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| Miss
Seah Jiak Choo, Director-General of Education, speaking
passionately at the Curriculum Forum for Principals
and Vice-Principals. |
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Miss Seah Jiak Choo, Director-General of Education, painted
this scenario vividly at the 2nd Curriculum
Forum for Principals and Vice-Principals on 17 November
2005. Together with an earlier session held on 15 November,
this is a follow-up to MOE’s Work Plan Seminar held in September.
Scandinavian and third world nations are focusing on education as one of the keys to meeting the challenges posed by the booming economies of India and China. For Singapore, education is the only key, and we do not have any fall back position, emphasised Miss Seah. If the Economic Development Board succeeds in bringing in hi-tech industries, it is not just our political stability and our location that draws investors, but our educated manpower. “So we have no choice but to do it well, and we have great potential to do it well,” she said.
Besides knowing how to teach, teachers need to understand how students learn. The teachers who are selected from the top one-third of each cohort must be able to teach across all standards, even those students who are in the last one-third of a cohort. The quality of interaction between students and teachers is critical as it is a substantiated fact that students learn better from the teacher they like.
Learning solely for examinations is out. Training students to solve old problems with model answers is out. Miss Seah stressed, “Otherwise, we have shortchanged the child and ourselves, for no teacher goes into teaching saying she goes into it to help students get good grades.”
In two video clips shown during the forum, one showed that the focus of learning was on teaching for tests and examinations alone. Students were not encouraged to think but to memorise facts and learning was mechanical.
In the other clip, the climate of learning was variously described as stressful, threatening, intimidating, stifling, unfriendly: in fact, it was toxic. Students were berated for questioning, even when they did not understand what was going on.
Although these two scenarios were portrayed starkly for the
sake of emphasis, it was clear that something had to be done
to improve the situation. Suggestions from the Principals included:
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Principals could take
a class, and model teaching pedagogies that engage the
learners ; |
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Giving students a voice; and |
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Helping teachers restore
the thrill of learning in students through their teaching.
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Teachers often say they have no time to do all the things they
would like to do with their students because the Principal wants
to see exam results, said Miss Seah. She reiterated that the
Principal is key to realising engaged learning. The closing
note: a video of a garden in full bloom – the Principal being
the chief gardener. |
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