Bhardwaj, Divya

In broad terms, the central objective of the National Institute of Education (NIE) Core Research Programme is to provide empirical answers to persistent questions about the instructional logic and intellectual quality of teaching and learning across Singapore classrooms. In Core 1 (2004-2007), lessons and surveys from English, Mathematics, Science, Social Studies and Mother Tongue classrooms at Primary 5 and Secondary 3 levels were collected. In Core 2 (2009-2014), three Panels were formed and organized along pedagogical beliefs and practices (Panel 2), classroom practices (Panel 3) and assessment practices (Panel 5) (Hogan, Towndrow, Kwek, & Chan, 2013). Both the Core 1 and 2 Research Programmes made important advancements in our understanding of a broad range of pedagogical practices through rigorous research designs and instrumentation. In addition, they had a significant impact on educational policy and research. The Core Research Programme continues to investigate what makes the Singapore education system successful, and what systemic pedagogical innovations are required to advance Singapore’s education to the next level.

The Core 3 Research Programme (Core 3) has been reconceptualised to include a Regular component, one of the two categories of sub-studies aimed at improving the utility of findings that are aligned to MOE’s knowledge needs and ensuring the timeliness of reporting of findings for MOE’s monitoring purposes. The Regular component is complemented with an Exploratory component which comprise sub-studies to investigate learning outcomes which are difficult to measure, conduct innovative data collection methods and analytical approaches, develop evaluation studies investigating curriculum implementation and enactment, and develop curriculum and pedagogical innovations. In particular, this study includes a significant, highly refined regular component that examines classroom pedagogy and an exploratory component that develops indicators for new subject domains and further examines teacher pedagogical reasoning. This Core 3 programmatic study (henceforth, “C3-PP”) follows a five-year subject domain sampling design that began in 2015. While the subjects that are the focus of this study (English Language, Mathematics, Additional Mathematics, History, Geography, Literature, Music, Visual Arts, Physical Education, Computer Applications, henceforth cumulatively termed “focus subjects”) are wide ranging, they follow the Core 3 data collection schedule for the years 2017 and 2018. The sampling design and subjects have been agreed upon by the MOE and NIE.

“This LES report is a synthesis of 14 Instructional Core (IC) studies that fit the inclusion criteria. $3,655,921 was awarded to the studies through the NIE Education Research Funding Programme (ERFP) in the 3rd tranche (2013–2017) of funding from MOE. Six of the 14 selected studies were Tier 1, 7 were Tier 2, and 1 was Tier 3 (Figure 3) (See Annex A for a detailed explanation of the selection criteria).”--Introduction.

In broad terms, the central objective of the National Institute of Education (NIE) Core Research Programme is to provide empirical answers to persistent questions about the instructional logic and intellectual quality of teaching and learning across Singapore classrooms. In Core 1 (2004-2007), lessons and surveys from English, Mathematics, Science, Social Studies and Mother Tongue classrooms at Primary 5 and Secondary 3 levels were collected. In Core 2 (2009-2014), three Panels were formed and organized along pedagogical beliefs and practices (Panel 2), classroom practices (Panel 3) and assessment practices (Panel 5) (Hogan, Towndrow, Kwek, & Chan, 2013). Both the Core 1 and 2 Research Programmes made important advancements in our understanding of a broad range of pedagogical practices through rigorous research designs and instrumentation. In addition, they had a significant impact on educational policy and research. The Core Research Programme continues to investigate what makes the Singapore education system successful, and what systemic pedagogical innovations are required to advance Singapore’s education to the next level.

The Core 3 Research Programme (Core 3) has been reconceptualised to include a Regular component, one of the two categories of sub-studies aimed at improving the utility of findings that are aligned to MOE’s knowledge needs and ensuring the timeliness of reporting of findings for MOE’s monitoring purposes. The Regular component is complemented with an Exploratory component which comprise sub-studies to investigate learning outcomes which are difficult to measure, conduct innovative data collection methods and analytical approaches, develop evaluation studies investigating curriculum implementation and enactment, and develop curriculum and pedagogical innovations. In particular, this study includes a significant, highly refined regular component that examines classroom pedagogy and an exploratory component that develops indicators for new subject domains and further examines teacher pedagogical reasoning. This Core 3 programmatic study (henceforth, “C3-PP”) follows a five-year subject domain sampling design that began in 2015. While the subjects that are the focus of this study (English Language, Mathematics, Additional Mathematics, History, Geography, Literature, Music, Visual Arts, Physical Education, Computer Applications, henceforth cumulatively termed “focus subjects”) are wide ranging, they follow the Core 3 data collection schedule for the years 2017 and 2018. The sampling design and subjects have been agreed upon by the MOE and NIE.