Master of Education (Curriculum and Teaching)

Full-time

Minimum

1 year

Maximum

2 years

Part-time

Minimum

2 years

Maximum

4 years

Course Descriptors

MCT901 Curriculum: Theories and Issues (4 AUs)
The field of curriculum is characterized by a vigorous debate and a plethora of compelling arguments. This introductory course invites participants to examine major issues and debates in the field of curriculum studies, and to bring these ideas to bear on curriculum developments in Singapore.

The course is structured around the following fundamental questions: How do we understand curriculum and the work it does? What knowledge is of most worth and what should schools teach? How should this be taught and for what reasons? How does the curriculum reflect a society's understandings of its past as well as visions and aspirations? Participants will be introduced to historical development, socio-economic assumptions, challenges of globalization and the implications of these and other factors on curricular reforms.

As participants consider various approaches to exploring these questions, these insights will also guide their study of key curriculum issues in Singapore. The latter include the purposes of education, selection and organization of knowledge, access to knowledge, and methods of delivery in an increasingly global context. These analyses will be done in relation to both theory and practice, and with references to implementation issues in schools and classrooms.

MCT902 Crafting the Curriculum (4 AUs)
The process of analysis will reveal that curricula are by necessity always incomplete and imperfecteverything that is included (topic, activity, question, component, material, assessment, etc.) means that something else has been excluded. This being the case, students will suggest refinements to the curriculum they have analysed, based on their understanding of the needs.

This course is an introduction to curriculum development. The underlying framework for the course is that curriculum building is a process that requires ongoing study and reflection about curriculum and the practice of teaching.

Central and perennial curriculum questions explored are: What knowledge is of most value and worth? How is the learner and learning viewed? What is the role of teachers in creating and enacting curriculum?

The process of analysis will reveal that curricula are by necessity always incomplete and imperfect-everything that is included (topic, activity, question, component, material, assessment, etc.) means that something else has been excluded. Th is being the case, students will suggest refinements to the curriculum they have analysed, based on their understanding of the needs of learners, the socio-political milieu, and the moral and ethical dimensions of schooling.

MCT903 Assessment in Education and Learning: Theories, Tensions and Issues (4 AUs)
- Understand the central and pivotal role of assessment practices in constructing and enacting educational outcomes and experiences.

- Critically examine how assessment design, judgments and feedback practices construct the process and outcomes of learning.

- Develop an awareness of assessment as the primary mechanism for determining merit, and an important discourse for addressing social justice issues. 

MCT904 Understanding Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice (4 AUs)
This course explores two intertwining themes:

(1) Teacher as the curriculum maker, which explores from the interpretive perspective on how teachers acquire the knowledge, skills, and values in forming their identity in situated teaching practices and curriculum making. How do we understand the composition of teachers knowledge, practice, and skills in making curriculum alive? What counts as teacher quality in an era of accountability? How do teachers provide and practice leadership in curriculum making? How do teachers learn at different points in the teachers professional continuum and in different contexts?

(2) Teaching as a practice, one that has been historically understood by scholars, practitioners, and policy makers from a range of theoretical perspectives. What does it mean to conceptualize teaching as a practice situated in relation to curriculum, assessment and learning? What are the many ways people have thought about teaching as a practice, and what are the consequences of those perspectives for how we understand teaching? Who can create, evaluate, and critique knowledge about teaching? The course will introduce some major frameworks that have been used to guide research, policy recommendations, and the work of teachers and teaching.

We consider the issues of teaching and teachers in an international context, drawing on research from Singapore and other countries. Some of our texts and video materials we will use will give us repeated opportunities to consider education in China, France, Japan, and the U.S. While they don't constitute a central focus of the course, they will give us some chance for shared discussion that draws on multiple and sometimes conflicting descriptions and interpretations of teaching and teacher in a particular setting. Thus, we further pursue the context-related questions when we make the familiar strange in such an international perspective: In what ways is teaching an embedded practice that is shaped by the many contexts in which it is situated? How is learning to teach a process of entering a particular culture? What does it mean to work as a teacher in response to the discourses prevalent in globalization, and the local culture of the students and the community?

