Yeow-Tong Chia - Teacher Preparation in Singapore: A Concise Critical History

Series Editors:

Teresa O'Doherty, Marino Institute of Education, Dublin, Ireland

Judith Harford, University College Dublin, Ireland

Thomas O'Donoghue, University of Western Australia, Australia

Teacher preparation is currently one of the most pressing and topical issue in the field of education research. It deals with questions such as how teachers are prepared, what the content of their programmes of preparation is, how their effectiveness is assessed, and what the role of the good teacher is in society. These questions are at the forefront of policy agendas around the world.

This series presents robust, critical research studies in the broad field of teacher preparation historically, with attention also being given to current policy and future directions. Most books in the series will focus on an individual country, providing a comprehensive overview of the history of teacher preparation in that country while also making connections between the past and present and informing discussions on possible future directions.

BY

YEOW-TONG CHIA

University of Sydney, Australia

ALISTAIR CHEW

Findings Education, Singapore

And

JASON TAN

National Institute of Education, Singapore

United Kingdom North America Japan India Malaysia China

Emerald Publishing Limited

Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK

First edition 2022

Copyright 2022 Yeow-Tong Chia, Alistair Chew and Jason Tan. Published under exclusive licence by Emerald Publishing Limited.

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-78769-402-6 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-78769-401-9 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-78769-403-3 (Epub)

Contents

Acknowledgements

This book is both an academic as well as personal journey for all three authors, as we did our pre-service teacher training at the Institute of Education (Jason Tan) and its successor institution, the National Institute of Education (Yeow-Tong Chia and Alistair Chew), in the tree-shaded colonial architecture of the Bukit Timah Campus.

We would like to thank Professor Tom O'Donoghue for inviting us to contribute this monograph to the Emerald Studies in Teacher Preparation in National and Global Context. Without his support, advice and encouragement, this book might never have seen the light of day. The staff at Emerald have been so patient in our many requests for extensions, and we would especially like to thank Kimberley Chadwick. Additionally, Yeow-Tong would like to thank Professor Tim Allender, his colleague at the University of Sydney, for his encouragement, advice and support.

We hope that our book contributes in some small part to the historiography of education in Singapore, as well as adding to the literature on Asian histories of education written in English. In the broad sweep of historical events, smaller stories are often lost. Fortunately, enough of them may remain that they might be reconstructed and retold.

Singapore is regarded as an education powerhouse, as seen in its impressive performance in various international rankings, such as those provided by the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's (OECD) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). One of the key determinants of this performance, as frequently highlighted by the academic literature, is teacher quality (Deng & Gopinathan, 2016).

While the academic literature is replete with accounts of contemporary teacher education in Singapore, there have been in this century only a few books or articles concerning the history of teacher preparation in Singapore, or monographs on Singapore's educational history (Blackburn, 2017; Chia, 2015; Gopinathan, 2015; Kho, 2013; Wong, 2002). One of the most comprehensive books to date on Singapore's educational history is Harold Wilson's Social Engineering in Singapore: Educational Policies and Social Change, 18191972 (1978), but teacher education received very little emphasis in the book. Likewise, T. R. Doraisamy's edited book, 150 years of education in Singapore (1969), spent much more time on education policy and reforms, and curriculum content, than on the history of teacher education.

There have been studies on Singapore's teacher education (for example, Sim & Ho, 1990; Goh & Lee, 2008), including two recent books (Goodwin, Low, & Darling-Hammond, 2017; Tan, Liu, & Low, 2017). However, these works tend to be uncritical and celebratory, and have very little historical overview. The most recent book on the history of Singapore's teacher education is the edited volume commemorating the 60th anniversary of the establishment of local teacher education in Singapore, Transforming Teaching, Inspiring Learning: 60 Years of Teacher Education in Singapore