Online Professional Learning - Breaking Barriers to Teacher Development

PI: Dr Lee Shu Shing, CRPP, NIE
Co-PI: Dr Tay Lee Yong, Beacon Primary School
Co-PI: Dr Andrew Pereira, CRPP, NIE
Collaborator: Dr Caroline Ho, AST, MOE

Project Description

• It is important to understand teachers’ readiness and level of comfort in using technological platforms and tools.
• When designing OPL, instructors should make explicit use of design principles, optimise online engagement and interaction, and promote sustained OPL.
• OPL’s structure should embrace teachers’ needs by optimising the modes of OPL, frequency, timing, duration, number of screen breaks and breakout rooms.
• OPL’s content should make learning manageable and engaging for teachers.
• OPL’s facilitation should include sufficient facilitators to support administrative duties, teachers’ PL, interaction, and rapport building. Facilitators should maximise teaching presence.
• Considerations should be made to support teacher ownership and self-directedness. It is important to reiterate the value of continuous PL so that time and space are provided for teachers to apply learning in classrooms.

Project Implications

Findings from the study highlighted the importance of leveraging the robust pedagogy in preschools to enhance other language skills that take a longer time to emerge, e.g. phonological awareness and depth of vocabulary, in both English and MT.

Recommendations for Schools:

1. Engage parents to participate in reading programs and interventions
2. Encourage preschool teachers to focus on hard to attain language skills like phonological awareness, depth of vocabulary and narrative ability
3. Since parents might not have the time to conduct daily reading in 2 languages with their children, try to find technology and AI tools that might compensate for this without de-emphasising human interaction
4. Flood the children with narrative and expository unfamiliar books in both the languages of the bilingual child.