As participants consider various perspectives to exploring these questions, they will be guided to reflect upon their own teaching practices and professional identity, with references to educational reforms in schools and classrooms.

MCT905 Theories and Perspectives on Learning (4 AUs)
This is a reflection-intensive, peer-learning course that offers opportunities for students to interpret and discuss some of the established theories and perspectives on how people learn. It will cover ideas from behaviorism, cognitivism, constructivism, and social-constructivism through key topics such as meaning-making, verbal understanding, inquiry learning, representations of knowledge, the process of knowing, situated cognition, and learning in community.

MCT911 Curriculum Implementation and Educational Change: Concepts and Issues (4 AUs)
The overarching purpose of this course is to provide a theoretical, analytical, and practical framework for understanding some of the key issues and debates surrounding the implementation of national and school-based curriculum improvement efforts, professional development and school change. A variety of factors for understanding the complexity of curriculum implementation will be presented: school culture, the complexities of roles and relationships in schools, and policy implications of change initiatives.

It is designed to encourage teachers and school leaders to examine their assumptions about the nature of educational change and the complex process of implementing planned change at the school and classroom levels. Participants will be expected to review, critically analyse and relate relevant literature to their own experiences of working with innovation and change initiatives in Singapore schools.

MCT912 Curriculum and Programme Evaluation (4 AUs)
This course offers an introduction to key considerations in interpreting and designing evaluation studies in the educational context. Through considering the purposes of evaluations and exploring the nature of major evaluation approaches, participants will develop understanding of the key aspects of designing evaluation studies. The primary assessment project for all students will be to design (but not conduct) an evaluation for a curricular programme, project or product.

MCT913 Differentiating Curriculum and Teaching for Diverse Learners (4 AUs)
Contemporary deliberations about the school curriculum have tended to privilege other stakeholders and marginalize students. Unless teachers are able to take seriously what students already know and believe, any innovation in curriculum or pedagogy becomes futile. All students deserve rich learning experiences. This course is designed to encourage teachers and school leaders to examine their assumptions about curriculum, teaching and learning, and to develop a critical understanding of different student learning needs in the regular classroom.

Participants will gain an understanding of the reasons and assumptions underlying differentiation. Through the readings and discussion, participants will develop an appreciation of the diverse characteristics of students who learn at different pace as well as study a variety of curriculum options such as those of content and implementation of differentiated units and lessons that optimize learning for students.

This course will examine ways that classrooms can effectively differentiate curriculum and teaching to address the complex challenges of meeting the diverse learning needs of students. These will include notions of culturally responsive pedagogy, and the use of technology. Participants will learn to use research-based tools to uncover students experiences and challenges with the curriculum and use curriculum design models in planning appropriate and defensible differentiated curriculum units.

MCT914 Globalization & Curriculum Reform (4 AUs)
Education systems around the world are in a continuous state of reform and change. The catalyst for curricular changes emanate from multiple and layered sources such as local socio-political tensions and global economic imperatives.

International comparisons of student performance between countries and their education systems conducted by international organizations (e.g., IEA and OECD) have motivated countries to reconsider their own forms of educational and curriculum policy against those which do differently or better. Countries undertake curriculum reform to equip students with understanding, values, skills and dispositions needed for participating in an increasingly competitive economic environment. Governments attempt to gain greater control over education in order to enhance the quality of educational outcomes, equity of schooling, manage demographic diversity, and develop the ideal citizenry. In many countries, policymakers actively engage in policy borrowing.

It is necessary that educators understand how systems and curricular of different countries are currently structured and how the integration of economies, industries, markets, cultures and policy-making and policy-borrowings around the world are converging and diverging curricular around the world. It will help them appreciate the thinking behind curricular reforms, the sustainability and integrity of reforms, its capacity to effect change, malleability of a system and the various institutional processes that countries put in place to effect change.

