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The more ambitious an educational innovation, the greater the challenge in scaling up. In this paper, we focus on the scaling up of an ambitious pedagogical practice—mathematics problem solving as a regular feature in the classroom. We adopt a long-term approach to continual professional development (CPD) that began with intensive work with one school before we broadened the programme to four other schools which span the spectrum of schools in Singapore. To evaluate this overall design, we examine the current state of each school's capacity in sustaining mathematics problem-solving instruction. In particular, we study and report findings on these areas: the readiness of teachers, the instructional materials and supporting structures. Based on the findings, we reflect on our CPD strategies and our theory of action which guided the CPD programme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Educational innovations in Singapore have reached fruition. It is now important to consider different innovations and issues that enable innovations to scale and become widespread. This proposition paper outlines two views of scaling and its relation to education systems. We argue that a linear model used in the medical field stresses top-down replication of a 'gold standard' to multiple contexts. This view is similar to scaling in centralized education settings. A project-oriented view stresses bottom-up spreading or diffusing innovations from localized settings to wider contexts. This view is more aligned with scaling in decentralized education systems. Instead of top-down or bottom-up views of scaling, this paper proposes an ecological model of scaling from a system's perspective. It emphasizes a sufficing standard that considers top-down and bottom-up structures as well as qualitative and quantitative dimensions. Accommodations are made to populate different innovations across the system. Top-down supports are given to enable bottom-up innovations. Qualitative dimensions in the form of tacit understandings are more important than replicating explicit or procedural knowledge. The spreading of education innovations is cultivated by nurturing professional learning communities, communities of practices, and keeping tabs of their growth within the system as well as identifying areas for improvement through quantitative, baseline studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates how sustained professional learning for teachers within a centralised system was cultivated. Specifically, the sustained professional learning was initiated by officers from the headquarters (HQ) and involved interested teachers across schools in Singapore. Qualitative instruments were used to collect and analyse the data in examining the partnerships perceived by the participants. The enablers responsible to bring about sustained professional learning are proposed. A contribution of this study is to clarify how resources in the HQ and its schools can be bridged. Deliberate bridging of resources is critical particularly at the initial stage of the partnerships. This bridging is made possible through dedicated appointed champions. The appointed champions are passionate about the educational innovations and are willing to invest their time to understand the teachers’ needs. This paper argues that the enablers can offer opportunities for lateral networks to be forged within a hierarchical system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Singapore’s strong performance in international benchmarking studies – Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) – poses a conundrum to researchers who view Singapore’s pedagogy as characterized by the teaching of facts and procedures, and lacking in constructivist learning principles. In this paper, we examine the impact of different curriculum innovations on critical thinking as measured by the Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Assessment – UK (WGCTA-UK). This includes two innovations that are subject-specific and short-term, one that strongly infuses the arts into the curriculum throughout the whole course of study, and the innovation of the Integrated Programme (IP) which allows academically stronger students to skip the GCE “O” Levels and enter directly into the next level of education, with the time previously allocated to exam preparation now spent on greater breadth in the academic and non-academic curriculum. This paper takes the sociocultural approach to investigate the contexts, process, and outcomes, reports the state of critical thinking, and sheds light on how critical thinking is being promoted. Through our analysis, we find support for the claim that only curriculum that is rigorously designed to foster critical thinking competencies will reap the intended student outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues for innovation diffusion as a “becoming” process in the context of lateral and vertical moves. The context of these innovations involves technology-mediated innovations and their diffusion trajectories in the Singapore education system. Embedded in a centralized-decentralized dialectics, this paper traces particular innovations from their nascent beginnings to their present state of play. We found that the cases we observed had lateral (or decentralized) moves and were subsequently supported by vertical (or centralized) ones. Characterizing these innovation diffusions was challenging as we found them to move across models according to different granularities and levels of analysis. Instead, we have chosen to characterize these diffusion patterns as “innovation becoming”. We attempt to distil some substantive generalizations from three case studies presented and how decisions can be made for future innovation diffusions. We recognize that the trajectory for innovation diffusion is inextricably linked to the identity projected by the particular innovation and the leadership supporting it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes and examines how Singapore attempts to implement ICT in education through its three Masterplans for ICT in Education since 1997. It analyses the management approach during the implementation of Masterplans One and Two and highlights the inadequacies of a linear Newtonian model of ICT implementation for Masterplan Three. This paper posits that for Singapore to venture into an uncharted era of educational ICT innovation, the new educational ICT management paradigm should be based on complexity rather than a linear Newtonian model. In particular, it should be one that promotes the recognition of the education system