In the past few years, Singapore schools are
undergoing changes to
prepare our young for the Knowledge-based economy.
National Institute
of Education (NIE), who is responsible for conducting
educational
research and teacher training in the country,
is faced with the challenges of recommending
changes based on research evidence and making
real impacts in schools. Knowledge Building approach
was introduced to the schools in this context.
Like in any other educational research projects,
one of the challenges is to scale up the approach
for its implementation in more schools. Our experience
shows that one viable method is through the synergistic
effort among researchers in NIE, the Ministry
of Education (MOE), and school teachers. We exploit
the close relationship between NIE and MOE to
conduct research in authentic contexts (school
environment), the results of which then provide
direct feedback to our teacher training curriculum.
We believe our model has the potential to achieve
sustainability and scalability of research-proven
effective practices in schools.