Lum, Chee Hoo

Thinking schools focuses on students being encouraged to developed skills that are associated with learning, communicating and creative thinking. The development of critical and creative thinking in teachers and students is established through the school curriculum and activities. In line with the educational goals of Singapore, with the emphasis on "Thinking Schools, Learning Nation", study serves to examine the effects of introducing group music composition activities as a creative and critical thinking tool in the primary music curriculum of Singapore.

The composition project provided an avenue to reaffirm musical knowledge and skills pupils have been learning and helped pupils in activity using these ideas in the music making process, also giving them a sense of ownership. Three outstanding observations that were prevalent in most groups that participated in the composition project include, 1) pupils' use of initiation as the main focus in composing, 2) the structuring of pupils' compositions were based on the initial exploration of sound and 3) pupils' group decision making process were based primarily on a leading member's decision in the group.

The scores for pupils' revised performances showed improvements as compared to their initial performances. Pupils' two main considerations during revision include, 1) the appropriateness of their sounds with regards to theme and 2) their co-ordination during the performance. Most groups had a more unified revised performance compared to their initial try. Evaluation is a process that is often left out in the current music curriculum which can prove to be an important tool in primary music education here in Singapore.

In this ethnographic study, the musical behaviours of 28 primary school children in Singapore were examined for their meaning and diversity as they engaged in the school day. A large part of these children’s musical behaviours stemmed from their exposure to the mass media. Children’s musical inventions emerged in the context of play, occasionally using musical play as an aid to academic learning. Instances of rhythmic play were more prevalent compared with melodic utterances. The children tended to motivate and encourage each other in their daily activities through the use of rhythmic play while melodic utterances seemed more prominently tied to expression and communication.

"Given our interest in advancing teacher inquiry, as well as in exploring preschool teachers' understandings of diverse learners and how to teach diverse learners in Singapore classrooms, the following research questions guided this study: 1. How does this group of effective preschool teachers in Singapore conceptualize and talk about diverse learners in their teaching? 2. How do these teachers' individual conceptualizations of diversity influence their classroom teaching and learning (i.e., teaching practices)?" -- p. 1.

Latching 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.

This 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.