Speeches
Speech by Ms Grace Fu, Senior Minister of State, Ministry of National Development and Ministry of Education, at the Opening Ceremony of Redesigning Pedagogy International Conference 2009 on Monday, 1 June 2009 at 9.00am in the Nanyang Auditorium, Nanyang Technological University
Prof Lee Sing Kong, Director, National Institute of Education
Prof David Hogan, Dean, Office of Education Research
Distinguished guests and participants
Good morning
Introduction
Let me first extend to all of you a warm welcome to the third Redesigning Pedagogy International Conference. In particular, to our friends from abroad, who have come to share with us your insights and experiences, I wish you a memorable and enriching stay.
This conference aims to provide a global forum for practitioners, researchers, educational leaders and policy-makers to interact and share leading-edge research and best practices with their peers from the international community. We hope the knowledge gained over the next three days will forge innovative directions for educational research, practice, and policy.
Education Research Grants for NIE
The theme for the conference is “Designing New Learning Contexts for a Globalising World”. Indeed, our teachers today constantly face new challenges and opportunities operating in a globalising world. Beyond employing traditional teaching methodologies of ‘chalk and board’ in the classroom, they need to take cognisance of the evolving cohorts of pupils who join the education system each year. Teachers also have to keep abreast of new and available pedagogies to engage the diverse profiles of our students, especially those born in this digital age.
The National Institute of Education (NIE), as the bedrock of teacher education in Singapore, is responsible for preparing Singapore’s teachers in content and pedagogy, and developing in-service teachers through its comprehensive range of postgraduate and leadership programmes. Although NIE is held in high regard, it must continue to strive to do even better. In our concerted drive to design and implement new educational environments that can generate and promote authentic and substantive learning in our students, the Ministry of Education (MOE), in close partnership with NIE, has invested substantial funds for the conduct of education research.
Singapore’s education system has had to evolve over time to respond to the changing needs of the nation as well as the external environment. In designing new teaching and learning contexts, we not only have to challenge traditional wisdom and practices in education; we also need to understand local settings. We are thus making a concerted effort to encourage both our own researchers and teachers to conduct contextually-relevant research. Our hope is that such research will produce new knowledge and sound recommendations that are tailor-made for our circumstances.
Facilitated by funding from MOE, researchers from NIE’s Centre for Research in Pedagogy and Practice and the Learning Sciences have been striving to better translate theory into practice since 2003. The Ministry acknowledges the research capabilities of NIE’s well-qualified local and international faculty. More funds were dispersed in 2008 for the NIE faculty to undertake another five years of strategic and innovative education research, with the objective of producing tangible findings and interventions which would improve classroom learning and organisational practices. I am pleased to note that some of these projects involve our teachers as co-researchers. We would like to encourage such continual collaboration between academics and teacher-researchers in brainstorming alternative solutions to solving complex challenges in the field of education. I am excited and certainly look forward to being informed of research outcomes, which could lead to a better appreciation of the challenges and questions faced by our teachers and students.
The NIE faculty enjoys a close partnership with teachers and students. As an illustration, four primary schools, which are collaborating with the Learning Sciences Laboratory and the Centre for Research in Pedagogy and Practice this year, will participate in an exhibition to showcase innovative ways of teaching and learning with technology. Mayflower Primary School will present the Group Scribble project that has been successfully used to help students rapidly generate ideas for effective communication and collaboration with their peers in the classroom. Nan Chiau Primary School will exhibit the school’s initiative in seamless mobile learning that bridges formal and informal learning beyond school boundaries while Fuchun Primary School will showcase how its innovative programme of equipping their students with home skills has benefited both students and the school. Lastly, MacPherson Primary School will be sharing how their teachers have incorporated pedagogical improvements in language learning.
Primary Education Review
On the school front, the Primary Education Review and Implementation (PERI) Committee recently conducted a comprehensive review of primary education. The review has shown that balancing the teaching of knowledge and the development of skills and values is key to preparing our children for a more dynamic future. Hence, ongoing reform in our schools is focused on developing new educational environments that will not only equip our children with foundational knowledge but also develop in them skills and values that will prepare them to survive and thrive in a globalising world.
For instance, the committee proposed a Programme for Active Learning (PAL) that creates greater opportunities for children to step out of the classroom and participate in sports, outdoor education as well as performing and visual arts activities like speech and drama, within school hours. The government accepted the recommendation which is in line with the focus on developing new educational environments, Another key recommendation of the review is the strengthening of pre- and in-service training for all teachers to ensure that they have not only basic teaching skills, but also a good grasp of curriculum content as well as a sound mastery of a variety of pedagogies and assessment practices. I hope that these examples will inspire participants of the Conference to come up with creative ideas to enhance pedagogies and educational practice so as to engage our students.
Communities of Practice
As we look to the future, revise our strategies and reinvent ourselves, we should never lose sight of this unchanging core in education, to nurture students with the values and strength of character to face the future with confidence. So beyond collaboration with NIE academics, we are also encouraging our teachers to become more involved in designing and researching their own teaching and learning contexts and practices, through action research and communities of practice. These communities of practice create opportunities for teachers, who share the passion for inspiring students’ interest in learning, to come together to design a greater variety of authentic and exciting learning contexts. The advantage of such an approach is an in-depth understanding of locally-situated practices and an appreciation of the resilience of existing contexts.
I am pleased to see so many of our teachers attending this conference. I have little doubt that both practitioners and academics would be capitalising on each other’s expertise in the numerous sessions of discourse and sharing. Where feasible, I encourage you to forge collaborations and follow-up activities. These interactions can only serve to enrich the collective knowledge and wisdom of all parties concerned in cross-cultural contexts.
Conclusion Finally, I would like to commend the organisers for recognising the wide array of critical issues in educational change and encouraging dialogue between academics and practitioners. Hectic schedules permitting, I hope our international colleagues find the opportunity to enjoy the sights and hospitality of our nation.
I wish you all a fruitful and stimulating time over the next three days. Thank you.