This book provides readers with insights into how Singapore school leaders are actively engaged in the transformation of the Singapore education system. It brings to attention crucial elucidations of the increasing demand and complexity placed on school leaders through the use of case studies. Each chapter in the book focuses on a particular issue which has become important or has gained renewed importance in the Singapore education system. The chapters first provide a background to the theme under examination and a theoretical basis for discussion. They then narrate the case that shows how school leaders interpret and implement policy initiatives in their respective schools or lead change in that area. The case studies span over a wide range of domains such as instructional leadership, assessment leadership, stakeholder engagement, professional learning communities, and school branding. The data collected from these case studies came primarily from interviews of educators in their respective school contexts, in addition to other sources of data such as artifacts. Each case study highlights descriptions, interpretations, and perspectives across school contexts, which is consistent with the proposition that school leadership is very much shaped by context. At the end of each chapter, there are guiding questions to help readers critically analyse and reflect on the main learning points of the case.

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.

The book shares stories of the role of school leadership in Singapore, with case studies from selected schools, that provides some insights on how Singapore delivers a high-quality education that had led to it achieving high rankings in TIMMS and PISA. This book will provide both the historical and present contexts of changes in the education system, school leadership and teacher leadership in Singapore that made it what it is today. It will distil some universal principles of educational change that school leaders and policy makers can apply in bringing about educational changes that will enhance the learning experiences of students and prepare them for future challenges.

This book offers an ecological perspective to understand the opportunities and complexities of spreading and sustaining educational innovations. It explores the imperatives underpinning educational reforms and identifies the role of schools in developing, disseminating, and sustaining changes in Singapore’s educational context. It also includes international case studies that examine the dialectical relationships between structure, people and culture and demonstrate that cultivating ecologies involves leveraging affordances and resources across the education system to create new contexts, synergies and capacities. Further, it argues that educational innovations and reforms also need to consider tacit knowledge and conditions of transfer, which may be ambiguous and challenging. Few books address the nuances and interactions of innovation and change across levels of the education ecology – from the micro (classroom), meso (organisation / school), exo (partners), macro (policy) and chrono (time scales) levels. The ecological perspective adopted in this book explores the dynamic tensions in order to understand the interplays of policy and school-level influences that contextualize school innovations. By presenting multiple voices and views, it allows impediments and affordances of innovation diffusion to be discussed holistically, which is an integral caveat for nurturing a sustainable ecology that enables innovations.

This book investigates the localised effects of reform by exploring the impact of a school improvement policy agenda on the work of three experienced principals. It presents three longitudinal case studies within a shared specific leadership context in Queensland, Australia. The case studies enable an exploration of the way the principalship in this context has evolved over time, providing deep insights into the practices and beliefs of three experienced school leaders working in a period of rapid and urgent systemic reform. The nature of global reform policy borrowing means that the research and the findings within this monograph are relevant for international audiences. The book describes a new way to understand and theorise the effects of reform policies and associated pressures on school leaders. Using post-structural theory, it provides a better understanding of the specific effects of reform policy ensembles, particularly when combined with an analysis of the ways policy and discourse work together at a wider level to create an environment that disciplines the principalship. Further, it sheds lights on the means of complying with or contesting policy influences and how the work of leaders has changed over time.

This book is a review of more than twenty years of international research on teacher educators. It offers a solid overview of what is known about the professional roles, professional behaviour and professional development of teacher educators. A systematic analysis of the focus, methods and data sources of 137 key publications on teacher educators make this book into an important reference work for everyone interested in the work of and research on teacher educators. There is a growing consensus that teacher educators largely determine the quality of teachers and hence, the quality of education. Through this book, Lunenberg, Dengerink and Korthagen provide not only insights into the various roles of teacher educators and the complexity of their work, but they also discuss building blocks for ongoing structured and in-depth professional development. The authors clarify that if we wish to take ‘being a teacher educator’ seriously, it is imperative that we build our understanding on research data. The book shows that although the number of studies on teacher educators is growing, the research in this field is still scattered. The authors highlight the need to create a coherent research programme on teacher educators and provide concrete suggestions for such a programme.

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.