Horn Mun Cheah

Insights and Learning from ICT Integration in Education in Singapore

This chapter aims to uncover the adaptive success factors of ICT integration in Singapore’s education system, to illustrate the trajectory of these factors over time, and to distil the lessons learnt into broad principles that can benefit educators or researchers working in other contexts. It traces the changes of various factors that evolve with the three ICT Masterplans, including the development of human infrastructure, ideas generation, ideas interactions and translation, support structure, and physical infrastructure. Rising above these factors that are context-bound, it derives broader principles that have underpinned the ICT integration effort: working as a complex adaptive system, adopting an ecological perspective, learning from critics and feedback, taking a long-term view for iterative improvement.

ICT Environments in Singapore

To integrate ICT into schools for effective instruction and learning, ICT infrastructure and resources are the fundamental and essential structural issues that need to be established before higher-level goals such as pedagogical innovation can be achieved. This chapter describes the development of ICT environment in Singapore for the country and more specific programmes and initiatives for the school environments. Led by the IDA, Singapore has been propelled to among the top countries in the world with regard to ICT pervasiveness and usage through more than 30 years of continual and coordinated effort. Unique to education, the three successive ICT Masterplans in education from 1997 to 2014 have continually upgraded the schools’ ICT infrastructure that facilitates pedagogical innovations. For example, the student-to-computer ratios have been improving in all schools, from 6.6 students to 1 computer to a flexible environment that includes 1:1 computing. Provision of learning management systems became pervasive in all schools. In terms of resources, the support has evolved from provision of CD-ROMs to development of one-stop Internet portals that consolidate access to all digital resources. Access to the Internet has been upgraded in terms of connection speed and availability of the broadband wireless network. Finally, student’s home computing environments are improving through various schemes.

Impact of ICT Masterplans

This chapter reports the outcomes of the ICT Masterplans in Singapore with regard to their impact on students, teachers, curriculum, and pedagogical practices in classrooms. It draws evidence from various sources of information, including websites from the Singapore’s MOE, UNESCO reports, international comparison studies, and academic publications. In general, the results show that over 18 years and across three ICT in Education Masterplans, Singapore’s education system is making steady progress in creating favourable learning environments and practices that leverage the power of technologies. Few valuable lessons can be drawn from this effort. First, it demonstrates the approaches that bridge the policy–practice divide; second, it shows how evaluation are used as a means not so much to prove the achievements but to improve the systems; third, it has evolved to an evaluation approach that aims at creating information for timely feedback to improve the implementation, as well as information to feedforward for subsequent iterative improvement of the policies.

Research & Development on ICT Integration in Schools

This chapter focuses on R&D programmes and initiatives relating to ICT integration in Singapore schools. Three broad strategies underpin this R&D effort: engaging multiple stakeholders and partners, creating real and wide impact in schools, and achieving synergy between top–down policy and ground–up effort. It is thus a system-wide coordinated effort to engage multiple parties so that findings and products from R&D will ultimately benefit students in schools. This chapter provides details of various research programmes and initiatives, including the Incubator School Scheme that evolved into the LEAD ICT@Schools programme, FS@SG programme, learning sciences research at the NIE, the NRF’s strategic research programme on IDM in education, the eduLab programme, and finally school’s action research.

Integrating ICT into K-12 Education – A Global Perspective

This chapter discusses the integration of ICT into education as a worldwide phenomenon, which is evident from the presence of ICT policies in education in most developed and developing nations. It analyses the key driving forces that shape this development from various perspectives, including political, technological, economic, social, and learning aspects. Critically, ICT has afforded new TL each factor feeds into others and is reciprocally being shaped by others. The resultant outcome is the continuous impact of ICT in education with increasing influence. However, to implement ICT integration in schools successfully, we also need to be cognizant of the critical voices against such move and empirical evidence of potential challenges. Such information is valuable in developing a systemic and systematic approach for ICT integration in schools.

Innovative Technology-Mediated Classroom Practices from Research

This chapter describes innovative technology-mediated practices in Singapore schools that are consequential outcomes of R&D programmes and initiatives detailed in the previous chapter. These case examples illustrate how the research has led to the transformation of classroom practices. As more schools are adopting or adapting these innovative practices, the substantial impact of research on student learning can be achieved. By innovation, we refer to the enactment of new practices with respect to local contexts, and newness at the time it was introduced. The first project introduced in this chapter is microLESSONS, a NIE-funded project to help teachers design ICT-based instructional materials at the beginning of mp1. The second project, called RCKI using GS, was a product and practice resulted from an NRF-funded IDM for education research initiative. The third case example came from a FutureSchool (Nan Chiau Primary School) that experimented with pedagogies supported by mobile technologies to engage primary school students in making connections to what they learn in the classroom with their daily life experiences. The fourth example came from a school-led eduLab project where teachers designed a three-dimensional virtual learning environment for multidisciplinary environmental education. Finally, action research projects led by school teachers are highlighted: one on a Robotics programme to develop student creative and inventive thinking and another on creating a 1:1 computing environment in a school.

