Educational reform in Singapore: from quantity to quality

In 2004, Prime Minister Lee called teachers to “teach less” so that students might “learn more”. In 2005, the Ministry of Education clarified this philosophical statement to mean transforming learning from quantity to quality—“more quality and less quantity” in education. This is in line with the national vision of ‘Thinking Schools, Learning Nation’. This policy initiative, which began in 2004, is set to change the fundamental nature of education in Singapore. This article discusses this initiative, its major implications for schools in Singapore and the challenges to be addressed in the implementation of the policy. In particular, the article discusses the issues of understanding an engaged learning paradigm, establishing signposts for the shift from quantity to quality and the difficulties of system-wide transformation. The challenge for schools is to go beyond the form of the initiative to bring real, substantial and sustainable educational change through this movement.     

Towards a theory and practice of policy engagement: Higher education research policy in the making

Academic engagement with higher education research policy in Australia, and with education policy more generally, is in crisis. This time around, it is not just that our theoretical tools are blunt and irrelevant (Ball 1990), so are our politics. It seems our attention has been so consumed by “what is policy” (Ball 1994a) and with challenging its claims to authority, that we have missed or ignored imperatives to engage with its production. Even though some have attempted contributions, for the most part we have been “coerced into an era of cooperation”. Getting ourselves out of this mess will take more than just better theories and new politics. It will require a degree of cooperation, to advance a theory and practice of policy engagement and to re-establish a field of education that resists the tendency to fragment and/or the temptation to defend itself “against” policy. In this paper I attempt an assessment of where we are theoretically and politically with regard to education policy and where we need to look to find new forms of policy engagement. By way of illustration, I draw on examples from AARE (the Australian Association for Research in Education) and the Australian RQF (Research Quality Framework) although the analysis is by no means restricted to these.     

“Variation problems” and their roles in the topic of fraction division in Chinese mathematics textbook examples

This article deals with the roles of variation problems (“one problem multiple solution” and “one problem multiple changes”) as used in Chinese textbooks. It is argued that variation problems as an “indigenous” Chinese practice aim to discern and to compare the invariant feature of the relationship among concepts and solutions. This practice also aims to provide opportunities for making connections, since comparison is considered the pre-condition to perceive the structures, dependencies, and relationships that may lead to mathematical abstraction. In the first part of the article, the “indigenous” practice is discussed against its philosophical Daoism and Confucianism backgrounds. To grasp its distinctiveness, a comparison between Chinese and American textbooks is carried out. In the second part of the article, the focus is on the manner in which fraction division is articulated in an important Chinese textbook. A framework to understand variation practice is introduced and some educational implications are suggested.     

The study on the core concepts of contemporary sociology of education and its theoretical construction

Within the sphere of contemporary social sciences, the terms “modernity,” “post-modernity” and “globalization” have penetrated, as the core concepts, into various fields of social sciences in a logical way. In constituting the concept of “modernity,” sociology of education develops the educational theory, as sociological theory does, into a “grand narrative” and “foundationalist” theory; the contribution of post-modernity is pluralism and self-examination in an attempt to transcend modernity. Globalization, a kind of expanded modernity, makes education sociologists broaden their perspective from single and traditional “nationality,” “society” and “nation” to an international society and even to the global society, which has broken through the research paradigm of modernity with ethnocentrism, anthropocentrism and Euro-centrism. These changes have required urgent constitution of the conceptions and theoretical frameworks of sociology of education to be applied on a global level. __________ Translated from Peking University Education Review, 2006 (1)     

Individuals and Leadership in an Australian Secondary Science Department: A Qualitative Study

In this article, we consider the complex and dynamic inter-relationships between individual science teachers, the social space of their work and their dispositions towards teacher leadership. Research into the representation of school science departments through individual science teachers is scarce. We explore the representations of four individual teachers to the assertions of teacher leadership proposed by Silva et al. (Teach Coll Rec, 102(4):779–804, 2000). These representations, expressed during regular science department meetings, occur in the social space of Bourdieu’s “field” and are a reflection of the “game” of science education being played within the department. This departmentally centred space suggests an important implication when considering the relationship between subject departments and their schools. The development of an individual’s representation of teacher leadership and the wider “field” of science education appears to shape the individual towards promoting their own sense of identity as a teacher of science, rather than as a teacher within a school. Our work suggests that for these individuals, the important “game” is science education, not school improvement. Consequently, the subject department may be a missing link between efforts to improve schools and current organizational practices.     

Learning/work: Turning work and lifelong learning inside out

CONFINTEA VI took place against the background of an uneven and contradictory social and economic impact of globalisation. This impact registered globally and locally, in both the political North and South, drawing new lines of inequality between “core” and “periphery”, between insiders and outsiders of contemporary society. Financial turmoil in the world has exacerbated levels of poverty and insecurity. The question is how work-related education and conceptions of learning might promote greater inclusion and security for those whose livelihoods are most severely affected by globalisation. The Belém Framework for Action implicitly recognises that lifelong learning and work cannot be discussed outside broader socio-economic and political contexts. The authors of this article draw substantially on research from around the world and argue for the re-insertion of “politics and power” into both the theory and practice of “lifelong learning” and “work”.     

