According to some studies, the lack of independence and control in the curriculum among teachers, affects their self-image and therefore their level of job satisfaction (see Smithers, 1990, and Mercer and Evans, 1991). Rice and Schneider (1994), also found that the degree that school administration empowers teachers in areas like pedagogy and contribution to administrative decisions have a significant impact on job satisfaction.

In a recent study of preservice teachers in Singapore, it was found that there almost 50 per cent of them do not perceive a good career prospect in their profession and they also would prefer to move out of teaching if they have an opportunity to do so. This is in a country where the teachers are among the best paid civil servants experiencing regular pay revisions and other incentives. Since most schools in Singapore are government-owned and there are almost 30,000 teachers, the MOE has also been busy trying to create more career progression opportunities for teachers. Still it is well-known that there is a high attrition rate among teachers in Singapore. Not to mention that according to one Straits Times report a while ago, teachers form the largest group of people to visit the local institute of mental health for various ailments.

The salary of Singapore teachers ranked among the best yet there seemed to be great difficulty keeping teachers. How does this compare to international schools in the region where generally the teachers’ salary is even lower than that of Singapore teachers? In addition, in most of these schools, career prospects is perhaps worse than in Singapore because international schools in the region are privately-owned, which usually means that there is not a huge organization in the background behind these schools for good career paths for teachers to look forward to.

Perhaps international schools in Southeast Asian countries like Indonesia and Thailand should seriously look into the findings by Rice and Schneider. International schools in the region should empower teachers even more in terms of pedagogy and decision-making. These seem to give teachers greater job satisfaction because of they would experience a sense  of achievement which can more than offset the negative impact of the lack of career prospects or potential for better pay. More training in the areas of pedagogy, and even in management especially on teaching-related issues, can help teachers to feel even better in the areas that the teachers themselves perceive to be very important to them in terms of job satisfaction.

In the Lord of the Rings, the band accompanying the Ring-bearer led by Gandalf approached the entrance of the home of the dwarfs at Misty Mountains and was barred by the Moria Gate bearing the ancient inscriptions, “Speak, Friend and enter.” Gandalf spent quite a bit of time trying to decipher the password that would magically open the gate. After a long time pondering upon it, he realized that the magical word was “friend”!

Similarly, if a teaching faculty in a school intends to move into the magical realm of integrating ICT in the curriculum, the approach to doing so should be based on that word “friend”. For ICT integration to succeed it must be people-friendly. Although the process of ICT integration seems to be about technology, in reality it is about people, especially the teachers and the students.

It is about people because it is these two groups that I mentioned above are the ones who are going to be most affected by the whole process and they are the ones who will decide on the outcome of the whole process. In an earlier posting, I described teachers as the “gatekeepers to ICT integration” in the classrooms. The success of an ICT integration program is dependent on the willingness of the teachers to introduce them in their classrooms. Therefore it becomes imperative that in any attempt to introduce ICT into the classroom on a regular basis, great thought must be given about:

• teachers’ perceptions or beliefs about the usefulness of ICT in education;
• teachers’ attitudes towards learning and adding another dimension to their already vast teaching repertoire and responsibilities;
• the kind of training and other forms of assistance that they would require to be using ICT successfully and regularly in the classroom; and
• the motivations for the teachers to use ICT in the classroom.

It is only when these considerations are taken into account before and during the implementation of an ICT integration program, that ICT integration can be a more friendly process for all, especially the teachers. This is vital not only as a PR excercise but for the successful implementation and continuity of the program. It is people first, and technology, second. It is only then we can “Speak, Friend and enter.”

The foundational element in effective work systems is self-correcting, self-managing, self accountable, self-governing behavior. Energy spent on monitoring and attempting to affect the behavior of team members or other entities from the outside is energy wasted and energy that could be better expended on improving the business and the capability of people. The critical element is to increasingly create self-governing capability.

-Carol Sanford, “Myths of Organizational Effectiveness at Work”

A modern day school examination

Many schools in Singapore and the rest of the world are caught in the pursuit of high stakes examinations. In such schools, it becomes near impossible, to use the words of Costa and Kallick (2004), to  “embrace and sustain curriculum and instructional strategies designed for individual meaning-making and personal self-directed learning.” Costa and Kallick are of the opinion that if we want prepare our students to be able to resolve “the ambiguous, paradoxical, and dichotomous problems and conflicts they will encounter in our increasingly more complex society”, schools must put to the forefront of their agenda that is teaching for meaning and fostering self-directed learning.

Self-directed learning has become more important because of the increasing complexity of society.  The need for self-directed learning has been given an economic face when business leaders repeatedly warn that the workforce must undergo a radical change as the nature of work has changed to the building of values, attitudes and skills in a world of reduced job security and a more loose work structure, and multiple job changes.  In such instances, the worker would have to rely on his own self-directedness or or self-reliance and initiative to survive and thrive.

Self-directed learning is in fact a natural tendency in man. As Wheatley and Kellner-Rogers (1998) pointed out:

Every living thing acts to develop and preserve itself. Identity is the filter that every organism or system uses to make sense of the world. New information, new relationships, changing environments – all are interpreted through a sense of self. This tendency towards self-creation is so strong that it creates a seeming paradox. An organism will change to maintain its identity.

Allowing students therefore to be self-directed learners is acknowledging this natural tendency to self-manage and self-regulate. The traditional school system where much of the thinking and decision-making with regards to learning is done by the teachers, does not encourage students to take on these responsibilities which should inherently belong to the latter. The students’ minds and capacities to learn becomes dull and their learning becomes externally motivated and “other directed”. Perhaps the only ones we know who are the exception to this rule are the peak performers. They have this trait where they have this strong belief that they are going to succeed. Even then, it can be argued that they do so not because of the traditional school system but it is in spite of the school system.

A painting of a Chinese Imperial examination

The traditional school system pays little attention to whether a student possesses self-directedness or not. The high stakes examinations and assessment that is usually done does not measure this. When high stakes examinations become the agenda of the school, everything else is pushed aside. It is in this light that perhaps it is unfortunate that Singapore’s “successful” educational system is being highlighted and even imitated with little consideration of what is taking place. Many schools in Southeast Asia are adopting the Singapore model for schools. In fact, many of these adopters of the Singapore educational model, may not have realized that the Ministry of Education (MOE) in Singapore, is trying to make the changes to fit the school-going population to the needs of the future workforce that is required by Singapore.

But inertia at the ground level (the schools) and a reluctance to give up the very same high stakes examinations system which has given it its “success” means that Singapore schools are still very much a high-level examinations pressure cooker. Many Singapore school principals who in public declare their agreement to the need for change, at best, pay lip service to this need for change. Teachers in Singapore are still reluctant to give up their hard earned experience in teaching to the examinations. This is partly due to the fact that many Singapore school principals still evaluate teachers’ performance based on the examination performance of the students. Teachers are seen to be hard working when they have extra classes to prepare students for the examinations. The paradigm shift has obviously not taken place at the ground level. But as Singapore’s leaders have realized, the need for change here has become paramount if Singapore is to remain competitive in the global arena. They too have realized the need for more self-directed people in the workforce. They need to prod the schools in Singapore harder to move in this direction. Teacher training should also pay greater attention to this need for change in approach.

Schools, therefore, have to prepare students for self-directedness. Students who are self-directed would have to display self-management, self-monitoring and self-modification (Costa and Kallick, 2004). Clearly these are skills which are currently not emphasised in school yet. They are also skills that emphasise the need for thinking to be at the forefront of a school’s agenda. Schools in Singapore are moving to alternative modes of assessment, but the high stakes examinations remain the primary mode of determining the success of a student, and the school.