REALITIES OF CURRICULUM AND TEACHING: REVELATIONS FROM SINGAPORE TEACHERS’

META-REFLECTIONS

MEMBERS:NEZANNAJANNAH

NASHRAHFATIHAHFADHLAH

Introduction

• Retrospective re-search, continual re-examination, and critique of practices in teaching

• Details and complexities of the past with the present and bring forward to the future

• Frameworks and guidelines could guide in reflecting

• Helps professionals to understand why and what they do.

• Gaining insights into experiences to be more focused on and purposeful

• Can be done as an individual or as a group depending on the goals

• Self-reflection illuminates personal practices of an individual’s classroom teaching

• Peer-reflection informs collective and group practices.

• In this paper, we relied on self-reflection

Purposes

• to illuminate problems and issues Singapore teachers face in curriculum work and strategies to manage them

• to challenge and delimit the boundaries of reflections

• to test out the idea that teachers would reflect more critically

Methodology• Roles : insiders of educational research and outsiders to

facilitate the reflection process• Subjects : four Singapore teachers• Using teachers’ initial reflections related to their professional

and create new questions and make comments• The two questions asked were:(1) Describe your experience in science curriculum making and teaching;(2) What are some factors you consider in reflecting on the curriculum and teaching? How are these factors important or significant

PROBLEM IN CURRICULUM

WORK

Jessie

Cathy

Sonia

Gordon

JESSIE

• English, Mathematics, Social Studies and Science teacher

• Problems:– teacher does not understand well the learning outcomes– most of the teachers teach according to the materials in the

textbook– limited access to and opportunity in writing, planning,

designing and revising the school science curriculum– less sharing of reflection among teachers due to small

numbers of teachers– too many subjects for each teacher

Cathy

Teacher's backgroundbiology teacherteach value educationform teachermember of discipline committeesubject coordinator

Reflective

• ongoing• reflect thing generally• prefer to walk in a park and talk about

controversial issue with her friends• she thinks that school shouldnot have

structured reflected session• reason: it gives this very personal and

meaningful activity of very baad reputation

SONIA

• Teacher’s background– the head of science department in school– teach students with privilege family backgrounds – the students are generally high-performing– in charge of the administrative and curriculum

matters in the science department– Her other task is to mentor beginning teachers

who join the school

REFLECTING & REFLECTION

• Reflect upon the general approaches to teaching after the major examinations

• Engage in reflections that centered on pupil’s science learning experience

• She found out that dialoguing stimulated the teachers to question their own beliefs and system

GORDON

• Teacher’s background– Male teacher teaching in an all-girls secondary school.– teach a diverse group of students with very different

family backgrounds and also of diverse intellectual abilities.

– Science and Biology teacher• in charge of the school band and I assist my

colleague in mentoring pre-service interns who are attached to my department.

REFLECTING & REFLECTIONS

• discovered that I had many misunderstanding and misconceptions about my teaching subject biology.

• thought that perhaps my teachers did not really have the time to explain concepts in detail to such a big class and hence the misunderstandings and misconceptions.

• exposed to the method of curriculum planning,• “Understanding by Design” – it got me thinking

about what am I teaching in the classroom

• consider the level of students I am teaching and their abilities

• less judgmental and to be more open to ideas.

ANALYSIS OF TEACHER REFLECTIONS AND META-REFLECTIONS

• View curriculum according to their experiences, beliefs about reflections, teaching and learning, personalities, and the school structure

CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS• The teachers’ repeated resistance, ignorance, or hesitance to address the

critical issues implied that reflections needed to be carefully solicited by some intricate means.

• their experiences about curriculum and their practices within an education system that is dominantly centralized and highly routinized. Schools have a set of fixed science syllabus that is geared towards the national examinations and teachers generally have to “teach to the test”. As such, their experiences with authentic curriculum planning and design are at the best one of interpretation and implementation of a curriculum that is “prescribed”.

• In spite of this seemingly constrained context, these four• teachers differed in their experiences as science teachers, both in terms of

their ideas about the curriculum and• their ideas about reflecting on their professional practices.