Costes-Onishi, Pamela Grace

"The current Local Evidence Synthesis (LES) on Teacher Learning (TL) builds upon the previous LES published in 2018 (Tan & Chong, 2018). This iteration of the TL LES consolidates significant findings and insights from local research stemming from the third and fourth cycles of the Education Research Funding Programme (ERFP)." -- Introduction

Many scholars have advocated the addition of more intellectual activities in music classrooms, the most prominent being critical thinking through inquiry. Inquiry-based learning (IBL) has been recognized as necessary for teaching and learning that increases critical thinking skills and dispositions. This study describes an extensive list of indicators that could ascertain the pedagogical practices and intellectual quality of knowledge work indicating the strength of inquiry in music classrooms. It shows the relationships between these indicators that help us understand the enablers and hindrances to critical thinking as an aspect of IBL in music. The article focuses on the Descriptive Statistics results of 114 classroom observations for music at the Primary and Secondary levels, using coding schemes developed in the Singapore Core3-PP project from 2018 to 2020. The results confirm the gap identified in the literature that music classes lack significant inquiry work that would nurture critical thinking skills and dispositions. The findings provide pedagogical insights that can (a) inform educators on how to examine and grow their IBL practice in music lessons; (b) move music education’s objective toward a balanced development of music skills and knowledge construction; (c) develop critical musicality and independent musicianship among students; and (d) provide concrete measures for researchers to design interventions in the areas of teacher learning in IBL.

We adapt a policy-oriented analytical framework to consider important teacher policy leverages that can help to generate successful learners - the teacher policy strategies framework (TPSF). The TPSF comprises a set of micro-layered strategies focusing on the personal growth of the individual teacher. At the same time, there are macro- layered strategies that are more cognizant of the wider system ecology. These micro- and macro-layer policy imperatives collectively and coherently drive a teacher development agenda. The micro-layer policies are: teacher recruitment; initial teacher preparation; compensation and incentives; career development structures; and, professional development and continuous learning. The micro-layer policies are supported by macro- layer policies that build a robust and coherent ecology of capacity building, identity formation, and change drivers needed to align and steer teacher education. For macro- layer policies we highlight: accountability, performance management and evaluation; school leadership; teacher symbolism; policy integration, alignment and coherence; and, collective teachers’ voice.

Aesthetic inquiry is a discipline-specific form of Inquiry-Based Learning (IBL) that explores problems on the value, nature and meaning of art in life. It is meant to engage the students in the critical and conceptual aspects of artistic activities as is the nature of inquiry. However, an analysis of 67 Primary 5 (11 year olds) and 71 Secondary 1 (13 year olds) visual art lessons in Singapore found that teachers continue to implement aesthetic inquiry as formal analysis and skills mastery more so than meaning making. The findings using the comprehensive observational indicators of this study will be useful for researchers, curriculum writers, and policy makers to underpin the challenges among in-service teachers in IBL. More importantly, it will enable teachers to learn and reflect on their competencies in delivering an inquiry-based curriculum.

In broad terms, the central objective of the National Institute of Education (NIE) Core Research Programme is to provide empirical answers to persistent questions about the instructional logic and intellectual quality of teaching and learning across Singapore classrooms. In Core 1 (2004-2007), lessons and surveys from English, Mathematics, Science, Social Studies and Mother Tongue classrooms at Primary 5 and Secondary 3 levels were collected. In Core 2 (2009-2014), three Panels were formed and organized along pedagogical beliefs and practices (Panel 2), classroom practices (Panel 3) and assessment practices (Panel 5) (Hogan, Towndrow, Kwek, & Chan, 2013). Both the Core 1 and 2 Research Programmes made important advancements in our understanding of a broad range of pedagogical practices through rigorous research designs and instrumentation. In addition, they had a significant impact on educational policy and research. The Core Research Programme continues to investigate what makes the Singapore education system successful, and what systemic pedagogical innovations are required to advance Singapore’s education to the next level.

The Core 3 Research Programme (Core 3) has been reconceptualised to include a Regular component, one of the two categories of sub-studies aimed at improving the utility of findings that are aligned to MOE’s knowledge needs and ensuring the timeliness of reporting of findings for MOE’s monitoring purposes. The Regular component is complemented with an Exploratory component which comprise sub-studies to investigate learning outcomes which are difficult to measure, conduct innovative data collection methods and analytical approaches, develop evaluation studies investigating curriculum implementation and enactment, and develop curriculum and pedagogical innovations. In particular, this study includes a significant, highly refined regular component that examines classroom pedagogy and an exploratory component that develops indicators for new subject domains and further examines teacher pedagogical reasoning. This Core 3 programmatic study (henceforth, “C3-PP”) follows a five-year subject domain sampling design that began in 2015. While the subjects that are the focus of this study (English Language, Mathematics, Additional Mathematics, History, Geography, Literature, Music, Visual Arts, Physical Education, Computer Applications, henceforth cumulatively termed “focus subjects”) are wide ranging, they follow the Core 3 data collection schedule for the years 2017 and 2018. The sampling design and subjects have been agreed upon by the MOE and NIE.

This research study seeks to understand the significant challenges faced by Singapore’s English-language musicians from its historically low popularity within local grounds up to the current COVID-19 pandemic. The study specifically explores how IGNITE! Music Festival has supported the local English-language music scene during these trying times and how it continues to serve as an essential platform for local musicians to continue performing their work during the COVID-19 pandemic. In understanding the history of Singapore’s English-language popular music scene and the possible reasons for its low popularity amongst the locals, interviews with industry practitioners provide more insight into local musicians’ hardships, which take a turn for the worse as the pandemic takes root and government restrictions come into play. Solutions to raise awareness of the local music scene in the small city-state are discussed, alongside the possibility of introducing local English-language music through the music education system.