Singapore’s education system has come to international attention due to its commendable performance on the Worldwide Educating for the Future Index produced by The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), as well as the students’ continual sterling performance in internationally benchmarked tests such as Trends in International Math and Science Survey (TIMSS), and Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). The accomplishments are the result of a long-haul vision of education, and more importantly, a deep commitment towards developing teachers for the 21st century. Singapore has invested steadfastly from the early years in teachers at the front line of the classrooms in schools. This book explicates the ‘thinking’ behind Singapore’s approach to developing teachers and building the teaching profession. It examines how Singapore strives to attract the best and the brightest people to become teachers, develop them into autonomous professionals, and grow them over their career so that they are able to deliver quality education for every child. The author hopes that by sharing the hindsight, insight and foresight of the system, and looking at Singapore's aspirations and challenges, the book can stimulate reflection and generate discussion, and provide ideas for improving teaching and teacher learning worldwide.

During the last few years, teachers across cultures have faced a lot of unprecedented demands in developing their methods in instruction. Population mobility, unstable labour market and globalisation change society around us rapidly. In addition, education per se is constantly changing, and redefining and modifying learning and teaching environments are an ongoing process. For example, modern educational psychology, including positive psychology movements emphasizing collaborative knowledge creation, calls teachers to facilitate their students’ learning and wellbeing and to create a positive learning environment instead of using traditional frontal teaching and other teacher-centered methods. Digital revolution has challenged teachers to adapt new educational settings and to update their pedagogical approaches into more use of digital solutions. Indeed, the COVID-19 pandemic propelled the teachers to offer new optimal learning experiences.

The Springer International Handbook of Educational Development in Asia Pacific breaks new ground with a comprehensive, fine-grained and diverse perspective on research and education development throughout the Asia Pacific region. In 13 sections and 127 chapters, the Handbook delves into a wide spectrum of contemporary topics including educational equity and quality, language education, learning and human development, workplace learning, teacher education and professionalization, higher education organisations, citizenship and moral education, and high performing education systems. The Handbook is grounded in specific Asia Pacific contexts and scholarly traditions, using unique country-specific narratives, for example, Vietnam and Melanesia, and socio-cultural investigations through lenses such as language identity or colonisation, while offering parallel academic discourse and analyses framed by broader policy commentary from around the world.

Suzanne S. Choo, Woon Chia Liu, and Bee Leng Chua offer a dynamic look into the tripartite relationship between education research, policy, and practice that characterizes Singapore’s changing education landscape. Over the years, Singapore has garnered increasing attention internationally for its world-class education system. Pushing back against the stereotypical notions of exam- and teacher-centric education in Asia, the contributors to this volume discuss opportunities as well as challenges in Singapore’s innovation towards constructivist, critical, culturally responsive, and cosmopolitan forms of learning. Highlighting the pedagogical innovation and its context in Singapore’s teacher education and schools, the authors bridge theory and practice by providing an understanding of innovative practices informed by key shifts in Singapore's education policies and the key conceptual principles informing these practices. More importantly, it provides on-the-ground empirical insights into the ways these innovative pedagogical practices are enacted in the classroom and in teacher education programmes. Each chapter provides an in-depth understanding of how these pedagogies are applied across various subject disciplines, including guided problem-solving in Mathematics, games-based pedagogy in Science, multimodal literacies in language, ethical criticism in Literature, Nonlinear Pedagogy in Physical Education, multicultural approaches in music, and dialogic pedagogy in drama, among others. Balancing theoretical and empirical focus, this resourceful text will be of interest to students, researchers, and practitioners in educational development, pedagogy, and teacher education, as well as policymakers across international fields in education.

