Goh, Jonathan

Greater emphasis on helping ''students at-risk'' improve in academic achievements has become a key concern of many countries. The relatively large achievement gaps between high and lower academic groups is an educational issue, and also, a socio-political and socio-economic one as it suggests that a sector of a population is not equipped with the necessary academic qualifications, knowledge, skills, and aptitude to take on certain types of jobs and earn a reasonably good income to sustain their living. In 2008, the school dropout rate in Singapore was 1.6 percent?1 percent was attributed to secondary school dropouts of which approximately 90 percent of these students were from the Normal Academic (NA) and Normal Technical1 (NT) steams (Ministry of Education, March 4, 2008). The dropout rate has decreased over the years. In 2010, the primary one cohort which did not complete secondary school education was 1.0% (Ministry of Education, January 16, 2012). Based on the data drawn from the MOE Education Statistics 2012, NA and NT students make up approximately 29 percent and 12 percent of the secondary school student population, respectively. This research proposal for Examining Normal Academic/Technical Students' Science Learning from a Sociological and Cultural Lens seeks to investigate Singapore Normal stream students' science curriculum experiences. While most science education research focuses on mainstream Express and specialised school students, no studies have focused on how Normal Academic (NA) and Normal Technical (NT) students learn science. As a critical lens on the topic is absent, we are particularly concerned with the lack of deeper insights into the challenges, difficulties, and tensions NA/NT students' experience that may limit their interest and ability to learn science in meaningful and productive ways. The three key research questions we want to address are: 1. How do Singapore Normal Academic and Normal Technical students experience science learning in and outside the classroom? 2. How do structures shape Singapore NA/NT students' science learning? 3. How do Singapore NA/NT students' construct their science discursive identities? We have designed a research study using qualitative methods on case studies and quantitative surveys on a large purposeful sample of mainstream Singapore secondary schools and case studies (one NA and one NT class) in one school to investigate the above issues and identify support needed in the Normal stream science curriculum. Both quantitative and qualitative methods will be used to collect generalised and case specific data. We will apply the sociological and cultural lens, specifically, the theory of agency and structure, to analyse how various cultural schema and resources in the primary and secondary structures enable or limit the students' agency. Related to this, we will also examine the science discursive identities of students using discourse analysis. The overall goal of the study is to improve the teaching and learning of science for all. The short term goal of this research is to gain deeper insights into NA/NT students' experience in science classrooms and include identifying existing schema and resources that they engage with both from within and outside the primary structure (e.g., home, institutional, and social structures) and the secondary structure (e.g., scientific discipline and practice in science classrooms) to make sense of science and to develop their science-related discursive identities. The long term goals of this research are to address current gaps in research on NA/NT students' participation in science classrooms, particularly, how they learn science, how they relate to science, their views about science lessons, the factors and forces shaping their agency, and their motivation and interest to learn and pursue postsecondary education in science-related fields. The intellectual merit of this research is to advance the knowledge base.

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).

A review of the literature reveals broadness in the conceptual and operational definition of the construct, Distributed Leadership (DL) (refer to discussions by Spillane, Gronn, Harris, Bennett, and Leithwood), making it elusive. The elusive nature of DL is due in part to the term 'leadership' which is contested among educational theorists; while the other, is due to the lack of attempts at trying to unpack and measure this construct. The purpose of this study is to unpack and discuss key dimensions of the construct of DL based on a nation-wide survey of school leadership in Singapore. Special care was taken in critically determining these dimensions and not areas or aspects where DL may be applied. In other words, we are more interested in the essence of DL rather than categories of distributed leadership practices, which most leadership researchers employ. This study is especially timely in view of the rising trend in school- based curriculum development and innovation towards growing expansion of student learning outcomes beyond the academic subjects such as the 21st century skills. The growing importance of school-based development and innovation calls for leadership practices that not only improve classroom teaching and learning, but also greater devolvement of decision- making power at the school and classroom levels. In the process of better understanding the DL construct, it is an imperative aim of much multivariate analysis is to reduce the dimensionality of the data collected. This is essentially desirable in the investigative stages of a research to provide a lucid interpretation of the data and theoretical measurement model building. This requires the use of a proper metric. As such, Exploratory Factor Analysis was performed on the Rasch (linearized) standardized residuals (see Linacre, 1998, 2006; Wright, 1994, 1996). The DL instrument consists of 25 items, and the sample involved schools leaders from Singapore (i.e., 224 Principals, 322 Vice-Principals and 686 middle-level school managers). The findings provided evidence that the Rasch residual-based factor analysis yielded 4 possible factors of DL. The discussion on these factors will be presented.

