103 / 192
[
] 103
tional levels. At the individual level, this work centres on
students, teachers and school leaders.
Individual capacity-building
Students
: Ministry of Education officials and NIE
researchers are committed to developing the range
of skills, understandings and dispositions young
Singaporeans will need for 21st-century institutional
settings, above all, but not limited to, the labour market.
In particular, since the release of the ‘Teach Less, Learn
More’ policy initiative in 2004 and ‘Curriculum 2015’
in 2008, the government is determined to ensure that
the classroom experiences of young people nurture the
development of 21st century skills rather than those
of a bygone era. This is reflected, particularly, in a
commitment to de-emphasize a traditional pedagogy of
knowledge transmission and reproduction in favour of
one that focuses on developing cognitive and disposi-
tional capacities associated with contemporary forms
of knowledge work, including disciplinary and trans-
disciplinary knowledge production, justification and
communication.
Teachers
: the National Institute of Education has
developed a relatively unique and high quality pre-
service programme at both the undergraduate and
graduate levels, integrating (and calibrating) content
knowledge gained through courses in domain-specific
subjects, pedagogical content knowledge gained
through courses in the curriculum, teaching and
assessment, and extensive classroom experience gained
through a carefully gradated programme of school
practicum. Selection is highly extensive and intensive
as it is limited to the top 30 per cent of each annual
student cohort. During their programme, students are
the first thirty years of the life of the republic, the government
focused on developing a comprehensive system of mass educa-
tion of high quality for all its people to prepare them for effective
participation in the world of mass and later high-end manufac-
turing. Since the Asian financial crisis of the mid-1990s, the
policy focus has increasingly been on preparing the Singaporean
workforce for effective participation in the global economy as
a leading knowledge economy and global city specializing in
financial services, shipping, basic and applied research, tourism
and hospitality, and high-value manufacturing in electronics,
shipbuilding, computers and biochemical industries. This new
orientation to human capital formation and nation building has
been strongly reflected in educational policy, beginning with the
‘Thinking Schools, Learning Nation’ policy framework set up by
the then Prime Minister, Goh Chok Tong, in 1997, and followed
by a raft of specific activities to promote initiative and enterprise,
high quality teaching and learning, the (relative) decentralization
of school governance, the integration of technology into class-
room practice, strengthening and lengthening of the pre-service
teacher education programme, a major expansion of in-service
professional development, and the building of a world class
system of professional training for school leaders at the National
Institute of Education (NIE).
From a sustainability perspective, Singapore’s educational expe-
rience highlights the fact that sustainability depends on both
individual and organizational capacity-building, on systemic insti-
tutional alignment and tightly coupled governance, on high quality
leadership at all levels of the system, from individual schools to the
most senior levels of the Ministry, and on a culture (in Singapore, a
‘mindset’) of continuous innovation and improvement.
Capacity-building
First, at a very broad systemic level, Singapore has been committed
strongly to capacity-building at both the individual and organiza-
Classroom of the Future is an initiative set up to demonstrate and model technologies for use in the learning of tomorrow’s students. It demonstrates
a student-centric learning environment where technology is used to support pedagogical and instructional approaches
Image: NIE, Singapore
Image: NIE, Singapore