as a complex adaptive system; promotes loose coupling between headquarters and schools, and among schools; promotes organisation around intelligences rather than fixed structures; and promotes integration through purpose rather than policy. The case study of Singapore contains lessons for other countries implementing national level initiatives for ICT in education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper views seeking the optimal balance between state strengths and the scope of state functions for 'good governance' as the formation of a homogenization-heterogenization matrix of policy initiatives in different social settings. Homogenization refers to a global tendency for institutional changes and governance framework to change state capacity, while heterogenization refers to the local adaptation of these global transformations. The paper attempts to take educational decentralization as an example of policy initiatives to assess and analyse the significance of the two opposite poses in four East Asian newly industrialized economies (NIEs) (Hong Kong, Singapore, Korea, and Taiwan). The paper's position is that it may be useful to see these four NIEs as making up two clusters. It sees political democratic transitions in Korea and Taiwan as important local factors affecting the developments of educational decentralization in the two societies, while reforms in Hong Kong and Singapore seem to be more consequences of managerial and market values. However, the NIEs face the question of how to maintain sufficient 'stateness' in the decentralization process. To conclude, the paper considers that achieving the balance of 'stateness' is the key to success in state-building. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the context of fierce global economic competition, school diversification and specialist schools have been seen by governments as cornerstones of education policy to engineer school improvement in both England and Singapore for more than a decade. In both systems, the policy has manifested in different school types, school names and sometimes buildings – in England, specialist status schools, academies and most recently free schools; and in Singapore, specialist schools and niche schools. Diversification is promoted by each school emphasising distinctiveness in its curriculum – often with implications for its funding and degree of autonomy – which differentiate it from others. There is normally the intention to scale-up curricular innovations school-wide. The paper addresses three aims in respect to both countries: first, it profiles the evolution of specialist schools' policies in both states in relation to school improvement and secondly, social justice; thirdly, it undertakes a comparative policy analysis in order to draw conclusions as to how the relationship between central government and schools has re-configured in both countries – arguing that the policy in England is radical, that in Singapore, conservative. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Leaders in Education Programme is a six-month full-time programme for specially selected vice-principals and ministry officers in Singapore to prepare them for school leadership. This paper describes and analyses the design of the programme and identifies the key underlying principle as that of knowledge construction, sharing and application using a social constructivism paradigm. In particular, it examines one particular component, the Future School project, in detail so as to illustrate these principles and how they operate in action. Drawing from the experiences of the Future School project, this paper suggests some pointers to designing a programme for school leadership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes how Singapore attempts to balance the need for quality assurance and the need for educational diversity and innovation. The Singapore experience shows that this is a delicate balance. On the one hand, to promote diversity and innovation, the government attempts to decentralise its power to the schools. On the other hand, for quality assurance, the government sets up quality structures that reassert the centrality of government control. This paper examines the implications of such a strategy and the challenges that schools face in navigating a new paradigm of diversity and innovation while satisfying the requirements of quality assurance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically examines recent education reform in Singapore launched under the rhetoric of "Thinking Schools, Learning Nation" (TSLN). I will make explicit the context and the premises underlying the new state-initiated TSLN education reform. I argue that the re-alignment of education change is a response to the trajectories of (global) economic conditions, concomitantly framed by (local) sociopolitical and cultural-ideological needs. Next, I tease out and critique the pedagogical problems and contradictions embedded in the TSLN education reform. The paper concludes by asking what critical perspectives can be drawn from the Singapore case vis-à-vis globalisation and education reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the ever-pressing twenty-first century demands, such as the need for new knowledge generation and application, schools today are aware of the necessity to change their structures, processes and practices to be relevant. In Singapore's centralized education system, the Ministry has introduced several decentralization initiatives in the hope of promoting flexibility and innovation within schools. One such initiative is the Integrated Programme (IP). IP schools are expected to redefine existing educational structures, redesign teaching and learning processes and reshape classroom practices to generate diverse learning experiences. This paper describes the case of one school that has embarked on the IP to shed light on the processes involved in curriculum innovation. Our findings reveal three significant processes: negotiating the programme with the school's vision, finding common ground for buy-in and investing in preparation time. These are instrumental in the development and enactment of IP by teachers and school leaders. These findings and their implications are deliberated on, providing ways that schools can shape and sustain curricular innovations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many countries, regions and education districts in the world have experimented with models of one-device-per-student as an enabler of new or effective pedagogies supported by mobile technologies. Researchers have also designed innovations or interventions for