Becoming a Teacher in Singapore

There are plenty of opportunities for professional development for teachers in Singapore. These four teachers from four different priamry schools were on teacher work attachment (TWA) scheme with Teachers Network and went to Cambodia in December 2009 to share with Cambodian teachers and educators interesting ways to teach primary mathematics. The second batch of teachers that went on TWA to Cambodia in June 2010 captured their experience at http://twacambodia2010.blogspot.com/

How does one become a teacher in Singapore? You can finish the A Levels (Grade 12) or graduate with a polytechnic diploma and join a two-year course at the National Institute of Education (NIE) to be certified to become a teacher. You graduate with a Diploma in Education. There are opportunities to obtain a university degree if you do well at the end of the two years (that means you study for another two years for the bachelors degree) or return to school after teaching for a couple of years.

From 2012, Ministry of Education (MOE) will stop taking in non-graduate teachers so this programme will presumably cease to exist. As of 2009 about 50% of teachers in primary schools are not university graduates. In secondary schools, most teachers are university graduates.

If your grade twelve national examination (the A Levels) result is good or you have done extremely well in your polytechnic course, you gain admission into a four-year degree programme where you graduate with a bachelors degree in science or arts with education.

You can also come in for a one-year course (PGDE) if you already have a university degree.

As far as mathematics education courses are concerned, they are the same in all three programmes. It makes sense because everyone, whether you have a university degree or not, will be doing the same job - teach children mathematics.

For secondary school teachers, the diploma option is not available as MOE takes in only university graduates as secondary school teachers. Secondary teachers either read the one-year PGDE programme or the four-year degree programme.

Secondary teachers are trained to teach two subjects, unless you are teaching in junior college (grades eleven and twelve). In that case, you do Teaching of Mathematics (Secondary) and Teaching of Mathematics (JC). There is also Teaching of Lower Secondary Mathematics for those do not not have the prerequisite to teach upper secondary mathematics.

Primary teachers are trained to teach mathematics with one (less common for now)or two (presently more common) other subjects.

Teacher Education in Singapore

The new focus of this blog is to share what we do in teacher training in Singapore. I will focus on the teacher education for primary school (elementary school) teacher who teach in grades one to six upon graduation.

The examples are limited to the courses I teach.

In this introductory entry, I write about some background information that is useful in understanding teacher education in Singapore.

All the 150+ primary schools in Singapore are all public schools. We do not have a private education sector. The variations that are now available in the secondary and junior college levels (grades seven to twelve) are not available in the primary levels.

Formal schooling starts in grade one. Students turn seven sometime during grade one. Pre-school education is varied and a small number of children do not attend kindergartens. Compulsory education is only for grades one to six. However, it is extremely rare for teenagers not to attend school although it is not compulsory to do so.

All our primary school teachers are public school teachers employed by the Ministry of Education before they study to become teachers. This is not common. In most places people study in faculties of educations in various universities in the country and they apply for a teaching job after they graduate with a teaching degree (e.g. bachelor of education). In Singapore, people apply for a teaching job before they study to become a teacher. Once they get the job, they will all study, at present, at one place - National Institute of Education (NIE) which is housed in one of the four universities in the country.

The photo shows one of my classes conducting a lesson for their colleagues. They have designed an activity-based lesson to teach pie charts. I was pleased they attempted to put into practice what they learn in the course on engaging pupils with meaningful activities.

AKM101 Lesson 4

We had four lessons and for the next few weeks we will be having online lessons. Today, we re-examine the issues of teaching mathemeatics versus teaching children. I am glad to hear many views including if the national examination assess good habits of mind and spirit of innovation and enterprise. It is popular rhetoric that all the things outlines in various initiatives are fine and good but the examinations do not value them and hence teachers do not place emphasis on them. That is what this course is about - for the participants to re-examine this beyond the popular rhetoric, to reconsider one's present point of view and points of views of the other participants and to examine the issues more deeply. Thus two questions - one, how to help students reach a certain level of achievement that will allow them to progress towards becoming a productive citizen of the country and the world and, two, as teachers, should we go all out to ensure highest grade possible, even at the expense of teaching the child values and developing his or her confidence to face the world or moulding their personality as a well-adjusted youngsters?

