Learning from Singapore tells the inside story of the country’s journey in transforming its education system from a struggling one to one that is hailed internationally as effective and successful. It is a story not of the glory of international test results, but of the hard work and tenacity of a few generations of policy makers, practitioners and teacher trainers. Despite its success, Singapore continues to reform its education system, and is willing to deal with difficult issues and challenges of change. Citing Singapore's transformation, author Pak Tee Ng highlights how context and culture affect education policy formulation and implementation. Showing how difficult education reform can be when a system needs to negotiate between competing philosophies, significant trade-offs, or paradoxical positions, this book explores the successes and struggles of the Singapore system and examines its future direction and areas of tension. The book also explores how national education systems can be strengthened by embracing the creative tensions generated by paradoxes such as the co-existence of timely change and timeless constants, centralisation and decentralisation, meritocracy and compassion, and teaching less and learning more. Learning from Singapore brings to the world the learning from Singapore—what Singapore has learned from half a century of educational change—and encourages every education system to bring hope to and secure a future for the next generation.

Learning from Singapore tells the inside story of the country’s journey in transforming its education system from a struggling one to one that is hailed internationally as effective and successful. It is a story not of the glory of international test results, but of the hard work and tenacity of a few generations of policy makers, practitioners and teacher trainers. Despite its success, Singapore continues to reform its education system, and is willing to deal with difficult issues and challenges of change. Citing Singapore's transformation, author Pak Tee Ng highlights how context and culture affect education policy formulation and implementation. Showing how difficult education reform can be when a system needs to negotiate between competing philosophies, significant trade-offs, or paradoxical positions, this book explores the successes and struggles of the Singapore system and examines its future direction and areas of tension. The book also explores how national education systems can be strengthened by embracing the creative tensions generated by paradoxes such as the co-existence of timely change and timeless constants, centralisation and decentralisation, meritocracy and compassion, and teaching less and learning more. Learning from Singapore brings to the world the learning from Singapore—what Singapore has learned from half a century of educational change—and encourages every education system to bring hope to and secure a future for the next generation.

Learning from Singapore tells the inside story of the country's journey in transforming its education system from a struggling one to one that is hailed internationally as effective and successful. It is a story not of the glory of international test results, but of the hard work and tenacity of a few generations of policy makers, practitioners and teacher trainers. Despite its success, Singapore continues to reform its education system, and is willing to deal with difficult issues and challenges of change. Citing Singapore's transformation, author Pak Tee Ng highlights how context and culture affect education policy formulation and implementation. Showing how difficult education reform can be when a system needs to negotiate between competing philosophies, significant trade-offs, or paradoxical positions, this book explores the successes and struggles of the Singapore system and examines its future direction and areas of tension. The book also explores how national education systems can be strengthened by embracing the creative tensions generated by paradoxes such as the co-existence of timely change and timeless constants, centralisation and decentralisation, meritocracy and compassion, and teaching less and learning more. Learning from Singapore brings to the world the learning from Singapore-what Singapore has learned from half a century of educational change-and encourages every education system to bring hope to and secure a future for the next generation.

This monograph serves as a resource book on the Model Method. The main purpose is to make explicit how the Model Method is used to develop students' understanding of fundamental mathematics concepts and proficiency in solving basic mathematics word problems. Through the construction of a pictorial model to represent the known and unknown quantities and their relationships in a problem, students gain better understanding of the problem and develop their abilities in mathematical thinking and problem solving. This would provide a strong foundation for the learning of matheatics from the primary to secondary levels and beyond. This monograph also features the Mathematics Framework of the Singapore mathematics curriculum, and discusses the changes that it has undergone over the past two decades. These changes reflected the changing emphases, needs and challenges in the mathematics curriculum as we entered the 21s century.

This book addresses the topic of humanities education fieldwork using the Singapore context as its primary focus. It explores how the thought processes behind and techniques of various humanities and social sciences subjects can be applied to fieldwork in a variety of school and training settings. In addition, it discusses how humanities students and educators could stand to benefit from utilizing fieldwork techniques and skills used in archaeology and anthropology, beyond undergraduates majoring in that discipline. Finally, the adoption of multidisciplinary approaches in fieldwork incorporating history, geography, literature and social studies demonstrate how these subjects can collaborate together in actual case studies to facilitate participants’ learning in the field.

This volume provides a multi-faceted and critical analysis of the Singapore curriculum in relation to globalization. First, it details reform initiatives established by the Singapore government to meet the challenges posed by globalization. Next, Globalization and the Singapore Curriculum presents how these reforms have been translated into programs, school subjects and operational frameworks and then examines, in turn, how well these have been implemented in schools and classrooms across the country. Through this examination, the book reveals how the initiatives, together with their curricular translation and classroom enactment, reflect on the one hand global features and tendencies and, on the other, distinct national traditions, concerns and practices. It brings to light a set of issues, problems and challenges that not only concern policymakers, educators and reformers in Singapore but also those in other countries as well. Written by curriculum scholars, policy analysts, researchers and teacher educators, Globalization and the Singapore Curriculum offers an up-to-date reference for postgraduate students, scholars and researchers in the areas of curriculum and instruction, comparative education, educational sociology, educational policy and leadership in Singapore, the Asia Pacific region and beyond. It also offers a vital contribution to the story of modern education around the globe: providing international students, scholars and researchers valuable insights into curriculum and curriculum reform for the 21st century.

Singapore’s education system has come to international attention due to its commendable performance on the Worldwide Educating for the Future Index produced by The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), as well as the students’ continual sterling performance in internationally benchmarked tests such as Trends in International Math and Science Survey (TIMSS), and Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). The accomplishments are the result of a long-haul vision of education, and more importantly, a deep commitment towards developing teachers for the 21st century. Singapore has invested steadfastly from the early years in teachers at the front line of the classrooms in schools. This book explicates the ‘thinking’ behind Singapore’s approach to developing teachers and building the teaching profession. It examines how Singapore strives to attract the best and the brightest people to become teachers, develop them into autonomous professionals, and grow them over their career so that they are able to deliver quality education for every child. The author hopes that by sharing the hindsight, insight and foresight of the system, and looking at Singapore's aspirations and challenges, the book can stimulate reflection and generate discussion, and provide ideas for improving teaching and teacher learning worldwide.