The Use of Structured Academic Controversy in a Mobile Environment to Broaden Student Perspectives and Understanding in the Social Sciences

This chapter describes a program designed around the use of handhelds and other mobile devices in a citizenship education program which has been implemented in a school in Singapore, in the Upper Secondary Social Studies syllabus. There is a general assumption that students are equipped with an adequate conceptual understanding of the theme of the macro concept of Conflict, one of the main themes of the syllabus. However, experience shows that this concept remains abstract to 15-year-old students who have limited experience, having been brought up in a relatively safe and secure environment in Singapore. The case studies in the Social Studies syllabus are much more complicated as they are multidimensional, involving clashes of interests, ideas, points of views and emotions. The program aims to afford students learning experiences which provide opportunities for the learning and examination of alternative, and often multiple, perspectives of controversial issues; the students will be given opportunities to discuss and express these perspectives through participation in a structured collaboration activity known as the Structured Academic Controversy (SAC). The pedagogy of the SAC is well known among Singapore teachers in Humanities departments and has been used to provide structure and focus to classroom discussions in various subjects. A primary innovation of this program is that teachers will design SAC activities going beyond face-to-face interactions (as has been the practice in schools, so far). Building upon the work of Lim (Enhancing fieldwork in social studies through remotely conducted structured academic controversies. Teach Learn, 25(2). National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, pp 189–195, 2004, Adolescent collaborative discourse through messaging. In: Aykin N, Preece J (eds), Internationalization, online communities, and social computing: Design and evaluation. 11th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2005), the program investigates how SAC activities can be transposed beyond the confines of the classroom (field-based SAC), as well as augmented through practice using 1:1 handheld devices (mobile-based SAC).

Horizon Scanning and Implications in the Near Future

This chapter analyses the contemporary developments in Singapore that might have an impact on ICT in education, including technological advances, sociotechnical developments, technology and economy, technology and new perspectives of learning, and technology-related national policies. Based on the current landscape, implications for Singapore education were discussed. In essence, educators need to navigate between the physical space and the cyberspace to leverage their complementary strengths. There is a need to develop many IT specialists that the country needs and to enhance the basic IT competencies of all students to meet the challenge of the future economic model. Physical face-to-face interactions are still essential for preserving the mother tongues and ethnic identities and maintaining social cohesion and state legitimacy in Singapore. Nevertheless, teachers can also harness the abundant resources in the cyberspace to help develop students’ agency in knowledge creation, so that they have the competency and recognize their critical roles in co-creating the future.

Interlocking Policies Facilitating ICT Integration in Education

Starting from Chap. 3, we begin to zoom into the focal point of this book, ICT integration in Singapore’s education system. This chapter explains interconnected policies in Singapore that set the stage and facilitate the effort in bringing ICT into classrooms. Following the multi-perspective analysis of the global situation in Chap. 2, we first examine policies that relate economy, R&D, and education from the 1960s to the present. We then trace the national technology policies in Singapore before describing in more details, the three phases of ICT policies in education that were implemented. The mp1, from 1997 to 2002, focused on establishing a baseline human and technology infrastructure. This allowed the mp2, from 2003 to 2008, to put in place structures and mechanisms to encourage innovative practices that pushed the limits in the use of ICT in T&L. The mp3, from 2009 to 2014, aimed to push the boundary, particular in the assessment of 21st-century skills and, most importantly, put in place processes and structures to scale up good practices through the system. We analyse the rationales behind each Masterplan and identify the impact that each has on the education landscape.

Idea Interactions and Translation: Scaling Up and Deepening ICT-Integration Practices

Scaling is an important aspect in spreading good practices throughout the entire education system. From ideas generation to proof-of-concept pilot testing, to teasing out the kernel of good practices, this chapter outlines the key approaches that were adopted in Singapore, which is encapsulated in the ideas to practice framework that was first mentioned in Chap. 3. It is an approach that integrates effort from the ground, industries, and centralized planning. This chapter explicates the support structures and mechanisms that had been put in place for idea generation, translational work, and scaling of innovative practices to ensure that ideas and practices flow in a bidirectional manner between practices in the schools and those developed through R&D efforts. It emphasizes the critical element of developing teachers to be reflective practitioners and recommends moving beyond the transfer of practices to deepening of pedagogical practices.