The coherence between policy initiatives and physical education developments in nation-building
This chapter examines the changing socio-cultural and political salience of physical education since independence in Singapore’s schools. A brief history of physical education with developmental changes based on policy orientations across key educational milestones will be presented. Specifically, the chapter will describe significant impetus and policy synergies relevant to the direction and progress of physical education with emphasis on individual’s holistic development, drive towards thinking citizens and lifelong learners, strive for community partnership and collaboration, and enhancement of teachers’ transformative pedagogies.
Beginning physical education teachers’ experience of continuing professional development and school-based mentoring
The transition from being students to first-year teachers can be a satisfying journey, and yet has the potential to be a significantly challenging life transition for many beginning teachers, and it is not different for any physical education (PE) teachers. This is especially so when these novice teachers are expected to fulfill similar roles and responsibilities as their more experienced counterparts in the schools. There is without a doubt that teacher education programmes provide the opportunities for these novices to develop their expected skills, knowledge, and attitudes to become qualified teachers. Therefore, it is reasonable for these individuals to learn a lot during their teacher education experiences, and to be effective at some beginning level. However, it is not reasonable to expect them to completely master these skills independently from experience alone, without any sustained and purposeful continuing professional development (CPD) and school-based support during the beginning years of their profession.
For many education systems and government, the difficulties faced by beginning teachers is of grave concern, and points to the need of specialised forms of assistance or support mechanisms, using a variety of CPD strategies, structured induction and mentoring programmes. Scholars have also argued that besides helping beginning teachers, welldesigned and high-quality CPD and school-based mentoring are critical to improving the quality of teachers, schools, and to some extent, student achievement. For the Ministry of Education (MOE), teacher continual learning and professional development, coupled with building a strong core of mentors for the younger generation of teachers, have always been a key thrust in the MOE’s strategic direction to developing a highquality teacher workforce (Heng, 2012). To support this vision, the Academy of Singapore Teachers (AST), and other specialist academies, like Physical Education Sports Teacher Academy (PESTA), have been established to spearhead professional learning and development for the subject-specific fraternity.
Video as an instructional tool in transforming teachers’ pedagogical practices and mentoring skills in physical education
This chapter focuses on video analysis as a tool to enhance physical education teachers’ pedagogical practices and experienced practitioners’ mentoring skills. It offers a description of how videos have been managed to help beginning physical education teachers (hereafter “beginning teachers”) reflect and improve on their pedagogical performance, and to develop instructional mentors’ (hereafter “mentors”) competence. Exemplary digital videos were created that represented the desired “best practice” teaching actions. Furthermore, digitally recorded beginning teachers’ lessons and mentors’ mentoring episodes facilitated video-aided analysis of beginning teachers’ teaching for self-reflection and subsequent conversations with their mentors. Three Primary and four Secondary beginning teachers and their mentors participated in a year-long professional development, where they learnt pedagogical knowledge and viewed the exemplary videos. Qualitative data of conversations and semi-structured interview transcripts were analysed using the constant comparison method to arrive at themes to describe the influence of video in transforming the professional learning of the beginning teachers and mentors.