Since the turn of the 21st century, the concept of distributed leadership situated within the context of school improvement has risen in importance. This is due to the growing demands on schools from a wide range of stakeholders within education contexts that are increasingly becoming more complex. Educational contexts are increasingly getting complex insofar as the changes accompanying educational reforms are characterized by intensity, rapidity, fluidity and uncertainty. Policymakers and the public are demanding greater public school accountability in the hope of improving academic and non-academic school outcomes, as well as decreasing the achievement gaps (Heck & Moriyama, 2010) through improvements in teaching and learning. It is therefore understandable that contemporary school leaders use up more time and energy in managing increasingly complex relationships, and resort to distributed leadership where leadership decisions are delegated and shared to other staff members beyond the purview of school principals.
In the Singapore context, delegation or sharing of leadership decisions to middle managers such as department heads (HODs) or subject heads (SHs) has been a common place for more than two decades, especially that pertaining to instruction. In this sense, distributed leadership is closely tied to instructional leadership insofar as the former allows instructional leadership practices to be delegated or shared to other staff members beyond school principals or vice-principals. The link between instructional leadership and distributed leadership has been observed (Lieberman & Miller, 2011; Spillane & Louis, 2002; Timperley, 2005). Hence, instructional leadership practices become more dispersed across the school organization, making it more effective to bring about enhancements in teaching and learning. However, over the last decade, leadership decisions pertaining to instruction have been delegated and shared to teacher leaders. This is a result of the growing demands placed on schools so much so that administrative decisions have to be passed on from senior to middle leaders, which result to middle leaders delegating or sharing their decisions on instructional matters to teacher leaders. These teacher leaders include Senior or Lead Teachers (STs and LTs), Subject and Level Reps, and Professional Learning Community Team Leaders – all of which are involved in making leadership decisions on instruction.

Competency in making inferences is an important aspect of student learning in the 21st Century, for making better-informed decisions. The purpose of our study is to investigate the type of science capital that can predict the science inference competencies of lower track students. Science capital comprises diverse social capital, cultural capital, and mental schema. A total of 1,397 Normal Academic (NA) and 637 Normal Technical (NT) Grade 7 students from 37 public secondary schools in Singapore participated in the study. Three separate science inference tests were administered to the students over one academic year, and test scores were calibrated and equated using Rasch analysis. The relationship between students’ perceptions of science capital and their development in science inference competencies was investigated using Ordinary Least Squares regression analysis. The results indicated that NA students’ self-views in science learning and their views about the nature of science were significant predictors of their scientific inference competencies. For NT students, their views about science teachers was the only significant predictors of their performance on making scientific inferences. Based on the research design and findings, we draw implications for local and international science curriculum policy. Additionally, we demonstrate the usefulness of Rasch analysis.

Educational leadership for the 21st century calls for a new and different working relationship between educators. In addition to well-known approaches to educational leadership such as transformational, strategic, educative and organizational styles, the notion of parallel leadership is receiving much attention with growing evidence from Australian schools that this leadership style facilitates school improvement. Parallel leadership challenges teachers and members of the school management to establish a more collaborative working relationship. Such leadership entails mutualism between administrator leaders and teacher leaders, a sense of shared purpose and an allowance of individual expression and action by respective leaders (Andrews & Crowther, 2002). Nurturing parallel leadership involves a change in the roles and responsibilities of principals – to lead in metastrategic development – and of teachers – to lead in pedagogical development. Such leadership is an impetus for essential processes of schoolwide professional learning, culture building and approach to pedagogy which will enhance and sustain school outcomes, thus giving IDEAS schools a cutting edge. This enables the knowledge-generating capacity of schools to be enhanced and sustained. Based on data obtained from interviews and fieldwork observations we introduce an elaborated version of the’ black box’ (Crowther, Hann & Andrews, 2002) and provide a discussion on how three principals in Singapore schools, as part of the IDEAS project, embrace the role of ‘strategic leaders’ in the context of parallel leadership. As these principals progress with developing parallel leadership, we expect valuable insight to emerge as to how parallel leadership is functioning in these schools, thus enabling us to provide at a later stage, a more conclusive answer as to what a parallel relationship between teachers and principals looks like in the Singapore context.

Professional learning communities (PLCs) have gained considerable attention in education. However, PLCs are dependent on how group members collectively work and learn towards shared goals on improving teaching and learning. This would require leadership to support meaningful and productive interactions within PLC contexts, and hence, the importance of teacher leaders. In this article, we report on an ethnographic case study involving three PLCs investigating how teacher leadership supports PLC conversations using an intervention framework provided by the research team. The findings showed that teacher leadership has potential in supporting PLC conversations along three dimensions of its construct.