Students in this course will benefit from understanding histories and practices of educational systems and curricular reforms in a sample of countries, and gain insights from internal relations of a countrys education system in a systemic change process.

MCT921 Theory and Practice of Authentic Assessment (4 AUs)
This course aims to provide participants with a sound grasp of the theoretical underpinnings of authentic assessments as well as practical skills needed for designing authentic assessments. More specifically, it aims to provide participants with

1) conceptual clarity on authenticity;

2) principles for designing quality authentic assessments;

3) a critical perspective of the role of authentic assessment within Singapores educational system.

The course will be conducted through discussions, group presentations, online forums, and hands-on activities. Participants are expected to critically appraise literature on authentic assessments and to develop an authentic assessment that will enhance the learning of their students.

MCT922 Assessment for Learning in Singapore: Critical Perspectives of Theory and  Practice (4 AUs)
Assessment for Learning (AfL) is recently referred to ubiquitously in some Singaporean classrooms, but its meanings, implications and applications in schools, and wider workplace learning contexts are less clear. This course first examines the discourse of AfL and formative assessment, against its varied and different theoretical constructions from Anglophone countries (e.g. USA and UK), before examining regional case studies from more recent times.

If new AfL policies and practices purporting to support teaching and learning are to be taken up within current and future Singaporean classrooms or workplaces, one needs first to look critically within past and current entrenched conceptions and practices. In particular, the (re-) construction and replication of particular version of AfL as classroom assessment practices is problematized using social-cultural lens, while also situating it within subject specific (or work area) issues, school policy and wider societal realities in Singapore. Critical reading of formative assessment and AfL research (including a locally situated research) would span the entire course. Coupled with personal reflections of assessment policies and practices, this course encourages participants to critically examine and interact with their perceptions and practices of AfL, permeating day-to-day classroom work.

MCT923 Assessment Leadership (4 AUs)
This course aims to develop teachers assessment leadership in ways relevant to the Singapore context and in alignment with regional and global priorities. Learning, practice and project opportunities are given at all grade levels on how to interact with policy, practice and theory in order to negotiate and manage assessment change.

Assessment leadership is the application of assessment literacy to inform educational administration, decision-making, and change management. Assessment literacy and leadership are recognized priorities locally, regionally and globally. In Singapore, this prioritization is embodied in policy/practice initiatives such as PERI, Holistic Assessment, Balanced Assessment and assessment of the 21CCs.

Resistance is also to be expected when translating and implementing assessment policy in schools. Given the consistent warnings from research and scholarship about the difficulties involved for teachers to interpret and enact assessment to meet its multiple and at times conflicting purposes, school leadership in the area of interpreting and guiding formative assessment policy in specific school contexts would be hugely important.

This course combines theory, research and practice to build students capacity as informed agents of change relative to these and other emerging assessment initiatives. Methods of engagement include group work, interactive lectures, problem-based learning activities, and authentic course assessments.

MCT923 is structured through a series of sequential objectives: 

*  Common understandings of concepts, theories and practices are established.  

*  Students examine leadership and change in Singapore, regional and global assessment contexts. 

*  Students utilize decision-making frameworks to understand application of leadership and change theory to assessment scenarios. 

*  New understandings are deepened through relevant, problem-based learning (PBL)
 activities. 

*  Students construct a leadership and change management plan that will allow them to extend their assessment leadership knowledge and skills within their professional contexts.

MCT924 Student Involvement in Assessment for Empowerment and Learning (4 AUs)
Assessment drives learning. Hence, any desired changes to learning to help prepare students to be independent, critical thinkers should permit them some role(s) and responsibilities for their own assessment. Hence, traditional paradigms of teacher-centric instruction and assessment have been criticized, and there has been an international shift in the focus of instruction and assessment from teaching to learning. For example, Assessment for learning (AfL)
 places students in the centre of the learning process by engaging them actively and continuously in their learning and growth and thus, enabling students to take ownership of and enhance their own learning.