AKM101 Lesson 1

We dealt with recent initiatives in primary mathematics. Today I used two case studies to get students to think how to bring to life words in initiative documents such as the curriculum document. The first case study was a problem that is different yet connect to a pattern that is taught in the curriculum. In the curriculum, children deal with patterns such as ABCDABCDABCD... type patterns where they are expected to be able to find the n th letter in the pattern. In this lesson, we did a very different pattern. Students were asked to propose solution methods and evaluate if the methods are generalizable or not. The second case study was on teaching area through problem solving, using a method that is commen in the textbooks. The students looked at the curriculum document and were asked to think about the rationale for teaching mathematics. Students were asked to make tetrominoes and compare them. Along the way, the basic concept of area and deeper concepts of area emerged. I was excited because the students were giving their views and opinions and asking questions on issues we discussed. I am looking forward to the next lesson. The students were asked to think about what is mathematics teaching all about according to the official documents and according to their own views - what it is and what it should be.

DCM200 Lesson 1

Teaching of Area. I tried to show how teaching through problem solving can be done for students in Primary 3. We did Tetrominoes (Make different shapes using exactly four square tiles.), Quadrilaterals (Make different quadrilaterals using exactly three square tiles and two half-square tiles), Area is Five Problems (Use the geoboard to make quadrilaterals of area 5 square units.). We ended by exploring the Pick's Theorem using the findings of the last problem. I wished I had more time for the students to explore the relationship between area and number of 'dots'.

Las Vegas Lessons

Latest: The slides for the keynote lecture for National Conference for Singapore Math Strategies are already available at www.singaporemathz4kidz.blogspot.com Other slides will be available at math.nie.edu.sg/T3 soon.

Riviera Hotel and Casino will be my classroom for four days. I will be teaching classes at the National Conference on Singapore Math Strategies for Grades K-6 with five other American teacher trainers. Several teachers are also sharing their experiences with the participants. I was told that there are 800+ participants from all but four states in the US with California having more than 100 representatives. There are also about 10 international participants from places as diverse as the Uganda, Mexico and the Philippines.

On Monday, I kicked the conference off with a keynote session with Char Forsten. The session is titled Singapore Math: Where East Meet West. I gave the audience the context in which mathematics is taught in Singapore. In particular, I touched on the emphasis on challenging problems in the PSLE, and the fact that most schools have their own problem-solving programme to supplement textbooks which focus on developing strong basics. I also spoke on high parental expectations and LSP and Foundation Mathematics as safety nets to make sure every student get help so that they do not fall too far behind. Many Singapore teachers conduct remedial programme in one form or another - some schools have structured remedial while others do them as and when the need arises. Finally, I touched on teacher education, before they enter the teaching service and when they are in service. I raised the point that perhaps it is possible for teachers to acquire pedagogical content knowledge and content knowledge by working through the student textbook.

Over the four days, I taught classes on a variety of topics ranging from word problems to visualization to lesson study and more. The participants were enthusiatic and appreciative despite the relatively large class size. On the first day, all the three classes I taught (visualization, questioning technique and challenging word problems) had about 200 people.

I will write about these classes. I will upload the slides for the keynote lecture as well as for the different classes at mathz4kidz.com and at math.nie.edu.sg/T3.

Other than this blog where I talk about the lessons I teach, you may go to http://www.singaporemathz4kidz.blogspot.com/ for general discussion on Singapore Math. There is a video gallery here. http://www.askyeapbanhar.com/ is where I post responses to questions I receive through e-mails. If you are interested in lesson study, go to http://www.singaporelessonstudy.blogspot.com/

Some Lesson Ideas for AYG2009

There is a sample lesson plan on incorporating scoring in diving mathematics lessons. See http://www.adrianbruce.com/maths/diving/diving_math_lesson.htm I think scoring in diving is especially useful for Primary 4 topic on operations involving decimals and Primary 5 topic on average.