Ng, Pak Tee

This is the fifth in a suite of five projects that aims to establish an evidence-base for the continual review and enhancement of pre-service teacher education and early career teacher professional learning and development within Singapore. Some findings emergent from these projects, especially the recently completed OER 14/13 LEL project, suggested that a supportive and sharing school culture, structured mentoring, and beginning teachers’ (BTs) attitude to learning account for their varying degrees of professional growth. During visits to schools participating in the Instructional Mentoring Programme (IMP), officers from Academy of Singapore Teachers (AST) also sensed that there existed school variations in the implementation of BT mentoring. Therefore, we collaborated with officers from the Ministry of Education (MOE) and AST to research support for and mentoring of BTs in Singapore.

In an engaged learning paradigm, learners are responsible, strategic, collaborative and energised through the learning process. As the Singapore education system changes rapidly to respond to an emerging global economy in a knowledge age, school leaders have to be engaged in learning, especially in the areas offuturing, knowledge creation and innovation. This article describes how the Future School project of the Leaders in Education Programme attempts to engage school leaders in deep learning and provides some pointers as to how engaged learning can be achieved in leadership programmes.

In the Singapore education system, e-learning is fast becoming the next frontier for schools. E-learning has the potential to add great value to education, allowing modes of learning that have never been possible in the traditional classroom context. However, before we hail e-learning as the definitive step forward in education and plunge headlong into it, educators have to understand e-learning and its implications in school leadership, management,curriculum, resources and pedagogy. While a well thought through approach will bring great gains to a school, blindly plunging into it may bring great pains because the process of change can be fraught with subtle pitfalls. Using the Organisational Change Model, this article provides a framework for schools to systemically and systematically consider the issues related to the implementation of e-learning in schools and the process of change. It argues that school leaders should consider the goals, business, culture, processes, and enablers(working tools) seamlessly and coherently in order that e-learning could be anchored in the school to bring real sustainable benefits.

This study examined the pedagogical practice of an initial teacher education course from the diploma programme in the National Institute of Education and how it contributed to student teachers’ professional growth in terms of pedagogical knowledge and skills, and professional identity as a teacher. This study made use of videographic data of 11 lessons of the course over an entire semester, and end-of-course focus group interviews with the student teachers and the lecturer who conducted the course. The findings have important implications for pedagogical practice in teacher education.

This is the fourth in a suite of four projects which aim to establish an evidence-base for the continual review and enhancement of initial teacher education (ITE) and early career teacher professional learning and development (TPL&D) within Singapore. Therefore, this project is the continuation and expansion of our three previously funded research projects (OER 13/09 LEL, OER 04/10 LEL, and OER 15/11 LEL). Specifically, this project investigates how ITE programmes and the first two years of teaching experiences impact the development of professional competencies and identities of student teachers and beginning teachers (BTs) in Singapore.

"In 2009, a project-OER 13/09 LEL Building an Evidence-base for ITP in NIE: A Formative Project-was funded to initiate a program of research activities that seeks to achieve a rich and contextualised understanding of the nature, substance and professional impact of student teachers' learning within NIE's ITE programmes." -- p. 3.