An exploratory approach to teacher professional development in a secondary school in Singapore

Abstract

This chapter introduces a school-based teacher professional development (PD) approach adopted by a local secondary school in Singapore in its pursuit of sustaining teaching and learning practices that could support school improvement and achieve educational success in the twenty-first century. By comparing the structure and operational guidelines of this approach with the characteristics and guiding principles of effective PD programmes identified in the contemporary literature, we argue that the approach has great potential to succeed, considering its apparent affordances for a community that (1) involves whole-school participation, (2) facilitates individual and group learning, (3) cultivates a collegial culture of sharing and learning, (4) promotes shared leadership and (5) connects with external resources and communities. Despite its promising outlook, we suggest that empirical studies on the intended conditions, enacted process and achieved outcomes of this PD approach are needed for validation, refinement and sustainability purposes.