“The biggest challenge I see is in time constraint – we need time to build rapport and we also need time to ensure that the students do well.” ~ Daniel Tan, primary school teacher, Singapore quoted in the Straits Times, January 20, 2010.

The above quotation is the response of a teacher in Singapore in response to a lecture by two American psychologists at the National Institute of Education (NIE) in Singapore. The two psychologists, Professors Edward Deci and Richard Ryan from the University of Rochester had delivered a lecture at the NIE on their findings in a 20-year period study on nurturing motivated learners and the effects of testing which had covered covering 15 countries.

No surprise that they recommended that students be given autonomy to decide how and what to learn. They also recommended that teachers spend less time on preparing students for tests. They also recommended that teachers build strong rapport with students. So this is what the research says. I will also add that this is not new.

I find the reaction to the findings by the teacher that I have quoted above interesting. He identified time constraint as “the biggest challenge.” My question is why is there a time constraint? Why is studying tied to time? He said that time is needed “to ensure that the students do well.”

Do well in what? The learning and deep understanding of concepts? Surely not as that should not be limited by a time cap. So where did that time constraint come from. Singaporeans will know he was probably referring to the high stakes examinations that Singapore students need to sit for in the course of their student life in Singapore schools.

What has been said at the lecture is nothing new to the Ministry of Education (MOE) in Singapore. I am certain they know that. But why bother with learning from research (and the MOE has been pushing for research-based teaching) when it is continually ignored in favor of administrative convenience? High stakes examinations are an administrative convenience rather than a tool to assist teaching and learning.

The remark also points to the MOE’s continuing love affair with high stakes examinations despite all the evidence to the contrary about the effects of such an approach in schools. When will “doing well” in school refer to a deep understanding of concepts instead of being well-drilled to examinations like the PSLE, GCE O and A levels?

At the end of the day, the remark suggests that all teachers in Singapore know that all that really matters in Singapore schools are the results of these high stakes assessments. All else for the MOE is just a PR exercise for the gullible, both local and foreign.

In my last post on the education systems of Singapore and Finland, I have highlighted the differences between the two with regards to the area of student ranking and streaming, and high stakes examinations or testing. I have also indicated the difference in the two systems’ approach to assessment with Finland paying more emphasis on formative assessment. In this post, I will look at the difference in teacher quality and their approach to teaching in the classrooms.

In Finland, all teachers are required to have a Masters degree while those in Singapore varies. In Singapore usually for those teaching in the secondary schools and above they are required to have a degree and are usually chosen from the top one-third of the university cohort each year. Even then there are exceptions with some new Mother Tongue teachers having only GCE AO levels. In the lower levels, there are still many with just A levels and a growing number with university degrees. At the preschool levels, in child care centers and kindergartens, a minimum GCE O levels is the norm with certification in early childhood.

In Finland as has been mentioned in an earlier post, teaching is a highly regarded profession which is given as much status as even professionals like lawyers. In Singapore, while parents still in general defer to teachers and expects their school-going children to be respectful towards teachers, teaching does not enjoy the same position as other professionals. It is for this reason the Singapore government’s approach to attracting and retaining teachers has been through a quick succession of pay increases. No doubt the Ministry of Education (MOE) has also introduced different tracks for teacher mobility and career satisfaction within the teaching service but without a doubt it is the relatively high pay that has attracted and retained most of the teachers. In contrast in Finland, the Finnish National Board of Education has consistently sought to make good working conditions as the attraction of the teaching profession.

The difference in teacher quality is also seen in the approaches to teaching that is employed in the two countries. In Singapore because of the heavy emphasis on high stakes testing or examinations, the approach used has generally been a very traditional teacher-centered one where the teacher does most of the talking while the students listen. In other words, it is very much the factory assembly line approach to teaching. This is made necessary as the high stakes examinations has always been the tail that wags the dog. The focus on examinations means that a lot is to be covered for students to do well in the examinations. There is an emphasis on width as opposed to depth. Speed becomes a necessity in the “coverage” of the examinations-centered syllabus. This in turn necessitates for the traditional teacher-centered approach generally carried out in schools as student-centered discovery and exploratory approaches will require time. A recent study on science teachers in Singapore supports this contention (see here). This is despite all official policy claims of the MOE like “Teach Less, Learn More” (TLLM), “Thinking Schools, Learning Nation” (TSLN) and others. As a result, while Singapore teachers are highly professional with regards to fulfilling the goals of schools, which is to do well in the national examinations, they are a lot less skillful at honing the “new” skills that students need to acquire for the 21st century.