possible adoption by schools or for informal learning. Of critical interest to the community is the question of how the more successful of these top-down or bottom-up models or innovations can proliferate to more usage, adoption and adaptation across levels of the education system. This paper describes a research programme that demonstrates how to make successful research innovations count in practice and that delineates what types of educational R&D involving scaling need to take place to make the critical link to impacting practice. We do this in the context of one such curricular innovation in a Singapore school that moves through the various phases to where the innovation is becoming an integral part of routine classroom practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes a global professional development program called 21st Century Learning Design (21CLD), which helps teachers design academic lessons that integrate opportunities for students to develop 21st Century competencies in a variety of dimensions such as collaboration, knowledge construction, and the powerful use of ICT for learning. The framework and tools of 21CLD are grounded in learning science research, promoting aspects of these dimensions that have been shown to tie to deeper learning. The paper highlights the example of Crescent Girls' School in Singapore, which is implementing this program school-wide as a next step on its longstanding journey to leverage ICT for instructional innovation. Critical aspects of the school's supportive ecosystem include a clear and consistent vision for teaching and learning, strong teacher ownership and a common language of discourse, distributed leadership, and the use of ICT to support teacher professional development and lesson design. The paper describes results for teaching and learning through a Communicative Arts lesson that leverages place-based ICT tools for student knowledge construction. Although Crescent Girls' School is unusually well resourced and has a strong history of ICT use for learning, this case offers lessons that apply equally well for earlier-stage explorations into ICT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The internationalization of higher education has become an important policy and research agenda. At the national level, different countries have responded differently with some countries becoming more open than others. At the local level, universities have also reacted differently with some becoming more liberal and innovative than others. Thus, this paper aims, first, to examine the rationale and policies of the Singapore government in internationalizing its higher education, and, second, to determine the corresponding institutional responses of Singapore educational institutions particularly at the university level. The findings show that government policies have been designed, implemented, reviewed, and adjusted to promote student values and attributes, including intercultural awareness and engagement, competitive edge, and global citizenship, through an internationalized curriculum; to meet the country’s manpower and population requirements; and to promote Singapore as an international hub for education. Singapore universities, in particular the National University of Singapore (NUS), have implemented their programs and activities to promote internationalization at home and abroad. Singapore will continue to internationalize its higher education as national borders become more open and as universities become more competitive and innovative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The education sector is often criticized for the growing gap between what business needs and what education provides. This paper discusses an innovative use of tripartite public-private partnership (PPP) of the government, university and industry partners to design, build, operate and finance the delivery of the international trading program (ITP) in Nanyang Technological University (NTU) as a complement to the contracting model of government provision and university production of education. The program operation is institutionalized with a centre of excellence and its advisory board. A corporate partnership scheme provides the financial foundation and industry commitment to ensure program sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the problematic enactment of instructional innovations. We examine how different interpretations of 'success' might be explained within a frame of reference that confronts the complexities of and uncovers the contingencies relating to educational policy implementation in schools. Based on the detailed description and comparison of three different educational innovations developed and implemented in the same educational context-Singapore-we show how the intricate and delicate interrelationships that exist within and across adopters, innovators and environments (Cohen and Ball ) influence what might be reasonably expected and achieved from specific innovation initiatives. By doing so, we hope not only to test Cohen and Ball's framework and conjectures but also lay the groundwork for future comparative work on innovation design and evaluation, moving the research agenda forward by critically examining reasonable expectations for educational innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Singapore government introduced education policy initiatives under the Thinking Schools, Learning Nation vision in 1997 to promote greater diversity, autonomy and innovation amonsgt schools. The first part of the paper provides a review of educational policies launched since 1997, and highlights how these reforms manifest salient features of marketing orientation in the Singapore educational system. The second part of the paper illustrates the marketisation of education through one recent nation wide initiative the niche area scheme. We argue that schools should instead identify parents' and students' needs, and then develop their 'products' based on competences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Against a backdrop of the nexus between education and national development in a knowledge-based economy, many states have extended their educational reforms to religious schools which are usually private schools not under direct state control. This paper explores how the Singapore government attempts to introduce 'new' pedagogies in madrasah education through new Islamic textbooks, a move that resonates with the national education initiative to 'teach less, learn more'. The paper argues that these student-centered pedagogies are not new as they have been propagated by Muslim scholars and practiced in Islamic institutions since the medieval times. But these pedagogies may be 'new' or unfamiliar to many madrasahs due to the prevalent teachercentered pedagogies privileged in madrasahs today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a trans-cultural perspective of emotional/behavioral difficulties and a brief overview of the subculture of today's young adolescent girls. Features of successful alternative education services provided at a Singapore girls' home are also presented. This paper concludes with a consideration of implications for teachers and other professionals working with girls in trouble. