SCHOOL TEACHERS

SCHOOL TEACHERS

2.

Assoc. Prof. Ong Soh Khim asked the Minister for Education (a) how our teachers' mindsets can be changed to remove the authoritative teacher-dominant style of teaching, as currently many teachers cannot be challenged by pupils and their views remain supreme; and (b) how our teachers can be trained differently to provide a more liberal learning environment in the schools so that they are open and receptive to questions and challenges in class.

Mr Tharman Shanmugaratnam: Good and well-trained teachers are critical success factors in our school system. That is why we continually strive to recruit quality teachers, train them better, support their efforts to nurture a spirit of inquiry amongst their students, and recognise those who demonstrate their ability to teach effectively.

We recruit teachers from diverse backgrounds. They graduate from a range of disciplines. One in six of those recruited in the recent recruitment cycle had at least three years of prior working experience, thus bringing more diverse perspectives and experiences into our schools.

Once teachers are recruited, they are put through pre-service training at NIE which prepares teachers not only for teaching of academic subjects, but also of skills and values. NIE's training programme is constantly being refined in light of new demands of the education service and learning from practice and research.

Serving teachers continue to upgrade and update their pedagogical and subject-based skills and knowledge through formal and informal training. Courses on pupil management, counselling and other soft skills are provided to enable teachers to effectively manage the changing demands of pupil development. Professional sharing also takes place at the Teachers Network, through Learning Circles and other communities of practice. Teachers are also given opportunities to step out of the school environment to broaden their experiences and gain fresh perspectives through work attachment and professional development schemes.

To support our teachers, we have made changes to the school environment that will give them the time and space to innovate and teach creatively. We will be putting more teachers in our schools, making judicious reductions in curriculum content, and providing more flexibility in physical space in schools to allow for more innovative approaches in classroom teaching.

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Our teachers are experimenting with various new teaching approaches, such as peer tutoring and project work, that encourages students to work among themselves to develop skills of independent learning instead of relying excessively on their teachers. By the end of last year, all our primary schools have undergone training to start implementing Project SEED (Strategies for Effective and Engaged Development), which encourages our teachers to establish new teaching strategies appropriate for Primary 1 and 2 students. For example, at Kong Hwa School, the teachers have developed a unit on "canteen food" to teach their Primary 1 students basic mathematical concepts and financial accountability. The teachers also showed the students how to use the Internet to find out more about what constituted a healthy and balanced diet.

While not everyone can move at the same pace in a 27,000-strong teaching force, we are moving ahead in the right direction.

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