However, it cannot be assumed that every instance of involving students in their own assessment would necessarily empower the students, and their learning. Research and scholarship warns of the risk that self- and peer-assessment may discipline and disempower students, instead of enhancing their learning and developing their autonomy. There is therefore a great need to critically appraise how student involvement in assessment can be conceptualised and practiced in ways that empower and enhance their learning.

This course aims to build and develop teachers awareness and knowledge of student-involved assessment in ways relevant within their institutional context and to the Singapore context, and to explore critical notions of power and assessment. It also includes an experiential component for participants to be involved in part of the assessment in the course, as a shared context for the class to discourse and discuss the complexities and issues that come with vesting greater opportunity, and responsibility, in assessment to learners.

MCT931 Narrative Inquiry in Curriculum, Pedagogy and Professional Development (4 AUs)
Narrative inquiry is used to enable teachers to examine, reflect on and study their curriculum work, pedagogical practice and personal and professional learning through telling and retelling and studying their own work- and life-related experiences and stories. The course provides both conceptual foundations and experiential learning for teachers to make meaning of their personal and professional lives and identity. It aims to empower course participants to own and draw from their lived experience for practical wisdom and knowledge creation by learning to think and live narratively.

MCT932 Teacher Research and Research on Teaching (4 AUs)
Academic research on teaching did not foreground the teachers role in the generation of knowledge about teaching. The division between the teacher research and the research on teaching makes it hard for the teachers to apply the knowledge produced by the university-based academic community.

This course is designed to explore conceptual and empirical research on teaching, which includes research on teachers, teaching, knowledge for teaching, teacher research as well as scholarships related to teacher learning and professional development. It will raise fundamental questions for teachers to think about. What counts as knowledge for teaching? Who can create, evaluate and critique knowledge about teaching? What are the assumed paradigms under the differing perspectives on teaching and teacher learning? What are the underlying conceptions about the role of teachers and the purpose of teaching? What counts as valid research? In which ways are the findings of research useful for teaching and teacher learning?

This course intends to help students to become aware of major areas in the field of research on teaching and teacher learning; in the meantime to help them make use of interpretive and qualitative methodologies in research on teaching from the stance of teachers. Its goal is to create a community of practice for teachers-as-researchers who can investigate, reflect on, and critique the current research on teaching and teacher learning, as well as sharing their teaching craft with colleagues. It guides the participants to explore the research literature on teachers and teaching in its historical, conceptual, and methodological contexts, including examples from teachers studies.

MCT935 New Media and 21st Century Learning (4 AUs)
This hands-on course aims to engage participants in examining the existing new media environment and provide an embodied new media experience for them. It addresses important, current issues in new media studies with in-depth discussion of popular perceptions/myths and implications to learning. Through the self-directed analysis of media content (critical media consumption) and production of media artefacts and participation in online communities (critical media prosumption), participants will gain a sense of new media culture and form their personal critique on the relationship between new media and 21st century learning for their refined practices.

MED900 Educational Inquiry (4 AUs)
This course introduces participants to the fundamental processes involved in conducting research such as formulating research questions, writing a review of the literature by synthesizing empirical studies, understanding various methodological approaches, collecting and interpreting research data. Participants in this course will have opportunities to develop the skills, knowledge and strategies needed to read, interpret, and evaluate the quality of research reports. In addition, participants will gain a critical understanding of quantitative, qualitative, and combined research approaches.

MED901 Academic Writing for Postgraduate Students (4 AUs)
This course will guide postgraduate students in studying the discourse and linguistic conventions of academic writing in their own discipline so that they can better manage the writing of their thesis/research paper. In addition to studying the discourse practices of academic writing, students will also examine the thinking processes underlying the production of those practices.

MED902 Integrative Project (2 AUs)
This capstone course requires participants to identify an education issue which forms the focus of inquiry, locate and read the most relevant literature to generate suggested potential solution to address the problem. The solution should show evidence that they are able to take the available information and restructure it in an appropriate way to deal with the issue.