Schools like Punggol Primary and Zhenghua Secondary have management teams and experienced teachers who give new teachers advice on effective teaching strategies for classroom management and subject pedagogy.
In schools like Rulang Primary and Queenstown Secondary, peer observation is encouraged in order for experienced teachers to model good classroom practices. On top of guidance in the academic aspects of the job, mentors and teaching peers also help out in matters of pastoral care, basic counselling skills and communication with parents.
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Strengthening Teacher Development
This new systematic approach will have a strong focus on school-level mentoring and includes three components: induction, school-level mentoring and provision of learning programmes specifically aimed at the new teacher.
The Programme will start off with 200 or so beginning teachers posted to secondary schools at the start of 2006. Mentors of these teachers will be provided with resource packages that contain tips, good practices and useful information on mentoring.
MOE will provide additional support to schools in order to free up more time for experienced teachers to mentor newer colleagues. Implementation and feedback from beginning teachers, as well as school leaders and mentors, will be monitored and used to improve the full implementation for the next cohort of 1,800 teachers due to be posted to schools in the middle of this year.
Enhancing Professional Development
The affective side of learning is not neglected either. A pioneer batch of NIE trainees had been involved in the Group Endeavours in Service Learning (GESL), which provided them with hands-on experience in various community projects.
Social and Emotional Learning, which helps to develop important attributes and values in children, will be incorporated into NIE’s GESL and practicum. It will be integrated within the overall pre-service training for teachers from July 2007, while from April this year, NIE will introduce new courses that help equip teachers to teach these core SEL skills to students.
