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Teacher learning communities as catalytic levers for educational innovations in Singapore schools
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Type
Book Chapter
Citation
Azilawati Jamaludin, Hung, D., Toh, Y., & Imran Shaari. (2022). Teacher learning communities as catalytic levers for educational innovations in Singapore schools. In D. Hung, L. Wu, & D. Kwek (Eds.), Diversifying schools: Systemic catalysts for educational innovations in Singapore (pp. 211-233). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-6034-4_12
Abstract
Grounded in our work on analysing teacher learning communities as they evolve from traditional learning epistemologies towards constructivist orientations and progressive, inquiry-driven pedagogies (Hung et al., J Interactive Learn Res 17:37–55, 2006; Hung et al., Educ Technol 55:20–26, 2015; Shaari et al., in press; Wu and Hung, Transforming learning, empowering learners: The international conference of the learning sciences (ICLS). International Society of the Learning Sciences, Singapore, vol 1, pp 474–481, 2016), this paper articulates teacher learning communities as catalytic levers for educational innovation in Singapore schools. We begin with an articulation of the characterizations of teacher learning communities within the Singapore education system—from those that organically emerge at the grassroots (teacher) level to those that were intentionally designed at the systems (ministry) level. While there has been growing recognition for networked learning of school faculties that engender results, which are meaningful and impactful at both the teacher and student level, the purported stance is that change towards innovation and progressive, inquiry-driven learning practices is not just a change in instructional strategies but also a fundamental change in teachers’ epistemologies. Through case examples of the developmental processes of a networked learning community within the system, we posit that apprenticeship-learning affordances of networked learning communities underpin teachers’ shifts in epistemology and function as proximal vehicles for catalyzing innovations through progressive, inquiry-driven pedagogies. These shifts are engendered through tenets of (i) growth intentionality, (ii) dialectics of structure-agency, design-emergence, periphery-centrality, and commonality-diversity, (iii) socio-technological leverages, and (iv) ecological coherence and alignments. Expanding our analysis both vertically (macro systems level to micro personal level) and horizontally (abstract cross-disciplines to concrete subject-specific affinities), we ground these theoretical ideas to a nuanced understanding of scalable epistemic learning, in the context of educational innovation and diffusion.
ISBN
978-981-16-6034-4 (online)
978-981-16-6033-7 (print)
Publisher
Springer
Series
Education in the Asia-Pacific region: Issues, concerns and prospects