Learning From Singapore

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.

In Asia, we are witnessing an era where the pendulum of power is swaying towards the East with the rising strength of China and India and Singapore is at the 'crossroads' between these populous nations. Although Singapore may appear to be the most westernized country in Asia, she is nevertheless a multi-cultural Asian society. Having the most open economy in the world, Singapore is plugged into the global marketplace of education and learning. The development of human capital is used as a strategic economic driver to internationalize and transform education for sustainable competitive advantage. Singapore's education system, regarded as one of the best performing in the world, offers a unique opportunity to explore the issues where east and west culture, values, beliefs and educational systems meet and adapt to bridge the divide. This first-of-its-kind book puts together topical key notions of eastern and western educational practices and looks at the underbelly of how a small 'resourceless' independent city-state like Singapore is managing to stay relevant against a backdrop of ever increasing intense global competition.

In Asia, we are witnessing an era where the pendulum of power seems to be swaying towards the East with the rising strength of China and India and Singapore is at the 'crossroads' between these populous nations. Although Singapore may appear to be the most westernized country in Asia, she is nevertheless a multi-cultural Asian society. Having the most open economy in the world, Singapore is plugged into the global marketplace of education and learning. The development of human capital is used as a strategic economic driver to internationalize and transform education for sustainable competitive advantage. Singapore's education system, regarded as one of the consistently best performing in the world, offers a unique opportunity to explore issues where eastern and western culture, values, beliefs, learning and knowledge systems converge, clash, and at times diverge. This book is meant to extend our knowledge on the role of ‘learning’, often overlooked and taken for granted as the air that we breathe but which constantly transforms our lives and reshapes societies. It is the first book that deals with the dichotomy of ‘east’ and ‘west’ going beyond the traditional learning and education framework to other areas such as economic, socio-cultural, political, and technological dimensions that impact Singapore. It puts together key topical issues and explores the underbelly of how a small 'resourceless' independent city-state like Singapore stays ahead of the learning curve, even while facing increasingly intense global competition where the discovery and emergence of new systems for empowerment and independence and the resulting creation of new knowledge and modes of communication are challenging traditional boundaries between the virtual and real world. Contents:ForewordIntroductionA Learning State?Cultural Neuroscience in LearningThe Business of LearningSwitching between CulturesWireless Learning: A New Frontier?The East-West Learning MatrixTheories and Discourses Readership: Universities, business schools and public and private institutions conducting executive programs, libraries, private and public sector organisations, individuals, consultants, researchers, HRD/HRM directors/managers, teachers, policy-makers, etc. Keywords:Learning;Culture;Education;Marketplace;East;West;SingaporeReview: “This is a thoughtful book about the Singapore success story and its future.” Tommy Koh Professor and Rector Tembusu College National University of Singapore “There is an urgent need for understanding and collaboration between people of diverse backgrounds. Dr Kumar draws on scholarship from multiple disciplines and his extensive experience in Singapore to report on approaches to learning that respect diversity while achieving academic success. This is an important book that should be read widely.” Carsten Kowalczyk Associate Professor of International Economics The Fletcher School Tufts University “Prem provides a good overview of the evolution, issues and trends in Singapore education. He nudges us to ponder whether education should be left to market forces and whether we should make changes to better prepare us for the future.” Tsui Kai Chong Provost and Professor SIM University Key Features:New and original edition on educational and learning that puts together topical issues as seen from both the East and West perspectives in the context of SingaporeServes as a reference in understanding the why, what and how educational policies and practice converge

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 explores to what extent China has drawn lessons from Singapore, both in terms of its ruling ideology and through the policy-specific learning process. In so doing, it provides insights into the opportunities but also the challenges of this long-term learning process, focusing attention to how non-democratic regimes deal with modernization. The stellar line-up of international contributors, from China, Singapore, Europe, and the US, offer a variety of perspectives on Singapore as a model of "authoritarian modernism" for China. The book discusses how the small Southeast Asian city-state became a major reference point for China, how mainland observers often misunderstood the nature of Singapore’s governance and instrumentalized it to bolster the CCP’s legitimacy, and why the Singapore model appears to be in decline under Xi Jinping. The chapters also analyze policy-specific learning processes, including bilateral mechanisms of policy exchange, the Chinese "mayor’s class" in Singapore, and joint industrial projects and lessons in social welfare provision. The book will be of interest to academics working on Chinese politics; development in China; state society and economy in the Asia-Pacific; international relations in the Asia-Pacific; and Southeast Asian politics.

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.

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.

Inception Point: The Use of Learning and Development to Reform the Singapore Public Service fills a gap in current literature on Singapore's modernisation. While the political leadership of the late Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew and his People's Action Party (PAP) government were key to Singapore's modernisation, the role of policy implementation was one shouldered by the Singapore Public Service, a story thus far neglected in literature. Inception Point argues that the Singapore Public Service used executive development and training to introduce reforms across the bureaucracy. In so doing, the bureaucracy constantly adjusted itself to help modernise Singapore. In the 40 years between decolonisation in 1959 and 2001, when the training arm of the bureaucracy became a statutory board, training had been used firstly, to socialise the bureaucracy away from its colonial-era organisational culture to prepare it for the tasks of nation-building. Subsequently, civil servants were mobilised into an 'economic general staff' through training and development, to lead the Singapore developmental state in the 1970s and the 1980s. The Public Service for the 21st Century (PS21) reforms in the 1990s was the epitome in harnessing development and training for reforms across the bureaucracy. Contents: Acknowledgements Abbreviations Introduction Neglect: The Origins of Singapore's Administration and Training (1819–1959) Early Political Socialisation: The Political Study Centre and Staff Training (1959–1969) Toward Managing the "Developmental State" The Staff Training Institute (1971–1975) Symbolism and Tinkering: The Civil Service Staff Development Institute and the Civil Service Institute (1975–1996) The First Dedicated Leadership Training Initiative: Civil Service College (1993–1996) Instrument for Reforms: Aligning the Civil Service College for PS21 (1996–2001) Conclusion: Training and Development as Inception Point of Reforms Sources and Bibliography Index Readership: Students and professionals interested in the history of the civil service in Singapore, interested in reforms for civil service in general. Keywords: Reforms;Learning and Development;Training and Development;Executive Development Bureaucracy;Public Administration;Governance;Leadership;Talent Management;Personnel Management;Human Resource Management;Modernisation;Development StudiesReview: Key Features: This book is the first academic treatment of the administrative history of an important central agency in the Singapore Public Service It uses new primary sources including archival records which have never been cited or published, and dedicated interviews with key players during the period, including a minister, several permanent secretaries and numerous senior officers This book provides an academic treatment of the administrative history of an agency in the Singapore Public Service. Numerous government agencies have published souvenir-type or corporate-style books which included snippets of their evolution. This book is the first which employs an academically rigourous approach to examine the development of an agency in the Singapore Public Service This book is definitive work on the role of learning and executive development and reforms in the Singapore Public Service, being a pioneering work in these fields. By featuring the erstwhile underdeveloped role played by the Public Service in Singapore's modernisation, the book also draws out deeper texture beyond the current narrative