MED858: MORE ON LEs & APERA PARA-CONFERENCE 2008

MORE ON LEs

Reading about school A in the case studies reminded me that there is no absolute good or bad LE. It is a matter of which type of LE is suitable for the class or the school at that point in time. A class of students of PSLE T-scores 240 to 250 would need a certain type of LE different from a class of students of PSLE T-scores 190 to 200. Similarly, the aesthetically talented in SOTA (School of the Arts), the sporting talents in Singapore Sports School, and the budding scientists in NUS High would need very different LEs from the mainstream schools.

The next principal who took over school A used to work in MOE in the PCCG branch or something to do with the like. He came to my school to give us a talk, in the mid 90s. Till today, I remember what he said, “We cannot change a person (student), but we can change the environment surrounding that person”. So changing the human and/or the physical environment would provide the conditions for a person to change. How true! Physical environment alone would have already shaped human behaviour. If a person enters a lift with full of litter, he or she would not be too worried about throwing a piece of used tissue paper in the lift. But if that person is in a posh hotel lift, clean carpet with nice yellow lighting and air-conditioned, then the behaviour would be altered. No wonder principals spend lots of money and time and effort doing up their schools. The comments from the un-enlightened would be that principals are doing up the school to show off. NIE should give all trainee teachers an introductory module on LEs, if this has not been done yet.


REFLECTIONS ON APERA PARA-CONFERENCE 2008

I very often heard, I may be guilty of it myself, people making remarks that the papers presented at conferences were nothing new. Such teaching approaches or teaching methods were already done in their own schools. My response is that many teachers have taught many different ways. But not many teachers are able to get themselves to do a pre-teaching assessment and a post-teaching assessment and document their teaching based on a sound and practical approach supported by some literature reviews of similar work done. Such work demands the teachers to be reflective in their teaching and to be honest in their self-assessments. Much more time has to be spent on doing the write-up, and preparing for the presentation, if their research studies do get selected at all. Thus I believe schools should give some form of recognition and reward to such teachers, as a form of motivation and encouragement.