A School-Based Professional Development Approach in Singapore

• In Event: Whole Child/Youth Development as an Imperative: Education Reform Challenges in Asia and the United States

Abstract

Objective
This paper unpacks a school-based professional development (PD) approach across three aspects, intended conditions, enacted process, and achieved teacher and student outcomes.

Perspectives
The Ministry of Education, Singapore recognises the importance of professional development (PD) by introducing the Teacher Growth Model (TGM). Aligned with TGM, Stanley School, adopts a school-based PD cycle on differentiated instruction (DI). Stanley School is a specialised school that develops students’ particular talents. DI is important to cater to diverse student profiles.
A school-based PD approach considers teachers’ needs for school improvement so PD efforts can be more aligned and coordinated. Research is needed to ascertain enabling and inhibiting school conditions, how conditions shape enactment, and outcomes. Limited studies unpack how a school-based PD model regulates teachers’ enactment and decisions. This study investigates teachers’ enactment to uncover challenges. PD programmes fail due to limited understandings of teacher and student change. This study investigates PD efforts’ teacher and student outcomes.
Methods and data sources
Mixed methods were adopted. Qualitative data included focus group discussions, interviews, and lesson observations. Thematic analyses elicited school’s PD conditions and how teachers perceived them. Themes describe teachers’ capacities of translating PD to enactment. Quantitative data was collected using Teacher Readiness Rating scale to elicit shift in teachers’ DI readiness. Students’ quantitative data were collected using Watson-Glaser critical thinking appraisal and Wallach-Kogan creative thinking test to examine shift of student learning, particularly critical and creative thinking.

Results and conclusions
School-level findings show gaps between school’s and teachers’ understandings of intended PD conditions. Themes illustrate misalignments and mitigates between designed PD conditions and teachers’ understandings and needs. Findings highlight
• confusions between leadership roles of the steering committee and instructional leaders in the PD process;
• opportunities for school leadership to emphasize cohesion between department, school and beyond school levels; and
• PD model takes an administrative rather than instructional change stance.
Teacher-level findings show gaps in PD approach and classroom enactment. These themes emerged:
• Attempt to share and explore unfamiliar pedagogies without professional learning led to misconceptions and confusion;
• Lack of support and affirmation to teachers’ work did not entice teacher change;
• Design and implementation of school-based PD did not situate teachers in the learning mode and hence little teacher learning occurred; teachers were unable to reframe and modify practice. Teachers were entrenched in the ‘doing’ rather than the ‘knowing’.
Shift of teachers’ readiness for DI and student learning showed that appetite for change among teachers declined in Time 2 compared to Time 1. Students’ capacity for critical thinking increased in Time 2 as compared to Time 1. So did fluency score in creative thinking. Flexibility and uniqueness scores remained unchanged.

Scientific Significance
Findings show the complexity of implementing a school-based PD programme and how PD shapes outcomes. Stakeholders have varying views of PD structures and processes. Productive PD involves collaboration and communication across stakeholders to interpret and align PD intentions, structures and processes. While school-based PD are more contextualised, it is important to consider institutional and personal needs to create a nurturing PD environment.

Authors

• Shu-Shing Lee, National Institute of Education - Nanyang Technological University

• Liang See Tan, National Institute of Education - Nanyang Technological University