engaging cogenerative dialogue (cogen) and coteaching in participatory action research (PAR) to support science curriculum change in a Singapore lower track classroom. The intervention was introduced after researching in a science teacher’s two lower tracker classrooms for about 18 months and observing that his lessons were teacher-centered and he experienced difficulty engaging the students. Using the empirical findings to inform teaching practice, the researchers engaged the science teacher and two selected students in two cogen sessions to identify issues with the science lessons. The students suggested solutions which were taken up and used to plan and design revised lessons co-taught by the science teacher and one researcher. This paper describes changes to the teacher’s and researcher’s teaching, learning, and research experiences through the lens of cogen and PAR. Transcripts from one cogen session, one cotaught lesson, one teacher interview, and one researcher’s written reflections were analyzed to distil affordances of PAR that led to changes in the classroom practices, views about science teaching and ways to carry out science research. The study illuminates the potentially transformative role of cogen, when coupled with action research, in Singapore and other classrooms.