Costes-Onishi, Pamela Grace

The term 'art space' suggests a physical space that portrays an architectural structure and infrastructure that would cater for musicians and artists to create, work and portray their craft. Many iconic art spaces in Singapore such as the Esplanade Theatre has fulfilled that purpose and have even added to the overall Arts Landscape of Singapore. However, beyond its physical purposes, there needs to be an emphasis that art spaces also provide a social environment for music and art communities to interact with the public especially from our local artists and the community of Singaporeans. The research would focus on the exploration of pre-assigned and public art spaces located within Singapore's own suburban neighbourhood areas that showcase how local music communities and groups make use of them for their music-making purposes to connect and interact with the communities of Singapore. This research is explored using videography as the main empirical research process and presented with an ethnographic documentary as the final product.

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.

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.

This study intends to extend the applicability and address the gaps in the study OER 01/14 OP where it was found that when the 7 structures of learning in community music is present in the music module for the General Music Programme (GMP), artistic habits of mind are nurtured in the process. The framework that emerged from the study is called Community Music-based Structures of Learning (CoMu-based SL) and was used in this study to develop unit designs for both Primary and Secondary levels.

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.

"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