A local research evidence base for English language education (ELE) in Singapore from 2010 to 2020 (early childhood to secondary school)

Abstract

This article is a review of research in English language education (ELE) in multilingual Singapore from 2010 to 2020. Most research activity has been in the areas of reading and writing while the least has been in speaking and listening and learning spaces. Some findings show how students may be distanced from learning and how complex thinking is constrained in classrooms. Others show the productive nature of metacognitive and metalinguistic awareness and linguistic transfer, suggesting pedagogic approaches of assessment for learning (AfL), scaffolding, and translanguaging to personalize teaching. Factors which influence teacher and student adoption of technologies are revealed by research in e-pedagogies and multiliteracies. Fresh avenues of study have been identity and spatial research which have produced knowledge about agency, diversity, and relations between schools, homes, and communities. Additionally, teacher knowledge and beliefs about texts, metalanguage of the subject, and theories of linguistic and conceptual development evidently require extending. Overall, this decade of research prompts a conceptual opening-up of ELE in Singapore for the next decade in recognition of participant agency and knowledge construction over the networked variety of spaces of ELE.