In Finland, an exploratory and student-centered approach are the fundamental approaches to teaching done in schools. The absence of high stakes examinations also means that much curriculum time is freed for deep learning rather than spent in examination preparation.What this means is that the usual stress, anxiety and demoralization that occurs in an examination-centric systems do not happen in Finland’s schools.

This approach does not seem to have negatively affected the quality of learning that is done in Finnish schools as Finnish students to do well in international educational surveys. More importantly perhaps is that the Finnish system reduces the human costs in terms of quality of life in schools for the students and teachers.

(End of series)

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Many years ago, when I was still fairly new at teaching, I attended a course on assessment for History. The course was meant to provide teachers with a better understanding of the marking of student’s History essays. This was before the days of the current History syllabus with the incorporation of the thinking skills. It was conducted at the National Institute of Education (NIE).

What I remembered most of the experience was the lecturer telling us that there wasn’t much to discuss as we all should know how the marking should be done and we would already know what is a good essay. He said that by just reading a good essay we should “know”. Of course, I immediately felt that I had wasted my time coming for the session and it turned out to be just that.

Several years later, when I was with the Educational Technology Division (ETD), I was asked to chaperoned some foreign guests from the ASEAN countries to the NIE. The visitors were all officers from educational institutions from the ASEAN countries. We were going to look at NIE‘s use of discussion forums in their teacher training. We were given an overview by one of NIE‘s lecturers and at the Q&A after the overview, a Malaysian guest asked the NIE lecturer how they assessed the students learning on the forum. The lecturer rather flippantly said that they just read the comments and contributions of the students on the forum and have a “feel” for the correct marks. I remember cringing and shifting uneasily in my seat, when the Malaysian who had asked the question, looked at me and whispered, “What he means is that he is just doing impression marking?” I also remember just smiling sheepishly at him. I was at a loss for words as I knew what the Malaysian guest meant.

A few days ago, I was at a meeting between teachers and parents of my son’s class. Just before the actual meeting started, a teacher for Design and Technology, was complaining to a parent about her son’s portfolio work that was due to be submitted for the GCE O levels. The parent accepted that her son was not doing what he should and asked the teacher what was lacking in her son’s work. All the teacher said was that her son was not doing “enough”. The teacher proceeded to say that her son was over-confident and had thought that he was doing a good job. The parent asked again what was lacking and again the teacher only said that he was “over-confident” and that her son had thought that he had done enough when in reality it was far short of acceptable standards. It, perhaps, never crossed his mind that it wasn’t a case of over-confidence at all but rather the student not knowing how to assess his own performance.

As I watched this last incident, the first two incidents came to my mind. I have come to the conclusion that students in Singapore are, in general, not taught how to assess their own learning and performance.In the first two examples, it seems that even the teachers concerned have no clear inkling of how the assessment of learning is to be done. If teachers have no idea of how assessment is to be done, we can safely assumed the students have even less of an idea of how to do it.

The sad thing is that, the last incident showed that it is still happening today. Teachers mark with some hazy idea in their heads about the assessment standards. Because they are hazy about it, they cannot transfer their knowledge to the students. Students will, therefore, always be dependent on the teacher to assess their performance. The students cannot do it on their own. I suspect this haphazard approach to assessment is still prevalent in Singapore schools. I am sure many students, for example, don’t know why their English language essay is considered good or bad. Sure there will be marks and some comments made on the student’s essay paper but rarely is the student given clear criteria for what constitutes a good essay. Writing essays is a hit-and-miss affair. Students who do well, don’t really know why their essay is good. The poor essay writer also does not know why his essay is good. They are all dependent on the teacher.

Now this might seem normal to some of us but at a time when schools are spouting slogans like “independent learners” and “life-long learning”, how do we expect students to display such characteristics when they are not taught to assess their own learning? How are they going to be taught this if teachers themselves are hazy and vague?

In my view, independent learning and life-long learning will not happen as long as this state of affairs continue. It is just as bad for students to be waiting for an “assessment” from the teachers about their learning, as waiting for the teachers to provide them with ready-made notes.

The independent learner needs to be taught how to assess his own learning. He has to be his own “man in the mirror.” He must be able to reflect accurately on his own abilities and decide what he lacks and what he is good at. Without this skill and attitude, independent learning will only remain an illusion.

I’m Starting With The Man In

The Mirror

I’m Asking Him To Change

His Ways

And No Message Could Have

Been Any Clearer

If You Wanna Make The World

A Better Place

(If You Wanna Make The

World A Better Place)

Take A Look At Yourself, And

Then Make A Change

(Take A Look At Yourself, And

Then Make A Change)

- “Man in the mirror” by Michael Jackson