Cultural competence in education promotes civic engagement among students. Providing students with educational opportunities to understand various cultural and political perspectives allows for higher cultural competence and a greater understanding of civic engagement for those students. The Handbook of Research on Citizenship and Heritage Education is a critical scholarly book that provides relevant and current research on citizenship and heritage education aimed at promoting active participation and the transformation of society. Readers will come to understand the role of heritage as a symbolic identity source that facilitates the understanding of the present and the past, highlighting the value of teaching. Additionally, it offers a source for the design of didactic proposals that promote active participation and the critical conservation of heritage. Featuring a range of topics such as educational policy, curriculum design, and political science, this book is ideal for educators, academicians, administrators, political scientists, policymakers, researchers, and students.

This book uses PISA data to show that a substantial proportion of students in OECD countries now attend schools that have high degrees of autonomy in different areas of decision making.

This book brings together and builds on the current research efforts on adaptation, conceptualization, and theorization of Lesson Study (LS). It synthesizes and illustrates major perspectives for theorizing LS and enriches the conceptualization of LS by interpreting the activity as it is used in Japan and China from historical and cultural perspectives. Presenting the practices and theories of LS with practicing teachers and prospective teachers in more than 10 countries, it enables the reader to take a comparative perspective. Finally, the book presents and discusses studies on key aspects of LS such as lesson planning, post-lesson discussion, guiding theories, connection between research and practice, and upscaling. Lesson Study, which has originated in Asia as a powerful effective professional development model, has spread globally. Although the positive effects of lesson study on teacher learning, student learning, and curriculum reforms have been widely documented, conceptualization of and research on LS have just begun to emerge. This book, including 38 chapters contributed by 90 scholars from 21 countries, presents a truly international collaboration on research on and adaptation of LS, and significantly advances the development of knowledge about this process. Chapter 15: "How Variance and Invariance Can Inform Teachers’ Enactment of Mathematics Lessons" of this book is available open access under a CC BY 4.0 license at link.springer.com Theory and Practice of Lesson Study in Mathematics: An International Perspective shows that the power of Lesson Study to transform the role of teachers in classroom research cannot be explained by a simple replication model. Here we see Lesson Study being successful internationally when its key principles and practices are taken seriously and are adapted to meet local issues and challenges. (Max Stephens, Senior research fellow at The University of Melbourne) It works. Instruction improves, learning improves. Wide scale? Enduring? Deep impact? Lesson study has it. When something works as well as lesson study does, while alternative systems for improving instruction fail, or only succeed on small scale or evaporate as quickly as they show promise, it is time to understand how and why lesson study works. This volume brings the research on lesson study together from around the world. Here is what we already know and here is the way forward for research and practice informed by research. It is time to wake up and pay attention to what has worked so well, on wide scale for so long. (Phil Dara, A leading author of the Common Core State Standards of Mathematics in the U.S.)

This volume offers critical analysis of national school reform policies intended to align with global agendas to promote educational quality and equity. By uniquely foregrounding the need for education reform to nurture child well-being alongside traditional measures of academic achievement, the book identifies common challenges across the Global North and South and extends insights provided by international student assessment data. Chapters offer a close analysis of reform practices in countries in Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Americas to consider cultural, social, political, and functional aspects which drive or inhibit the success of reform initiatives. Providing excellent insights into holistic education for children and youth, this book highlights lessons to support global efforts in providing high-quality, equitable education for the whole child. Developing international knowledge and supplementing international data, this volume will be of interest to students, scholars, and researchers with an interest in education policy, as well as comparative and international education.

This book deals with teacher training for vocational education and training. In individual chapters next to the positions of relevant international organizations, donors and development banks, it also covers selected countries in their ways of shaping of Technical Vocational Education and Training and teacher training. The structure of the book aims at two objectives: To outline positions of important stakeholders of the international Technical Vocational Education and Training policies and international cooperation in TVET teacher training. To discuss the current status of Technical Vocational Education and Training and teacher training in selected countries, from developing countries, countries with emerging economies to industrialized countries. The book is meant to create a platform that supports a reference concept within international cooperation for the further development of Technical Vocational Education and Training and teacher training up to a higher quality and performance.