Joan M. Fry

The Games Concept Approach (GCA) as a Mandated Practice: Views of Singaporean Teachers.

This paper reports on the views of Singaporean teachers of a mandated curriculum innovation aimed at changing the nature of games pedagogy within the physical education curriculum framework in Singapore. Since its first appearance over 20 years ago, Teaching Games for Understanding (TGfU), as an approach to games pedagogy has gathered support around the world. Through a process of evolution TGfU now has many guises and one of the latest of these is the Games Concept Approach (GCA), a name that is given to this pedagogical approach in Singapore. As part of a major national curricular reform project, the GCA was identified as the preferred method of games teaching and, as a result, was mandated as required professional practice within physical education teaching. To prepare teachers for the implementation phase, a training programme was developed by the National Institute of Education in conjunction with the Ministry of Education and well-known experts in the field from the USA. For this part of the study, 22 teachers from across Singapore were interviewed. The data were used to create three fictional narratives, a process described by Sparkes and used more recently by Ryan (2005) in the field of literac. The stories were framed using Foucaults notion of governmentality and Bernsteins notion of regulative discourse. The narratives reveal tales of confusion, frustration but also of hope and enthusiasm.

Peer coaching with interactive wireless technology between student teachers: Satisfaction with role and communication

In technology-savvy Singapore, wireless communication devices were used over four weekly lessons to facilitate communication between pairs of student teachers (STs). In the naturalistic setting of a neighbourhood primary school, one ST used the technology to coach the other who was engaged in teaching. (Both were familiar with the lesson plan and in a later lesson the roles were reversed.) The coachs comments (tape recorded) to the teacher were guided by lecturer-designed focus sheets. Following each lesson, all teaching STs (n = 21) completed a short Likert-scale inventory on satisfaction with the role of teacher, influence of communication on satisfaction with role, characteristics of the communication as well as satisfaction with the device. Coding of tape transcriptions after Kahan (2002) showed that the communication was shaped by the focus of the observation sheets. Means of the tabulated frequencies on each survey item indicated that the participants were overall very satisfied with the process of being coached. Satisfaction in role increased across time. However, the influence of communication on role decreased across time. Satisfaction with communication (amount) peaked in Week 2, but satisfaction in content of communication increased across time. Although reporting that the devices were clumsy and at times impeded their teaching, generally the students were satisfied with the technology.

In the Nation's Good: Physical Education and School Sport in Singapore.

Since independence in 1965, education and sport have been instrumental in Singapore’s nation building, with a rapid rise in education and economic status. This article examines the roles of physical education and school sport in the local context and makes comparison with global themes (instrumentality and marginality). It is argued that current roles in fitness development and social unification were established in early survival- and development-driven national policies. Syllabus revisions (1999, 2005) have mandated and reinforced a philosophical shift from technocratic efficiency to ability-driven learning process. Although the pedagogical practice of physical education has arguably been reoriented, its status in education remains low. A recent inquiry into primary school education recommended increasing core and co-curricular time for activity programmes, especially school-based sports talent development programmes, which are generally outsourced. Thus, the analysis presented in this article suggests that while school sport has gained a significant national and political profile in Singapore, physical education has not. Current improvements in physical education infrastructure are yet to impact on the quality of physical education pedagogy.