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Lum, Chee Hoo
- PublicationRestrictedTeaching diverse learners: Conceptualisations and pedagogies of preschool teachers(Office of Education Research, National Institute of Education, Singapore, 2020)
; Zhou, XiaoleiThis study is relevant in the present climate of concerns about preschool quality (MOE, 2003, 2007, 2008) and supports Singapore‘s ability-driven education system within the national vision of becoming a ―global city‖ (Lim, 2005) and an inclusive society (i.e. ―Singapore 21‖ report). Despite being a private sector, preschools in Singapore have been in the spotlight since the year 2000 when the MOE began to pay greater attention to quality in preschool education by intervening in a number of ways.The key assumption underlying the series of past and ongoing MOE initiatives is that quality preschool education can play a role to equalise or ―level up‖ children from lower socio-economic groups so that they are not disadvantaged in primary school (MOE, 7 Mar 2007). And yet, the definition of quality preschool education remains vague in official discourses and teaching communities. There is much lip service being paid to trendy terms such as ―play-based and interactive‖, or ―engaging and stimulating‖ but what do these actually look like? Do all teachers have common understanding of these supposedly quality practices?
This study recognizes that Singapore society is becoming increasingly diverse in the 21st century partly due to the continued influx of foreigners, and the widening income gap within its residential population. This diversity is definitely reflected in Singapore preschools. Given the increasing diversity within the populace, this research study‘s focus on teaching diverse learners in the Singapore context is an important contribution to expanding current theoretical notions of human ―diversity‖ and speaking to local and international research on culturally relevant pedagogies for the 21st century, in view of the changing social fabric of this nation.197 27 - PublicationOpen AccessLearning through popular music, lessons for the general music programme syllabus in Singapore(Office of Education Research, National Institute of Education, Singapore, 2024)
; ; This project sought to investigate the identity, role and function of popular music within classroom-based education in Singapore.
Popular music is characterised by: (i) lnterdisclplinarity (music, dance, poetry, theatre, etc); (ii) It suffuses the lives of school-going youth in their out-of-school curriculum. (iii) Skill acquisition is frequently gained through more informal learning than is usual in institutional settings (Green, 2002). (iv) Participation in popular music by various communities seems to cut across ethnic, religious and age boundaries, which makes popular music participation an interesting study in social integration. (v) Engaging in popular music potentially provides students life-long engagement The impact of popular music in the classroom has not been fully explored.
Creating, performing and responding to popular music genres arguably act as an apt medium of and for self expression considering the complex nature of an ever-shifting demographic mix and strategies to bring about more effective social integration across communities-of-practice (Wenger 1998) engaging the later cosmopolitan society in Singapore.
The GMP (2008) document supports the value of popular music beginning with musical skills of composing, improvising and recreating extending to identity formation and multiplicity in identity negotiation in group dynamics (MOE 2008, pp. 7-10). Current broader educational aims are to develop creative, imaginative and socio-culturally well-tempered individuals and popular music has an important educational role to play in this respect. Dairianathan and Lum (2010) have discovered how popular musics re/iterate their place in the music curriculum for music as lived and living space.
Secondary factors crucial to this research are: (a) to examine the place of popular music in local public and international schools across Singapore, (b) to draw out the intrinsic and extrinsic motivations for school-going youth to be engaged in popular music and (c) to critically examine popular music immersion in relation to the objectives established in the GMP syllabus (MOE 2008).
20 115 - PublicationMetadata onlyThe Seoul agendaThis commentary will focus on thoughts gathered from the inaugural UNESCO UNITWIN meeting in April 2017, Singapore and the subsequent publication of the 1st UNITWIN yearbook (Lum & Wagner, in Arts education and cultural diversity: Policies, research, practices and critical perspectives. Inaugural yearbook of arts education research for cultural diversity and sustainable development, 2019). Together with ideas sparked from the 2nd UNITWIN meeting in May 2018, Nuremberg, it is hoped that some linkages can be made to propel the work forward to the subsequent UNITWIN gatherings.
60 - PublicationOpen AccessJamming in the intercultural space: Collaborative creative processes of an experimental music group in SingaporeLatching onto UNESCO’s prompt on promoting intercultural dialogue through the arts and sharing good practices, this research narrative focuses on the collaborative creative processes of a Singapore experimental music group made up of five musicians (instrumentation: dizi, didgeridoo, guzheng, table, cello, vocals, drum kit, percussion) in preparation for an album recording. One of the key issues explored in their collaborative gathering and musical improvisations was making sense of the intercultural amongst the musicians’ personal and geographical contexts. The qualitative case study traced the music jam sessions of the music group in their working studio, gathering data through audio and video-recorded focus-group interviews with the musicians and field notes written by the researchers during the music sessions. The collaborative creative processes which emerged spoke to various avenues the musicians followed to actively sound out their intercultural selves and contexts, some of which included: jamming to thematic emotive keywords to evoke particular soundscapes; taking on melodic scales and/or rhythmic grooves of particular music genres as improvisatory starting points to identify what would work for the collective; manipulating and playing on timbral uniqueness of ethnic instruments through technological means; hinging on personal impactful stories that speak to intercultural issues as sources of collective improvisation.
148 27 - PublicationMetadata onlyReimagining Singapore: Self and society in contemporary artForegrounds the perspectives of Singaporean artists as they propose new ways of reimagining the contemporary. Approaches the subject of contemporary art by exploring the social embeddedness and identities of Singaporean artists. Examines how artists negotiate their relationships.
31 - PublicationMetadata onlyArticulating sound citizenship in the general arts classroom towards sound awareness and sound living
This chapter seeks a nuanced path towards music education as/for sound citizenship. Guided by R. Murray Schafer (Soundscapes), and Pauline Oliveros (Deep Listening), the chapter posits that arts educators can encourage people's creative potential by making them aware of and exploring their immediate sound worlds and environments. They can further create their own sound works while making critical judgments that may lead to improvements to the soundscapes of the world. Sound citizenship is an aspirational proposition. It is defined as an encouragement of sound awareness in the hearts and minds of students towards an empathic and developmental view of social and cultural equity. This leads to artistic resonances that can project and activate sound living in a safe and sustainable environment. Sound citizenship also takes on the intercultural space, where the encouragement of deep listening and critical dialogue will enable the creation of more collaborative and cooperative cultural environments (Walser, 2000). This chapter analyses two cases to argue for a pragmatic approach to sound citizenship. It provides explicit examples of how sound citizenship can be activated in the spaces of general arts education in the context of Singapore. It further draws implications for arts teachers and practitioners in furthering sound awareness for students towards creating artistic responses to social and cultural issues in their immediate environment and beyond.
11 - PublicationMetadata onlyWorld music pedagogy, volume VI: School-community intersectionsThe five-layered features of World Music Pedagogy are specifically addressed in various school-community intersections, with attention to the collaboration of teachers with local community artist-musicians and with community musicians-at-a-distance who are available virtually. The authors acknowledge the multiple routes teachers are taking to enable and encourage music learning in community contexts, such as their work in after-school academies, museums and libraries, eldercare centers, places of worship, parks and recreation centers, and other venues in which adults and children gather to learn music, make music, and become convivial through music.
Scopus© Citations 9 54