Costes-Onishi, Pamela Grace

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.

"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

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.

INTRODUCTION/BACKGROUND In Singapore, the Ministry of Education (MOE) emphasises the importance of developing 21CC through Co-Curricular Activities (CCA). For example, the Handbook for the Co-Curriculum states that there ought to be an “intentional design” of CCA activities such that they create “authentic opportunities” for students to “practise” the 21CC (MOE, 2014, p. 16). This includes the development of 21CC through music CCAs, such as the school band.
STATEMENT OF PROBLEMS Sentiments on the ground, however, suggest that many band directors see the development of these competencies already implicit in current practice. Furthermore, there is no research in Singapore that has empirically examined the assumption that 21CC can be developed through music CCAs. There appears a need for empirical data to determine if and how 21CC are being developed by school band programmes as currently practised. This would also render any form of formal intervention more organic, persuasive, and authentic.
PURPOSE OF STUDY The purpose of this exploratory study was to examine the development of 21CC through the school band; it aims to render explicit what might already be implicit in current practice. To achieve these goals, two high performing school bands (one Primary and one Secondary) were examined over a period of one year.

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.