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines and analyses where and how information and communication technologies (ICT) are integrated in Singapore schools to engage students in higher-order thinking activities. Taking the activity system as a unit of analysis, the study documents the actual processes and sociocultural elements that engage students in higher-order thinking. By employing methods such as observations, focus group discussions with students, and face-to-face interviews with teachers, ICT-coordinators and principals, an account of how the activity systems within and between classrooms, and the schools are generated. Based on the analysis of the data from 10 schools, issues in the learning environment are discussed: Necessary (classroom management and orienting activities) and sufficient conditions (scaffolding activities and supporting school policies) for effective ICT integration in the classroom. The account also highlights the constraints of time and lack of knowledge and experience in the contexts that the teachers are working under, and how these constraints are addressed by supporting school policies in the larger sociocultural setting of the school. This account provides a sample of pedagogical and sociocultural issues that are discussed over the course and at the end of the project. Like a good guidebook, the study sensitizes the audience to what is likely to happen given a particular objective, constraint, or design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Action research has received increasing attention, especially by school leaders, as a result of the Singapore Ministry of Education’s push for greater autonomy, diversity and innovation at the school level. It is also perceived as a means for teacher professional development and professionalism. The Teachers Network, which has its own brand of action research called ‘Learning Circles’, is in support of such a view. Action research projects are not, however, without problems. In this paper, structures that pose constraints to successful action research endeavours will be the main focus for discussion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines some of the complexities involved in the actual work of classroom instruction by examining interactions among the goals of teaching. The research is part of a case study of teaching a Year 7 Singapore class comprising students of average mathematical ability. Among the complexities of teaching analysed here are the problems associated with trying to fulfil the multiple goals of teaching and the conflict experienced by the teacher as he attempts to carry out these goals. This provides insight into how a teacher performs the act of balancing different goals while carrying out instruction in class. The implications of these insights into teaching practice for the wider education community are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we describe and reflect on a collaborative, school-based professional development project (an ‘intervention’) intended to encourage innovation in classroom teaching. Specifically, the intervention included a collaboration between university-based researchers/mentors and primary school teachers in Singapore who were interested in discovering new strategies for reading comprehension instruction. The results show that by working together, over time, teachers were able to innovate by adopting new strategies for leading reading comprehension discussions and adapting the new strategies to fit the local teaching context. Crucially, the innovation found that ‘learning’ the new strategies was insufficient; teachers needed professional support from the teacher trainers and their collaborating colleagues as well as time—over three years—to develop their expertise and their confidence in the implementation of the new strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the relationship between policy, research and practice in the Singapore education landscape in response to Hargreaves and Shirley's arguments of Fourth Way principles of educational change. Examples of recent policy developments in Singapore are used to illustrate the interaction between judicial uses of research data and pragmatic knowledge of classroom practices and stakeholders' interest in policy formulation in Singapore. It is advocated that a key ingredient of the success of Singapore's education system is the unity of vision and mission of the people behind policy, research and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the discourse of international educational reform that aims at meeting the various challenges of globalisation and a knowledge-based economy and preparing students for a better future in the twenty-first century. Specifically, it reviews the dominant themes, trends and goals of modern education. It does so by exploring the shared themes of curriculum adaptation, the emerging models of learning and innovation, the trend towards lifelong learning for all and the growing need for the internationalisation of education. It concludes by suggesting an overall trend of the sectorisation and de-sectorisation of education emerging under new social and economic circumstances in the twenty-first century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an empirical study which utilizes the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) as a research framework to authenticate the appropriateness of the model in forecasting pre-service teacher's intent to use technology, as well as in assessing its validity when applied in educational setting. Respondents of the research comprise 239 pre-service teachers enrolled at the National Institute of Education (NIE) in Singapore who were given a survey questionnaire on five-point Likert scale. It outlines the measurement model used such as the structural equation modelling (SEM) to assess the suitability of the measurement model. The result shows that the TAM is a suitable model to be used in examining the intention of using technology among educational users.

