Lee, Shu-Shing

The Ministry of Education (MOE) recognises the importance of teachers’ professional development (PD) by introducing the Teacher Growth Model (TGM). In line with TGM, our case study, Stanley School, adopts a 5 stage, school-based PD cycle. This study is situated in the third iteration of this PD cycle, focused on differentiated instruction (DI). The key components of DI are the develop students’ critical and creative thinking which relates to students’ 21st century competencies. This study aims to understand the intended conditions for professional growth and teachers’ perceptions of these conditions and ways in which PD informs enactment and sustenance of practice, as well as achieved outcomes of PD such as shifts in students’ learning and teachers’ readiness.

Primary school learners are often engaging in learning opportunities in both inside and outside of school contexts. To understand how these different contexts afford opportunities for metacognition and self-regulation, we follow local primary school students of elementary grades five and six. In Vygotsky's work, metacognition appears as an awareness of one's own thinking processes and the way they can be controlled and directed. For Vygotsky, metacognition and self-regulation are completely intertwined in which the latter takes the forms of control over one's attention, thoughts, and actions (Fox & Riconscente, 2008). Consequently, the understanding of these important constructs supports the understanding of human behavior, learning, and development within a broader context of all human activities. To explore the learning of metacognition and self-regulation in students' learning, we draw data from an informal context: a primary school, co-curricular activities (CCA), in bowling. Interpreting from a variety of data-collection techniques such as field observations, interviews, field notes, and video recording, the research team has been observing the bowling team's practices at least once a week since January 2010. Although the school's team comprises of more than thirty students, we targeted our observations to nine of these students. A further sub-section of two participants were selected and interviews were conducted to collect information on strategic planning, self-efficacy, and knowledge application. Moreover, artifacts such as written statements of the way their families assisted in their learning in an informal context were also collected. Preliminary findings indicate that learning in an informal context affords opportunities for metacognition and self-regulation in interesting and authentic ways. In addition, students point out that learning strategies can be used in both formal and informal contexts. The findings also illustrate the importance of linking students' development of metacognitive abilities to parental mentoring in providing a fuller understanding of their learning in both formal and informal contexts.

Teacher learning is key for quality teaching and learning. Schools leverage situated teacher learning to develop teachers’ capacities. However, situated teacher learning is ambiguous. How teachers learn is shaped by socio-cultural factors. This paper elaborates upon a case study of situated teacher learning in Singapore in which teachers learn in a community to design innovations and enact student-centred practices. Cultural Historical Activity Theory is used as a lens to unpack situated teacher learning and its socio-cultural dimensions at macro and micro levels. Macro level findings show the collective socio-cultural elements in the entire situated teacher learning process involving real issues and communities. Micro level findings discuss each event within the situated teacher learning process, understand the contradictions teachers faced, decisions they made, and the individual and social interactions that led to teachers’ expansive understandings of student-centred practices for their contexts. Findings illustrate how situated teacher learning engages teachers in reflective inquiry and a generative process of unpacking what student-centred practices mean for their contexts. Findings show that situated teacher learning is a collective endeavour. It requires the teacher community to experience collective inquiry, navigate the demands of school and policy contexts, and create socio-cultural supports to address challenges.

The paper attempts to bridge informal and formal learning by leveraging on affordance structures associated with informal environments to help learners develop social, cognitive, and metacognitive dispositions that can be applied to learning in classrooms. Most studies focus on either learning in formal or informal contexts, but this study seeks to link the two. The paper proposes three tenets to augment de-contextualized learning in schools by putting back the: (a) tacit, (b) social-collective, and (c) informal. This paper seeks to advance the argument for a consideration of how formal learning might be made more authentic by leveraging the affordances of informal learning. Two case examples are illustrated. The first case shows learners operating in a virtual environment in which—through the collaborative manipulation of terrain—adopt the epistemic frame of geomorphologists. The case seeks to illustrate how the tacit and social-collective dimensions from the virtual environment might be incorporated as part of the formal geography curriculum. In the second case, interactions between members of a school bowling team highlight the contextualized and authentic metacognitive demands placed on learners/bowlers, and how these demands are re-contextualized—through metacognitive brokering—to the formal curriculum. Productive linkages are made between informal and formal learnings and anchored through learners’ authentic experiences.

A common pedagogical approach to foster creativity and develop talents among gifted students is after-school enrichment programs. However, in practice, there are several issues concerning the conceptualization and implementation of such programs. Since these enrichment programs are typically not part of the core curriculum and scheduled outside curriculum time, these programs are relatively low stakes. As an after-school add-on program, such programs tend to be fragmented and ad hoc in nature. Instead of a systematic program designed to stretch gifted and talented students, with the goal of developing their knowledge and competencies in breadth and depth, the programs that are implemented tend to be pitched at exposure level. To effectively meet the needs of the gifted and talented students, it is imperative to examine the intricacies of these programs. The fidelity has significant implications on the quality of the students’ learning experiences. This article shares the issues and challenges they faced.

Educational research has been at the forefront of educational transformation by examining how learning occurs and enabling ways of learning notably through designing and implementing learning innovations. However, learning innovations are complex. There are multiple embedded contexts involving classrooms, schools, communities, homes and the wider education landscape. This article is a reflection from two researcher-innovators who have partnered with schools and teachers in their innovation and change journeys in Singapore. We have encountered several tensions amongst teachers and raise three of those dilemmas relating to stakeholder perspectives, sustainability and the customisation of the innovation. Learning innovations in the field, while creating various dilemmas for the key teacher stakeholder, translates research to practice and enables teachers to learn and grow their professionalism. An effortful resolution is required.

The diffusion of innovation is critical to societal progression. In the field of education, such diffusion takes on added significance because of the many stakeholders and accountabilities involved. This article presents the argument that efforts at diffusion which are designed from a top-down perspective are not sustainable over the long term because such a perspective does not sufficiently acknowledge the importance of tacit knowledge in the successful adoption and adaptation of innovations. Using examples drawn from the trialing and implementation of a suite of research innovations in the Singapore education system, the argument is made that tacit understandings of any given innovation are attained through dialogue and embodied practice within authentic contexts, and that these very contexts and opportunities for dialogue are precisely the affordances of Communities of Practice. The article draws some tentative conclusions about systems-level moves and strategies which might nurture the dialectic of theory, practice, and epistemology by leveraging existing social structures.

This paper addresses how twenty-first century learning cultures can be enabled and spread in the Singapore school system by enacting curricular innovations and developing teachers’ capacity for adaptivity. We appropriate understandings of adaptivity, including adaptive expertise, and contextualize it to the Singapore school system at the socio-cultural level of analysis. Our focus is on the socio-cultural enablers mediated by curricular innovations that influence teachers’ learning of adaptivity. This socio-cultural perspective of teacher adaptivity is our contribution. The case study reveals that twenty-first century learning cultures and developing teachers’ adaptivity are enabled by: (1) school leadership creating socio-technological provisions for teacher experimentation and innovation; (2) learning contexts that re-orientate pedagogy, curriculum, and assessment; (3) learning communities that build teacher capacity; and (4) historicity for developing adaptivity. While enablers can be appropriated from this case study to show how teacher learning occurred within the school, the spreading of teacher adaptivity to other schools cannot be naively replicated. We discuss these issues and postulate that diffusing teacher adaptivity requires leadership and socio-cultural dimensions to enact a process of teacher learning across schools for practices to be diffused.