Culture(s) and Pedagogy: Investigating Singapore as a Microcosm

• In Event: Innovating Learning and Teaching in a Centralized Education System: Potentialities and Problematics

Abstract

In Culture and Pedagogy (2000), Robin Alexander illuminated the dialectic of teaching and learning and macro-societal culture in five countries. Similarly, Chinese scholars have developed a distinctive literature on pedagogy in East Asian societies influenced by Confucian heritage cultures (Watkins & Biggs, 1996; 2001; Rao & Chan, 2009). This research strand on ‘The Chinese Learner’ claims that there are inherent differences between non-Western and Western pedagogical constructs owing to dissimilarities in culture and education systems. Singapore is a Southeast Asian nation which embraces diverse cultures. However, Hogan et al. (2013), reporting on a system-wide study of pedagogical practices in Singapore mainstream schools, claimed that Singapore teachers profess no cultural or tribal loyalty to East Asian or Western traditions in their pedagogies.

Singapore has exhibited consistent top performance in mathematics alongside East Asian societies on international benchmarking assessments such as PISA and TIMSS. This paper seeks to elucidate: (1) the pedagogical orientations of these top-performing societies and whether there is a uniquely Singaporean pedagogy; and (2) the interaction between culture(s) and mathematics pedagogies in Singapore and whether there are culturally relevant pedagogies at play and why (or why not).

This research examines the innovations in mathematics pedagogies in Singapore secondary schools taking two major policy initiatives as a reference point: Teaching Schools, Learning Nation (TSLN) in 1997 and Teach Less, Learn More in 2004. It draws on a quantitative analysis of international assessment data (PISA 2012) and the Singapore CORE Research Programme in order to identify specific patterns in pedagogical practices internationally, within East Asia and within Singapore. The Singapore results are further explained by data from a qualitative study involving focus group discussions with mathematics teachers in six types of schools and interviews with key education policymakers in Singapore. This paper expands the scholarship on the dialectic of cultures and pedagogies research in Asia by building upon the work on the Chinese learner and creating new discourses based on the multicultural context of Singapore.

Author

• Maria Manzon, National Institute of Education - Nanyang Technological University