Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine the reform initiatives that began with a focus towards change in the teaching and learning in Singapore classrooms with technology integration. Design/methodology/approach: The methodology used in this study is review and descriptive narrative of educational technology polices, initiatives and…

This paper explores and analyses adult educators' professional development (PD) in Singapore at three levels: national, organisational (training providers) and individual and examines the gap between skills supply and demand of adult educators. Requirements for adult educators' competencies established by the government initiative…

This paper suggests an explicatory model for language policy reform (or lack thereof) at the level of the state. This is accomplished by assessing the value of the 'punctuated equilibrium' model of public policy analysis (Howlett and Migone, Policy and Society 30(1):53-62, 2011), which I argue can be strengthened by a genealogical approach…

The selection of standards and norms constitutes the first and most important step for language standardisation. In this paper, we examine the standard establishment for Huayu (or Singapore Mandarin), a new Chinese variety that has emerged in Singapore as a result of centralised planning and inter-linguistic contact. Huayu is the officially…

Increasing societal and linguistic diversity poses significant challenges to formative categories of language policies. We make this point via an examination of Singapore's management of its most linguistically diverse ethnic group, the Indians. While heterogeneity has always been Singapore's defining feature, the nature and scale of recent…

Singlish -- "the name given to the colloquial variety of English spoken in Singapore" [Wee, Lionel. 2014. "Linguistic Chutzpah and the Speak Good Singlish Movement." "World Englishes" 33 (1): 85-99], incorporating Chinese dialect (particularly Hokkien) and Malay lexical and grammatical elements -- has for some time…

This article reflects on the landscape of ICT-mediated learning research in Singapore schools over the past 12 years. This ICT (information and communications technology) journey is situated in the context of the Singapore education Masterplans and the inception of substantive research funding in this area of work since 2003. The article questions…

In 2002 a high-level economic review committee recommended that Singapore position itself as a "global schoolhouse". An ambitious target was set to attract 150,000 international students to Singapore by 2015 and to lift the education sector's contribution to GDP from 1.9% to 5% in the same timeframe. The global schoolhouse was viewed as…

The Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) launched the volunteer-led Asia-Pacific Alumni Relations Survey in 2014 to provide a resource for alumni relations professionals to benchmark performance internally and against fellow institutions of higher education. That was the first survey CASE has done on alumni relations programmes…

This article investigates the ways in which newly-established higher education institutions (HEIs) position themselves as "world-class" through constructing themselves as "global". With the escalating "free market" and competitive forces arising from the marketization of education, most universities see a construction…

Between 1960 and 2010, Singapore's real gross domestic product (GDP) per capita skyrocketed from $4,383 to $55,862, while Jamaica's barely increased from $6,417 to $8,539. It is plausible that differing rates of GDP growth are associated with differences in the development of education systems but causally the linkage is not well understood. Using…

Hargreaves and Shirley's "The Fourth Way" offers a valuable framework for considering the challenges and dilemmas that confront education change practitioners. In this article, I consider how well their framework fits the evolution and more recent changes in Singapore education. History, context culture and aspirations are seen as…

In 1966, the Singapore Government implemented the English-knowing bilingual policy which made it mandatory for all Chinese students to study English as a "First Language" and the Chinese language (CL) as a "Mother Tongue Language" in Singapore schools. Using key literature relevant to Singapore's bilingual educational policy…

Middle leaders are "recognised as a significant source in ensuring that quality education reaches out to pupils" (Low and Lim "1997", p. 77) for they are "the human link between national education policy as manifested in school-level strategic planning...and the teaching staff whose "field tactics" are used to…

This paper discusses Singapore's bilingual policy and looks at how the government's top-down and structured language policy has transformed the country into an English-knowing society. Education and language-in-education planning in Singapore are linked closely to the country's economic development and nation-building process. This pair of…