This book discusses the strategies that the Singapore Education System has embarked to encourage school change and innovations. It documents the change journey of Specialized Schools and Future Schools in Singapore with a view to understand the key tenets that enable school wide change and reform. The intents for change and reform are to anchor the education system to the basic foundations and principles of education and yet enable the system as a whole to be malleable to change and globalization. It shows how Singapore enables diversity within a structured environment through innovations in Specialized and Future Schools, and highlights the systemic rationale behind various efforts in Specialized and Future Schools and the kinds of adaptations schools have made to leverage structures and make adjustments for their contexts.
Professor David Hung is Dean of Education Research at the National Institute of Education (NIE), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. He currently oversees education research grants from various external sources of funding. His research interests are in learning and instructional technologies, constructivism and social constructivism, cognition and communities of practice. In particular, he is interested in the social cultural orientations in the contextual systems of schools in Singapore and he works on scaling of innovations in schools as one of his key research foci. Professor Hung has also delved into the Science of Learning in Education (SoLE). His foundations in learning and the learning sciences has prepared him for his foray into the neuroscience, physiological, and other biological indicators of learning. Professor Hung juxtaposes the science of educational systems with the science of learning. More recently, he was appointed as the NTU’s President’s Chair in Learning Sciences.
Dr Longkai Wu is currently a Research Scientist and faculty member at the Office of Education Research, National Institute of Education, Singapore. He holds a Doctor of Philosophy in the area of Learning Sciences and Technologies at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. His research is on the development of sustainable frameworks to translate and scale education innovations into classroom practices in Singapore school system. He has worked closely with local primary and secondary schools, as well as Ministry of Education, to formulate the nexus among research innovations, scaled practices and education policies. Over the years, he has also been involved in international collaboration with Hong Kong, Taiwan, US, Finland and UK universities on classroom and school improvement.
Dr Dennis Kwek is Centre Director, Centre for Research in Pedagogy and Practice, and Associate Dean (Strategic Engagement), Office of Education Research, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. A Senior Research Scientist with over 25 years of research experience in the UK and Singapore, his research interests include system studies in education, policy research, classroom pedagogies, sociology and philosophy of education, and teacher professional development. He is currently leading National Institute of Education’s CORE Research Programme (2004-present), a multi-million-dollar government-funded large-scale baseline suite of empirical studies into Singaporean classroom pedagogies.
