Teacher Education & Multi-Disciplinary Learning And Innovation

With an increase in Singapore’s life expectancy, more people are likely to choose to remain employed beyond the national official retirement age of 62, and the recontract age of 65. Lifelong learning relating to the relearning of new knowledge and skills upgrading play a key role in adult education. This same phenomenon applies to the school context. Teachers are expected to be self-directed in professional development throughout their career as they are pivotal in developing and innovating pedagogies to equip students with 21st century competencies. Hence, teachers’ continual engagement in professional learning in the context of lifelong learning thus becomes significantly important. Although the idea of lifelong learning seems ideal, teachers’ motivations for their own professional learning may not take place as well as desired by policymakers. A systematic review of literature is conducted to identify, appraise and synthesize empirical evidence related to the current study. Based on the literature, we proposed a model of teachers’ motivation in formal professional learning.   This model will provide useful insight for future studies to explore the motivations in teacher learning as a fundament for continual professional development of teachers. Hence, the study intends to examine the motivations for learning among teachers in the mid and late career phase participating in formal professional learning. The purpose is to ascertain the motivations of teachers particularly those in the mid to late career who are pursuing formal professional development courses with certification at NIE inclusive of those in postgraduate programmes (Masters and Doctoral degree). The motives for these experienced teachers pursuing formal learning are likely to be multidimensional and influenced by both external and internal motivational orientations. The findings of this study will add further to understanding the adult learner’s motivation and barriers to learning. This presentation seeks to (1) elucidate the reasons for supporting continual professional learning for teachers, (3) analyse key literature pertaining to teachers’ career cycle and professional development needs, and (4) briefly describe the implications for research, policy and practice.

Teachers need to be informed about the relationship between motivation and volition, and be taught how to activate the volition of their students if they wish to liberate human potential. Motivation and volition could be likened to our right and left hand, or right and left brain; they could work standalone or work better with each other. Motivation is well known in psychology as goal-setting but not volition. This paper re-introduces volition, or will, or choice, as an important human attribute in human development. It presents the relationship between motivation and volition, and then defines the three facets of volition. The fact that motivations and goals remain as dreams, and may not be manifested in actions would be explained by will psychology of “crossing the rubicon”. Brilliant ideas or thoughts are useless unless they reach the plane of action when they are manifested in deeds, or actions, or behaviours. It is only with healthy or well-developed volition that people can become more action oriented and less helpless. Human beings, especially young students like adolescents, will develop better if they receive human education or psychological education early. Indeed, the success or failure of a human being depends on the deeds s/he has conducted in her/his life time. Every human being has a choice, will or volition. It is how we are taught to use our will that we could subsequently live the life we choose, responsibly and happily.

Despite an established ‘spatial turn’ in the humanities, which has defined much recent complexification of critical thought concerning the social world, little attention has been paid either to the socio-spatial dimensions of literary set texts or to the systematic development of spatial competences at pre-tertiary levels. This paper explores how affective-critical engagement with literary set texts can be a route to spatial competences of knowledge, perception and practice for students aged 14-18 years. It demonstrates how set texts can be creatively used to promote knowledge of person-space relations and the institutional structures governing space, so provoking critical thought concerning issues of human well-being and urban spatial justice. At the same time, innovative (and hopefully enjoyable) readings and pedagogies are designed to ‘scout’ a network of trajectories across specified locales, illustrating the power of approaches grounded in perceptual and practical capabilities to provoke authentic insights in operationalisable forms.
With a particular focus on Singapore as a ‘new Asian City’ confronted with unique practices of aesthetic hegemony and vexed issues of identity and heritage, alongside more common problematics of speed, compression and seriality, this paper adopts a transdisciplinary approach drawing on geography, semiotics and environmental psychology in addition to the critical spatial theories of Henri Lefebvre and Michel de Certeau. A geo-semiotic reading of Singapore demonstrates the importance of developing critical spatial awareness in Singapore students, while a discussion of approaches to the selection and study of ‘local’ texts demonstrates the possibility of achieving this through Literature teaching in age-appropriate ways. Concurrently, contrasting engagement with existing (American) set texts shows that culturally relevant spatial readings can often be developed even without large changes of curriculum and establishes the reach of culturally relevant spatial approaches beyond Singapore.