Hutchins’s University of Utopia: Institutional Independence,Academic Freedom,and Radical Restructuring

In a crisis-plagued world looking to higher education for knowledge, wisdom, and solutions, higher education itself is stumbling. Its transformational thinking has frozen up like an overstressed computer program; and we need, in effect, to “push the reset button.” In 1953, the renowned and controversial president of the University of Chicago, Robert M. Hutchins, authored a refreshing and provocative work, The University of Utopia, containing ideas that still challenge today’s paradigms. He argued for institutional independence over “accountability,” “outcomes,” and “stakeholders.” He indicted educational evils he called “industrialization,” “specialization,” “philosophical diversity,” and “social and political conformity” and suggested ways to defeat them. Although his 56-year-old thoughts on reconceptualizing the multiversity are not a panacea, they could help higher education make a fresh start. This essay reintroduces the modern reader to Hutchins’s iconoclastic and stimulating ideas in the hope of restarting the stalled agenda for educational reform.     

Professional Responsibility – An Issue for Higher Education?

The aim of this article is to shed light on some aspects of professional responsibility by investigating students’ visions of future work and notions of professional responsibility. The data is based on interviews with samples of freshmen in three educational programmes at the University of Oslo in Norway. The data has been analysed in relation to two thesis claimed by Steven Brint: “The rise of a utilitarian ethos” in higher education and the movement from “social trustee professionalism” to “expert professionalism”. The findings show that the students in our sample do not think of higher education primarily as a means to get credentials that will be useful in the labour marked. An intellectual interest in the discipline is the most prevalent reason for the students’ educational choices. Furthermore our findings support an orientation towards “expert professionalism” rather than “social trustee professionalism”. But, embedded in the perspective of an expert there is an emphasis on ethical knowledge, moral and/or societal responsibility and the wish to do good for others. However, the students’ sense of responsibility seems to be restricted to certain “localism” of their specific occupation. Based on the findings we argue that the students reveal a moral awareness that should be taken seriously by the educational institution in order to foster critical rationality and professional commitments.     

Vygotskian theory and mathematics education: Resolving the conceptual-procedural dichotomy

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that in spite of some superficial similarities the current mathematics reform in the US based on constructivist principles differs substantially from mathematical education based on Vygotskian cultural-historical theory (V.V. Davydov’s mathematics program), and to illustrate the manner in which Davydov’s program virtually obliterates the conceptual-procedural division that has fueled the current “math wars”. Both constructivism and Davydov’s approach emphasize the active character of students’ acquisition of mathematical concepts. Constructivists, however, begin the instructional process from the children’s preexistent concepts while Vygotskians reorient it toward acquisition of what Vygotsky defined as “scientific” rather than “spontaneous, everyday” concepts. A three-year study of the implementation of Davydov’s elementary mathematics program in a school setting in the US found that the American children overcame the initial challenges of the program, consistently resolved computational errors conceptually, and finally demonstrated the ability to solve high school level mathematics problems. The curriculum appeared to foster the development of theoretical thinking, an explicit goal of Davydov’s program, which constitutes its major value and educational significance.     

Diversity and multiculturalism in Japan: what is called into question?

This study explores the different ways in which the notion of multiculturalism in Japan has been influenced by various social and historical trajectories. Since the Japanese government started to promote “internationalization” in the 1980’s, slogans such as “international exchange,” “cultural exchange,” and “understanding of other cultures” have become the most popular expressions among policy makers and educators. This article demonstrates that the notion of Japanese multiculturalism is intricately and deeply embedded in the society, culture, and education system of Japan. It also points out that this particularly Japanese style of multiculturalism excludes some immigrants who have lived in Japan for generations, and that this exclusion is not the result of ideological products, but rather the effect of multiple power relations.     

Audio-visual education in urban school systems

Summary impressions In some ways, this report shows progress in audio-visual education. The work is being headed up by more widespread adoption of central coordination, more classroom teachers are prepared to use audio-visual materials in their classes, and there is more wide-spread use of the materials. On the other hand, there are some urgent needs that become so evident from these data. “More time” is the need, “more central coordination” is the need, “more adapted classrooms” is the need, and separately and behind all these is the need for “better support.” This article is a digest of a report given at the DAVI national convention in Los Angeles in April. The address was entitled “A First Look at Findings of the NEA Survey of the Status of Audio-Visual Education in City and County School Systems.” Victor Hornbostel is assistant director of the Research Division of the National Education Association and supervisor of the survey which is reported.     

