Lee, Yew-Jin

While student achievement has recently been shown to be very successful in international tests in Singapore, both qualitative and quantitative research has shown that classroom teaching here is still largely frontal, directed teaching albeit of a high quality and that students’ epistemic practices are scarce. Longitudinal studies of a “model” secondary school that adopted inquiry science practices also showed that recent reforms did not significantly improve students’ generation of new knowledge just as teaching was mainly confined to traditional methods [3]. Statistical modeling [2] has reported that the logic of teaching in East Asian contexts dictates high-efficiency content coverage in the face of high-stakes assessment regimes and societal expectations of success. The PISA 2012 report has even speculated that high content mastery by students has been a significant reason for their strong achievement in mathematics here that has compensated for fewer problem-solving skills.I claim that this situation is unsatisfactory; teachers in Singapore enjoy high levels of training in curriculum, leadership, and assessment strategies but development in the liberal education tradition appears to be lacking or unable to show itself in the classroom. This is a problem that demands a shift in thinking about what constitutes genuine learning and asks if politicians are serious about the rhetoric of effective learning in the 21st century. As a science teacher-educator, I have been experimenting with practice-based teaching, which I will share during my presentation. These have included a program where preservice teachers mentor after-school inquiry investigations with groups of pupils over a school term. Here, teachers and pupils collaboratively engage in projects whereby there are often no known answers in the textbooks although the teachers explicitly act as facilitators. Such practice-based teaching that follows the US Fifth Dimension program [1] help close the theory-practice gaps and are a viable model also for PD. As well, I share similar work done using a Microbial Fuel Cell with secondary school students and their teachers. We have much theoretical support from the ideas put forth by many from Aristotle to Durkheim, Michael Young and Paul Ricoeur about the need for intertwining abstract and practical knowledge. It is my contention that teachers in Singapore are ultimately underperforming with regard to their potential similar to a powerful car that is imprisoned in a garage and that once education (rather than mere training) is given priority, education for the young can truly advance.

The teaching practicum is commonly regarded as the capstone course within teacher education programmes because the former immerses novices into the actual complexities of school teaching. Recent reforms in Singapore have increased both the duration as well as sharpened the focus of the teaching practicum experience for pre-service teachers. Benefits include providing local teachers with a better understanding of the meaning(s) of their professional work and helping them apply knowledge to act appropriately across various contexts. It also assists pre-service teachers to interrogate their teaching beliefs and classroom concepts because of increased opportunities to learn for/from practice – the theory–practice nexus is explicitly foregrounded here. This chapter describes how the new enhanced practicum model in the Post Graduate Diploma in Education (PGDE) can shape their emerging identities as teachers as well as to help them inquire deeper into their professional practices. The authors conclude by discussing some implementation issues and possible refinements to the existing practicum model in Singapore.

Most educational theorists now promote activity in context and authentic activities to engender more meaningful forms of learning. Problem-based learning (PBL) is one of such pedagogy whereby students work in groups to solve "real world" problems. However, when these practices from the real world are introduced into classrooms, school teachers could encounter many challenges, such as curricula and individual constraints. In this ethnographie study, we describe what happened when a high school physics teacher adopted PBL in his classroom in an attempt to move toward inquiry-based instruction. Using cultural-historical activity theory, we compared his instruetional activities with a referent PBL model derived from literature, so as to surface the tensions and contradictions in the activity system as he introduced new practices into his classroom. We found that the challenges he faced arose from disparities between the motives driving everyday practices and schooling, which we attribute to differences between academics and the lived-realities of practitioners. We suggest that researchers work collaboratively with teachers towards an equilibrium point. This joint reflective practice could potentially enable authentic pedagogy such as PBL to be implemented meaningfully and realistically in an Asian society that has long placed a premium on academic achievement.

This paper provides a situative account of a teacher becoming a technology-using educator. The specific process of becoming was described on a micro-genetic level to show how the process of becoming is relationally constituted with an experienced other. The significance of this study is that it provides an empirical account on the increasingly important issue of identity and learning.

Various issues confronting science education publications that cater for non-English speaking audiences are explored. With reference to an English-medium journal that the author co-edits, two main conundrums are discussed: (1) How to serve local school practitioners in concrete ways while fulfilling the institutional goals of academia, and (2) the struggle to promote research from non-English speaking contexts against the hegemony of the English language. It is suggested that valuing difference can create much educational value and thereby allow one’s science teaching to be interrogated, evolve, and maintain its relevancy.