The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in Singapore has resulted in the adoption of home-based learning (similar to remote or distance learning' worldwide) due to periodic school closures in Singapore. The media and academia have diverse views on the effectiveness of this alternative mode of education. This study draws data from teachers'…

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly affected the higher education sector in Singapore. Existing tertiary studies seeking to understand the intraperiod response to COVID-19 often focus on single institutions, jurisdictions or stakeholder groups. This study is the first in-depth qualitative multi-stakeholder examination of the higher education…

This study attempts to explore the links between research, policy and practice. Specifically, it investigated how teachers enact a national policy on the implementation of formative assessment practices and explored what affects their capacity and will to carry out educational reform. Using a case study approach, formative assessment-related…

Formative assessment (FA) has been a popular discourse in education, but its potential benefit is fundamentally dependent on teachers' willingness to make changes to their classroom practices. These changes bring about much assessment tension (AT). This paper argues that how well teachers experience and manage AT determines the efficacy of their…

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused great disruption in schooling around the world. This has triggered me to reflect on educational change in Singapore and some related issues the pandemic has raised. Using "Timely Change, Timeless Constants" as an organizing framework, this paper examines the educational changes that are happening in…

The phenomenal spread of Japanese lesson study (LS) beyond Japan is indicative of the perception that the seemingly obvious routines of LS are transferable into foreign contexts. It is, however, to be expected, that various aspects of LS would be adapted to suit the culture of the adopting context. The diverse ways in which LS is adapted across…

This article explores the significance of context within the process of contemporary education reform and policy-making. It draws upon evidence from a comparative study of educational change and transformation in seven education systems: Australia, England, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Russia, and Singapore. The article focuses on school…

The recent focus on AfL has shifted from defining its scope and extent to understanding its implementation, and research has revealed AfL implementation to be complex and contested. AfL implementation is especially challenging in national contexts that emphasise high stakes examination performance and grades. One such example is the nation state…

This paper presents the findings of an exploratory research project that examines what aspiring principals in Singapore think a good principal is, based on a framework of personal, interpersonal, and organizational dimensions of school leadership. According to the findings, a good principal has a moral purpose centered on personal values, a humble…

This paper attempts to discuss how the Singapore Education System is shifting towards student-centred designs and pedagogies, yet retaining a unique Singaporean orientation. It complements the McKinsey report by analysing directives and efforts to understand trade-offs, consequences, and insights for moving forward. The paper uses an ecological…

The Singaporean education system has recently shifted emphasis from being highly centralised and standardised towards one that aims to promote innovation and autonomy at the school level. Yet, the concomitant move towards a more decentralised and flexible curriculum enacted and controlled at the local level has not been straightforward.…

Educational innovations in Singapore have reached fruition. It is now important to consider different innovations and issues that enable innovations to scale and become widespread. This proposition paper outlines two views of scaling and its relation to education systems. We argue that a linear model used in the medical field stresses top-down…

This paper reports the development of a scheme of characterising pedagogical practices in initial teacher education classes. The scheme is intended to provide baseline data on classroom pedagogical practices in Singapore's sole provider of initial teacher education (ITE). This study is original in that the research team has found no reports of…

This article investigates the ways in which newly-established higher education institutions (HEIs) position themselves as "world-class" through constructing themselves as "global". With the escalating "free market" and competitive forces arising from the marketization of education, most universities see a construction…

School accountability is such a familiar concept in many education systems that questions about what it actually means and entails are rather uncommon, especially to busy practitioners on the ground. This paper reports a research that examines each of the questions of what and to whom Singapore schools are accountable, from the point of…