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Loh, Chin Ee
Innovating towards reading excellence in the Singapore English language curriculum
2022, Loh, Chin Ee, Pang, Elizabeth
A key emphasis of the Singapore education system has been on ensuring English language competency and fluency for communication and work. This chapter examines reading innovation in the Singapore education system, focusing specifically on strategies related to extensive reading to promote reading enjoyment alongside growing reading proficiency. Rather than adopting a broad historical overview, three case studies that are substantiated by published research have been selected for discussion in this chapter: (i) the implementation of the Reading and English Acquisition Programme (REAP) from 1985 to 1989 for students from Primary One to Three; (ii) the development of the Strategies for English Language Learning and Reading (STELLAR) programme for primary schools from 2006 to 2015; and (iii) the focus on reading and school libraries in the Building a Reading Culture (BRC) and library redesign projects at the secondary level from 2017 to 2020. The chapter documents how reading innovations have taken place at the levels of curriculum, pedagogy and learning environments, in response to sociocultural and economic changes, global and local demands and the educational needs of the times. Challenges to improve students’ educational outcomes for their reading futures are discussed in the conclusion.
Lived experiences of literacy learning in Singapore from the past to the present and lessons for the future
2021, Loh, Chin Ee
Historical events, policies and practices shape personal experiences of literacy learning and are embodied in ways of thinking, valuing, conversing and doing. This chapter takes a historical perspective to understanding how curriculum is enacted and experienced, using an autoethnographic approach to examine how policy, practice and personal experiences are intertwined. It draws on Bourdieu’s concept of field, cultural capital and habitus to trace the changing fields of Singapore’s literacy landscape, particularly reading, from the 1980s till 2019, and the interplay between familial and institutional habitus in cultivating dispositions of engaged English literacy as valued cultural capital.