This Forum article addresses some of the issues raised in the article by Ying-Syuan Huang and Anila Asghar's paper entitled: "Science education reform in Confucian learning cultures: teachers' perspectives on policy and practice in Taiwan." An attempt is made to highlight the need for a more nuanced approach in considering the Confucian…

This paper discusses how the elite schools in Singapore have been recontextualising their pedagogical programmes, as the public education system adjusts to the developmental state's balancing act to continue with nation building while remaking Singapore into a global city. The elite schools have been updating their pedagogical programmes to…

This article focuses on the learning affordances of different language and communication curricula in the world. For reasons of space, only two national education systems (Finland and Singapore) and their language and communication curricula are referred to. The accounts of national education systems consist of the identification of mechanisms…

Muslims live in a "modern" world where subjects such as the English language, mathematics, sciences, and information and communication technology (ICT) are highly valued and enthusiastically transmitted in schools. How some Islamic schools attempt to equip their students with "modern knowledge" while remaining faithful to their…

This enlightening handbook offers current, international perspectives on the conditions in communities, contemporary practices in schooling, relevant research on teaching and learning, and implications for the future of education. It contains diverse conceptual frameworks for analyzing existing issues in education, including but not limited to…

As a school subject, physical education (PE) in Singapore took on its own shape with the introduction of a conceptual games teaching approach in response to the national government's "Thinking Schools, Learning Nation" policy of the late 1990s. With the recent media attention on hosting two main international events (Asian Youth Games…

In the face of the challenges of globalization, nation states try to reinvigorate their traditional or national values and local identities as a kind of counterbalance to globalizing influences. Hence, social and citizenship education across nations in Asia takes different forms with certain distinctive varieties in terms of policies, practices…

This paper traces the evolution of the design framework for the use of technology in a teacher education program in a Singaporean university. This course focuses on developing student teachers' capacity for the use of ICT in teaching and learning. We report our two-level reflection: one that focuses on the trajectory of the course design, and one…

Takes stock of the variety of uses of "drama" in Singapore. Looks at the environment in which drama is operating to trace the growth and development of drama in Singapore schools. Concludes that much has happened in the area of educational drama over the past 10 years, both in and out of schools, from assembly plays, student drama…

This paper addresses the ecology of communicative language teaching (CLT) by reflecting on the Singapore experience. It reviews how CLT was conceptualized, advocated and implemented in stages/phases as reflected in the different syllabuses by the Ministry of Education, Singapore. In anchoring the discussion against a historical backdrop and…