East Meets West: Learner Centered Pedagogy Indigenized in Singapore

• In Event: Pedagogy, power, and spread of educational reforms

Proposal

The trend in educational (policy) borrowing has seen increasing borrowing of educational ideas and approaches across international borders, such as learner-centered pedagogy (McEneaney & Meyer, 2000) and differentiated instruction (Heng, 2023). The borrowing process is typically summarized into four stages (Phillips & Ochs, 2003): stage one – cross-national attraction, stage two – decision, stage three – implementation, stage four – internalization/ indigenisation. Internalization, or indigenization of policies (Stage Four) occurs when the policy becomes part of the borrower country’s education system, with the objectives of the borrowing and implementation analyzed and evaluated vis-à-vis the borrowing context. While Phillips and Ochs’ (2003) model is helpful in providing an overview of education borrowing, scholars have critiqued that educational borrowing studies tend to focus on the macro-level (i.e., Stages 1 – 2) omitting the realities of those on the ground (i.e., Stages 3 – 4) (Mukhopadhyay & Sriprakash, 2011). Further, we argue that Stage Four of the framework tends to center more on the evaluative (how internalization compares against the original idea) and the negative (challenges faced). Instead, we propose an asset-based perspective that recognizes the uniqueness, affordances, and strengths of both contexts and leverage the concept of hybridity in fulfilling this perspective.

Hybridity, or the cross-pollination of different logics and practices, has been used as a lens to analyze how countries synthesize educational policies and reforms (Bordoli, 2021; Clément, 2021; Deng & Zhengmei, 2021; Maroy, 2009; Tan, 2020). To illustrate, Western conceptions of social justice education with Chinese inflections foreground social justice “between schools rather than between students” (Tan, 2020, p. 1391) and early childhood teachers in Singapore adopted a “fusion of constructivism and instructivism” (Yin et al., 2020, p. 595). Given the scant literature examining stakeholders’ lived experiences of educational borrowing and how educational ideas are indigenized (or hyrbridized) at the micro-(ground) level, this qualitative study hopes to use the case of how Singapore teachers hybridize differentiated instruction (Tomlinson, 2014)—a learner-centered pedagogical approach borrowed from the U.S.—to expand research findings around Stages 3 and 4 of Phillips and Ochs’ (2003) model.

Methodology
This study is guided by a constructivist paradigm (Schwandt, 1994) to foreground teachers’ realities and voices. Ethnographic tools like semi-structured interviews, lesson observations and artefact collection enabled the reconstruction of participants’ experiences and perspectives (Davies, 2008; Hatch, 2023). Participants completed an online background questionnaire, three interviews (Int), three lesson observations (LO) and a unit discussion (UD). In total, there were 33 lesson observation cycles and 33 interviews. We conducted “inductive analysis” (Hatch, 2002, p. 161) to create emergent—not prefigured—codes (Crabtree & Miller, 1999). Eleven participants from six primary public schools were recruited by criterion sampling for teaching subjects, teaching experience, DI training, and gender. Teachers were recruited across six sites to increase response variability (Seidman, 2006).

Preliminary Findings
Teachers' approaches to implementing differentiated instruction (DI) seemed to be based on a philosophy of pragmatism, balance, collectivity, and fairness, reflecting teacher-directed learner-centredness. They focused on practical principles and strategies, incorporating multi-functional practices or methods—that benefit both themselves and their students while balancing various educational outcomes. For example, they were deliberate in how they arranged seating and grouped students, accounting for aspects such as readiness, temperament, gender, and ethnicity to simultaneously meet academic (like supporting the learning of both struggling and advanced students and managing large class sizes through peer teaching) and non-academic objectives (such as promoting inclusion through gender and ethnic diversity). Given the structural constraints of large class size and reduced planning time, teachers chose strategies they deemed as aligned to DI’s philosophy but which suited them.

Teachers frequently alluded to balance. They discussed their efforts to align learning goals with students’ varying needs—such as readiness, interests, and preferences—while still keeping curriculum outcomes in mind. They also navigated between whole-class and small-group instruction while working on individual remediation. Additionally, they blended traditional and modern teaching methods; for example, offering worksheets both physically and online to provide a balance between the convenience of physical materials and the accessibility of online resources.

Teachers recognized the role of education in socializing students to appreciate the collective. They saw DI as excessively individualized. Instead, they emphasized non-academic outcomes—such as turn-taking, respect for others, and peer support—by educating students about inclusivity and awareness of the larger community. Their instructional decisions and actions demonstrated a commitment to fairness by supporting weaker students without limiting stronger ones, reflecting Singapore’s social policies of “not to cap the top, but to lift the bottom” (Wong, 2019, para 21). To help all students achieve the Ministry of Education's standardized learning goals, teachers implemented scaffolding and various learning modalities to assist less-prepared students, while also providing extensions to advanced students who are responsible for peer teaching, further reflecting the philosophy of collective responsibility.

The concept of learner-centeredness—a cornerstone of DI—appeared to be recontextualized as teacher-directed learner-centeredness. Teachers made curricular and instructional decisions that prioritized the achievement of "learning" objectives over the "learner." They considered learner variance and needs when it could help achieve the learning goals. As a result, curricular choices tended to be teacher-directed, with attempts to support learner-centeredness and self-directedness to fit within curricular constraints. For instance, during a science lesson on the life cycle of animals, rather than allowing free choice, students could only select animals to study from a mandated list set by the syllabus.

Significance
Teachers in this study constructed a hybrid vision of teaching and learning that marries eastern and western approaches, bridging what may originally be perceived as divided worlds (Deng & Zhengmei, 2021; Tan, 2020). This study unveils teachers’ agency and creativity in navigating borrowed educational approaches and offers practical and more sustainable ideas that reflect indigenization of DI to the Singapore context. Rather than evaluate educational ideas against those from the borrowed country, it may thus be more productive to study how to adapt it to the destination context’s needs vis-à-vis the agents who grapple with the educational ideas on the ground to achieve greater success and sustainability.

Authors

• Lynn Song, Nanyang Technological University-National Institute of Education

• Tang T Heng, Nanyang Technological University-National Institute of Education