With rapid developments in information technology (IT) and the increasingly sophisticated abilities of IT users, schools have the inevitable task of integrating IT in their school curriculum. Owing to the prevalent use of educational technology in schools, it is often questioned whether information literacy (IL) is necessary in the school curriculum, especially when it is widely perceived that IT literacy is equivalent to IL. This article gives an overview of IT initiatives as well as IL strategies that have been implemented in Singapore schools and addresses the gaps that exist in the Singapore school education system in assimilating these two areas. On the basis of exploratory interviews with practitioners and academics in the area of education, several suggestions to bridge the gaps between IT and IL in the school curriculum are presented. These include compulsory IL training for all teachers; the revival of the now defunct School Libraries Unit within the Ministry of Education; the creation of the role of a full-time teacher librarian within each school; and the seamless integration of IT and IL training within the school curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Schools as social institutions are resistant to change, and the introduction of ICT (information and communication technologies) into classrooms has not yet created fundamental changes in learning and teaching in public schooling in general. Findings from international comparative studies have shown that educational innovations leveraging the potentials of technology have taken place in schools around the world and that national educational policies have major influence on the sustainability and scalability of educational innovations. This commentary draws on the policies and strategies associated with the implementation of the IT in Education masterplan in Singapore and Hong Kong to argue that there is a distinct possibility that these systems will be able to leverage the potential of ICT to bring about significant changes in public schooling within the next two decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The importance of thinking skills in Singapore was seen in the launch of the ‘Thinking Schools, Learning Nation’ (TSLN) vision in 1997. This vision aims to develop creative thinking skills, a lifelong passion for learning and nationalistic commitment in the young. In elucidating the concept of ‘thinking schools’ the former Prime Minister, Goh Chok Tong, stressed the urgency for Singapore schools to nurture thinking and for committed citizens to keep Singapore vibrant and successful in the future. A recent effort to teach critical thinking skills is seen in the revised ‘Junior College’ curriculum which aims at developing thinking skills, and nurturing the skills, spirit and values required for Singaporeans to thrive in a more globalized, innovation-driven future (Ministry of Education, 2002). The government in Singapore announced that a new GCE A level subject, ‘Knowledge and Inquiry’ (KI) will be introduced from 2006. This article focuses on the teaching and learning of critical thinking through KI. By examining the objectives as spelled out in the syllabus, the article identifies and discusses the curriculum challenges in the government's attempt to create thinking schools through KI from 2006 onwards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on need of education system to have innovations for improvement in the learning of the students. It states that several methods in teaching were introduced by an educational website Khan Academy including the video lecturing, classroom interactive discussions and workshop-style learning. It also mentions that global innovators including Arnold Wasserman has been working with governments in Singapore and Columbia to enhance creative education.

The article presents a list of events related to medical education. A conference titled "Arizona 2006 Association of Professors of Gynecology and Obstetric Faculty Development Seminar" will be held on January 7-10, 2006 in Phoenix, Arizona. A meeting titled "Winter 2006 Group for Research in Pathology Education Meeting" will be held on January 12-15, 2006 in San Juan, Puerto Rico. A conference titled "3rd Asia Pacific Medical Education Conference" with the theme "Curriculum TIPS: Trends, Innovations, Priorities, Strategies" will be held on February 18-21, 2006 at National University of Singapore, Singapore. The annual meeting of the Southern Group on Educational Affairs will be held May 4-6, 2006 in Galveston, Texas. The 32nd Annual Meeting of the Association of Directors of Medical Student Education in Psychiatry will be held on June 22-24, 2006 at Loews Annapolis Hotel in Annapolis, Maryland.