Learning-based curriculum development

This article is written to inspire curriculum developers to centre their efforts on the learning processes of students. It presents a learning-based paradigm for higher education and demonstrates the close relationship between curriculum development and students’ learning processes. The article has three sections: Section “The role of higher education (HE) institutions” presents a discussion of the role of higher education in the knowledge society. Section “Contextual learning” presents the paradigm of contextual learning which we see as a useful foundation for curriculum development. Section “Curriculum development in practice—the BETA course” shows how a particular course in Business Economic Theory and Analysis has been developed using this paradigm. The article will be of interest to all academics interested in students’ learning processes but is especially relevant to those responsible for curriculum development.     

Teamwork — teach me, teach me not: A case study of three Australian preservice teachers

Explicit training in teaming skills (both preservice and inservice) has been identified as a key means of facilitating the effective functioning of teaching teams (Main, 2007). This case study explored how groupwork tasks within university coursework can prepare preservice education students to work effectively in teaching teams. Three students in their final year of study were primed to the skills that have been identified as necessary for successful team practices. The students then participated in a semi-structured interview about their groupwork experiences at university. Results from this study of preservice teacher education students reflected findings from studies of students’ groupwork experiences in other disciplines (i.e., business). Students reported opportunities to practise teamwork. However, they were not explicitly taught “how” to work effectively together. It was also found that the assessment focus was entirely on the final “product” and not on the group “process”.     

Literalism in the young child’s interpretation of pictures

This article describes four studies concerned with the young child’s response to the illusion of incompleteness in pictures. A substantial proportion of the children, aged 4 to 7 years, responded as if an element “out of sight” in a picture either did not exist or was incomplete. This mode of responding, termed “literalism,” was found to be related to age and proved to be little influenced by training and one other form of structured experience. The work reported in this article was funded by a grant from the Education Research and Development Committee, Commonwealth Department of Education, Canberra, Australia. The author acknowledges with gratitude the assistance of Ann Ring, June Sleet, and Janette Muir in the execution of these studies.     

Affection and cognition in transaction and the mapping of cultural space

Summary In this article, an attempt has been made to treat affection and cognition “transactionally” and to report work underway in the development of a rationale for mapping “sign components” of “cultural space.” The development of statistical procedures and applications remains to be undertaken.     

Students’ Socio-Scientific Reasoning in an Astrobiological Context During Work with a Digital Learning Environment

In a European project—CoReflect—researchers in seven countries are developing, implementing and evaluating teaching sequences using a web-based platform (STOCHASMOS). The interactive web-based inquiry materials support collaborative and reflective work. The learning environments will be iteratively tested and refined, during different phases of the project. All learning environments are focusing “socio-scientific issues”. In this article we report from the pilot implementation of the Swedish learning environment which has an Astrobiology context. The socio-scientific driving questions are “Should we look for, and try to contact, extraterrestrial life?”, and “Should we transform Mars into a planet where humans can live in the future?” The students were in their last year of compulsory school (16 years old), and worked together in triads. We report from the groups’ decisions and the support used for their claims. On a group level a majority of the student groups in their final statements express reluctance towards both the search of extraterrestrial life and the terraforming of Mars. The support used by the students are reported and discussed. We also look more closely into the argumentation of one of the student groups. The results presented in this article, differ from earlier studies on students’ argumentation and decision making on socio-scientific issues (Aikenhead in Science education for everyday life. Evidence-based practice. Teachers College Press, New York, (2006) for an overview), in that they suggest that students do use science related arguments—both from “core” and “frontier” science—in their argumentation and decision making.     

Kindergarten Teachers’ Conceptual Framework on the Ozone Layer Depletion. Exploring the Associative Meanings of a Global Environmental Issue

This paper reports on a study conducted among Greek kindergarten teachers aiming to explore their conceptual frameworks on a major environmental issue of our times: the ozone layer depletion. The choice of this particular issue was premised on its novelty, complexity and abstractness which present teachers with difficulties in its teaching. A free word association task was employed to identify the associative meaning of the issue among the participant teachers. The study’s results revealed the existence of a simplistic, linear, cause-and-effect scheme in the teachers’ conceptual frameworks, the two poles of which are “solar radiation” and “its harmful results for human health”. Some of the well-known misconceptions and misunderstandings already emerged in previous research also arise in this study. Prominent among them are the deeply rooted confusion between the “ozone hole” and “greenhouse effect”, a general fusion of ideas concerning all environmental problems and an overemphasis on the harmful consequences of the ozone depletion on human health. Implications for kindergarten teacher education are also discussed.The present study is part of a research project that is co-funded by the European Social Fund and National Resources – (EPEAEK II) PYTHAGORAS II.     

Communications programs in higher education: Objectives and curricula

Conclusion This report has shown that there are areas of commonality and areas of diversity in existing communications programs in higher education. The undergraduate and graduate curricular structure reflects, for the most part, the stated objectives of the program. Several questions remain to be answered: “What is being accomplished under the communications label that could not otherwise be accomplished?” “What are some of the emerging trends in this rapidly growing field?” These topics will be covered in subsequent articles. This is the second in a series of articles on communications programs in higher education by the author who is director of the audiovisual center at Syracuse University. The first article, “Communications Programs in Higher Education,” appeared inAV Communication Review, Winter 1960.