Understanding and Providing for Pupils with High Ability in Mainstream Classrooms

Dr Letchmi is currently Assistant Dean, Professional & Leadership Development at the Graduate and Professional Learning Programme Office (NIE) and Lecturer with the Psychology and Child & Human Academic Group. As Assistant Dean, she oversees leadership programmes offered to school department heads and leaders. As a lecturer, she supports the High Abilities Studies Master of Education Programme specialization as well as teaches courses on differentiated instruction, pedagogical practices, and curriculum innovation, at both pre-service and in-service levels. She obtained both her Masters and Doctoral degrees from the University of Western Australia and her Ed. D dissertation studied teachers use of differentiated instruction in mixed ability classrooms across Singapore’s secondary schools. Her work in school-based curriculum development and evaluation as her school’s Assistant Head of Department for the Gifted Education has extended her research interests to include issues pertaining to giftedness, critical and creative thinking, differentiation, concept-based pedagogy, and teacher agency. Her research work includes comparisons of teacher education across eight countries for the International Alliance project and she has supervised several student projects in high ability studies and teacher professional development. She has won multiple research grants including “Curriculum Perspectives and Leadership in Innovations for the Nurturing of 21st Century” (ERFP OER 27/15 TLS; $249972) ; “Teachers Developing Concept- Based Curricula to Engage Diverse Learners” (ERFP DEV02/15LDP;$99953) and recently “Differentiated Instruction to Address Diverse Needs In The Singapore Classroom” (ERFP OER 04/21 ;$ 149956). Dr. Letchmi has presented several keynote speeches on differentiation, published several articles and book chapters, and has recently co-edited a book published by Springer, Singapore entitled “ Curriculum for High Ability Learners: Issues, Trends and Practices.”