1,720,962 research outputs found
Exploring pedagogical leadership in the early childhood context of Singapore
No full textThis dissertation presents a qualitative study exploring pedagogical leadership in the early childhood context of Singapore. The preschool landscape comprises diverse operators running child care centres and kindergartens that offer varied care and educational services for children from birth to six. This has resulted in different levels of quality and standards in preschool education. Positive child outcomes are found to be strongly linked to high quality early childhood programmes (Ang, 2012), and effective leadership is one of the key drivers for programme quality. As such, the assumption of this study is that effective preschool leaders tend to establish high quality programmes for the children under their care. The philosophical underpinnings of this research come from the interpretivist tradition, also known as social constructivism. This worldview posits that social realities are constructed by humans who make sense of the world through their life experiences (Bishop, 2007). The interpretation of social realities translates into social constructs, which through shared experiences and interactions, a co-construction of multiple realities and common understanding is formed (Patton, 2002). This paradigm enables the researcher to reach a shared understanding of pedagogical leadership through the multiple perspectives of the participants – the principal, teacher, children and children’s parents sampled in the study. Using a case study approach, this research investigates how pedagogical leadership is enacted through the roles and practices of a child care centre principal. Based on the criterion of purposeful sampling, an exemplary child care centre with a government accreditation, SPARK Commendation award, was chosen for this study. Data collection includes artefacts, classroom observations, questionnaires, interviews and survey. Analytic induction, coding and qualitative content analysis were used for data analysis. Through detailed descriptions, the narrative account provides insights to how an effective pedagogical leader has advanced programme and centre quality. The findings illustrate the roles and practices of this leader and shed light on how she had led her centre to achieve a SPARK Commendation award, and provide a high quality programme. This case study also provides recommendations on leadership development and capability building in the early years, and hopes to inform policymaking
COVID-19 and preschool education in Singapore: Responses, changes and challenges
No full textThis chapter examines the impact of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic on preschool education in Singapore. Since its outbreak in late 2019, COVID-19 has impacted all age groups across the globe, including children. Using Urie Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory as the theoretical frame, this chapter interrogates how Singapore has responded to this crisis through policymaking towards the care and education of young children. Through a top-down approach, it critiques how the government had swiftly rolled out policies to enforce safety measures and provide support, funding and resources for families and children during this crisis. It discusses the effects and impact of the pandemic on young children and ends with a set of recommendations for intervention and support
Values education in Singapore’s preschool education landscape: How leaders lead and teachers teach
No full textRecognizing the need for making values education explicit from early childhood, Singapore’s Ministry of Education (MOE) identified four values to be taught in the preschool curriculum. The revised Nurturing Early Learners (NEL) framework, a national curriculum framework for preschool education, explicates respect, responsibility, care, and honesty as values that should be cultivated in preschool children. As values are sociocultural constructs, the interpretations of values could be varied and complex in a multiracial and multireligious society. This article draws from a study that explored what these values mean in Singapore’s multicultural context and how preschool leaders and teachers implement values education. The multidimensional qualitative study solicited multiple perspectives from religious leaders, government officials, preschool leaders, and teachers from various preschool operators. Semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions were conducted and thematically analyzed. The findings provide recommendations for leading values education and teaching values in preschool centers through fostering a culture of well-being and using a three-pronged approach—Live it, Embed it, and Teach it.Accepted versio
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Signature pedagogies for pedagogical leadership
No full textThe chapter examines the relationship between pedagogical leadership and signature pedagogies. It explains how Shulman’s signature pedagogies intersect with the roles and practices of a pedagogical leader in a case study undertaken in an early childhood development centre in Singapore. The study’s data reveals how effective pedagogical leadership contributes to programme quality
Moral and values development for early childhood education in Singapore
No full textThis chapter discusses moral and values development for early childhood education (ECE) in Singapore and delineates its international implications. Keeping in mind that early childhood spans from birth to eight, this chapter examines three national frameworks adopted in Singapore: Early Years Development Framework from birth to 3 years of age, Nurturing Early Learners Framework for 4- to 6-year-old children, and the refreshed Character and Citizenship Education (CCE) launched in 2021 for lower primary school children of seven and 8 years of age. This chapter critically discusses how the Ministry of Education in Singapore promotes moral and values development as part of student well-being through the abovementioned frameworks. This chapter has elucidated an example of a moral and values educational program that is geared toward the all-embracing development of students. It explained how moral and values education as exemplified in CCE can be relevant to young children and applied in ECE programs to cultivate desired values from young. It provides suggestions on how various aspects of CCE can be adapted to the pre-school curriculum and offers recommendations on possible pedagogies to implement in the pre-school settings.</p
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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