Diversifying Schools: Systemic Catalysts for Educational Innovations in Singapore: 61 (Education in the Asia-Pacific Region: Issues, Concerns and Prospects, 61)

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.