Hairon Salleh

The advent of the Knowledge Age has brought many challenges to countries around the world in every aspect of life, including learning in teacher education. With regards to this, there is widespread agreement on the promotion of educational themes such as higher order skills, teaching for understanding, constructivism, authentic problem solving, and lifelong learning. In the same vein, there is increasing recognition for teachers to teach in ways that are appropriate to prepare students for the Knowledge Age, and thus the need to re-evaluate the learning structures for pre-service teachers. This paper summarises an inductive research study of four final-year pre-service teachers (Diploma in Education) to look at how engagement in an action research project during the teaching practicum influences their pedagogical practice and beliefs towards professional learning.

Although action research has been around and had been used for a couple of decades in the world of academics and practitioners, its value and essence are often under appreciated. In the Singapore education scene, some may perceive action research as beneficial especially with the slew of recent reforms that demand greater accountability not only to the product, but also the process of education such as the School Excellence Model (SEM) and External Validation (EV). Some are given the choice between WITS (Work Improvement Teams) or LCs (Learning Circles) – the latter is one form of action research. In this paper, the author will provide the rationale for the use of action research in current change agenda, and conclude by emphasising on the necessity for action research to be critical, reiterating the salient proposition that “action research is a participatory, democratic process concerned with developing practical knowing in the pursuit of worthwhile human purposes” (Reason and Bradbury, 2001, p. 1).

Since 2015, the MLS Course Facilitation component of the programme, which has to do with help participants develop reflective practice knowledge and skills so as to use it to deepen their learning in the MLS has been of interest to both the Programme Leader and the Associate Dean, Leadership and Learning, GPL. The initial interest was borne of out two main events or thinking. First, the strength of the MLS programme has always been its self-directed and self-organization in learning, which is consistent with principles of adult learning theory, and more so with principles of social theory of learning. Second, the demands on manpower and man hours have the tendency to be high due to the number of reflections per participant. This study was motivated by these two ideas or thinking.

Policymakers and the public in many developed countries have demanded for greater public school accountability in the hope of improving academic and non-academic school outcomes, as well as decreasing the achievement gaps among subpopulations of students (Heck & Moriyama, 2010). In response, there has been a growing conversation amongst educational practitioners and researchers on how educational leadership might be linked to effective teaching, and student learning and ‘achievement’ outcomes. Educational-effectiveness researchers have attempted to link (directly and/or indirect) existing research with theory about educational processes to identify contextual, school factors (including leadership), and classroom factors (including teacher effectiveness) to student learning and ‘achievement’ outcomes (Creemers, 1994; Creemers & Kyriakides, 2008; Heck & Moriyama, 2010; Leithwood & Mascall, 2008; Scheerens, 1990, 1992; Stringfield & Slavin, 1992; Teddlie & Reynolds, 2000). Also of interest are (i) possible differences in the contribution of the leadership practices, (ii) whether some practices are better performed by certain people or roles instead of others, and (iii) whether some strategic efforts to implement changes in the school’s instructional practices are more effective than others (e.g., Creemers & Kyriakides, 2008; Firestone & Martinez, 2007; Leithwood et al., 2004; Locke, 2003).

It is clear that the ‘Principal as the sole decision maker’ conception of leadership and bureaucratic organizational structures are no longer consistent with the new school leadership climate (Pearce & Conger, 2003). Proponents of this view have argued that a dispersed form of leadership is thought to enhance opportunities for the organization to benefit from the capacities of more of its members rather than a single leader (Leithwood & Mascall, 2008). Leithwood and Mascall (2008, p.530) further argued that in so doing, organizational members can develop “a fuller appreciation of interdependence and how one’s behavior affects the organization as a whole”. This clearly reflects the growing appreciation of the informal dimensions of organizations often among those who are not in positions of formal authority (Gronn, 2003; Tschannen-Moran, 2004; Wheatley, 2005). Evidently, leadership and school improvement are increasingly conceptualized as organization-wide phenomena (Manz & Sims, 1993; Ogawa & Bossert, 1995). The evidences from previous studies have provided the impetus for greater understanding of the links between leadership, teaching and learning. Clearly, these issues warrant greater empirical attention. More specifically, educators and researchers are interested in understanding of the following:
(i) Impact of educational policies and system structures on school leadership practices; (ii) Impact of leadership practices on teaching; (iii) Linkages of core leadership practices in schools (i.e., instructional leadership, distributed leadership, teacher leadership, and transformational leadership); (iv) Impact of leadership practices on student learning; (v) Impact of teacher variables (i.e., teaching competencies, engagement and job satisfaction) on student learning.

In line with TLLM and I &E, Nan Chiau Primary seeks to move away from the traditional mode of frontal teaching to adopt the social constructivist model of teaching with pedagogical intentions which focus on nurturing pupils skilled in creating, evaluating and sharing knowledge in authentic learning experiences. The school’s Microsoft Class Server, the infrastructure of wireless technology and handheld devices, provides the structure for the integration of social constructivism across four core subjects in the curriculum. The action research conducted in 2005 sought to understand how the social constructivist model of teaching in a technology-enabled environment is integrated in Primary 4 curriculum using three dimensions of inquiry: perceptions of pupils towards learning; practices of learning; and performance of learning. The findings of the action research project hopes to provide a model for teachers and school leaders who wish to better engage pupils in learning through social constructivist processes in an ICT environment.

Community-based teacher learning in Singapore education started in 2000 with the introduction of Learning Circles, followed by other forms of community-based teacher learning platforms such as Action Research and Lesson Study. By 2010, the Ministry of Education embarked on a school- and system-wide approach to community-based teacher learning in the form of Professional Learning Communities (PLC). However, studies looking at its impact on student learning outcomes are non-existent locally. Internationally, research studies investigating the effects of PLCs specifically on student learning are not aplenty. In their literature review, Vescio et al. (2011) found that although 11 studies reporting impact of PLCs, only eight out of the 11 investigated the impact of PLCs on student learning with modest evidence (Louis & Marks, 1998; Suppovitz, 2002; Suppovitz & Christman, 2003; Phillips, 2003; Strahan, 2003; Hollins et al., 2004; Berry et al., 2005; Bolam et al., 2005). Since the publication of the literature by Vescio et al. (2011), three other studies investigating impact of PLCs on student learning outcomes have also been reported (Sigurðardóttir, 2010; Lomos et al., 2011; Williams, 2013).