Select a choice

Episode 6:
The 21st Century Learners

How have students evolved, and what are their diverse needs that extend beyond the classroom? The podcast will also dive deep into the latest trends that teachers would need to take note of, such as attention span, blended learning, and the consequences of social media or current affairs in the classroom.

AVAILABLE AT YOUR FAVOURITE PODCAST DESTINATIONS

AVAILABLE AT YOUR FAVOURITE PODCAST DESTINATIONS

Transcript

0:23	Hi everyone, welcome to the teaching point. For today's episode, we have Dr. Dennis Kwek, who has a plethora of experience. He is from the National Institute of Education Office for Research.
0:39	He is the Centre Director for the Centre of Research in Pedagogy and practise, as well as the Associate Dean for Strategic Engagement, Senior Research Scientist.
0:49	So thank you Dr Kwek for joining us today.
0:51	Kushal Ted, share with us a little bit more about yourself.
0:54	OK, Thanks for inviting me for this podcast.
0:58	I am the Centre Director for the Centre for Research and Pedagogy and Practise or CRPP for short.
1:04	CRPP has been around since 2002, so it's one of the oldest education research centres around the world actually, and definitely in Singapore.

1:15	And the work that we do there is largely to really help our Singapore schools improve in terms of teaching and learning.
1:22	And so a lot of the work that we do, a lot of the research that we do covers both descriptive studies of what's happening in schools as well as the kinds of innovations that we can help with teaching and learning.
1:34	That's kind of some of the work that we do over there.
1:36	My own personal research area is in classroom pedagogies.
1:40	So I, I like to understand how do teachers teach?
1:45	Why do they teach the way they do?
1:47	And how do students learn and trying to shift the needle, if you like, in the way in which classroom practises work, especially with the introduction of new technologies, new demands, etcetera and all that.
2:01	So that's kind of like the, the nutshell of what I do in, in NIE.
2:05	Thank you.
2:06	So I think learning about, you know, the teaching environments and learning environments of students as of especially for today's worrying context is very important.
2:16	So with that, given that, you know, today's episode releases really focuses on that, how would you, you know, describe the classroom experience of a typical primary five student in today's classroom?
2:28	But that's a very good question.
2:30	So let me, let me give you a little bit of history about my, my own research life in, in NIE.
2:39	First, when I first joined NIE in 2004, I was a research associate with the Centre for Research in Pedagogy and Practise.
2:48	And I was high in specifically to do, to, to go into classrooms to look at what teachers are doing in classrooms.
2:56	And this was the first time that a large study has been conducted in Singapore where we are going into hundreds of lessons to really collect information about the, the typically what's known as the black box.
3:07	You know, when the classroom doors close, we don't really know what happens inside the, the classroom.
3:12	So that was the first time that we were invited to go into hundreds of lessons to really see what's happening in in the classroom.
3:19	And this study is known as the Core Research Programme and it began in 2003 and it's still ongoing now.
3:28	We, we often like to call it the hidden gem in NIE because we do a lot of work in it, which influences our policy, policy ideas and all that.
3:37	But we are also trying to see how we can continue to change the way teaching and learning happens in our classrooms.
3:47	So back in 2004 when I first entered into a classroom, say for example, in science.
3:54	So I'm in a science primary 5 classroom and I would be in a number of schools.
3:59	So, you know, in, in, in a week, for example, I'll be in three or four schools watching 3 or 4 teachers or even 5 teachers, different lessons, but all on the same topic, for example.
4:11	And you would almost certainly see the same thing being taught in all those lessons, you know, And it would be the same way, the same textbook, the same pages.
4:24	It's almost like a cookie cutter approach to to how teaching and learning happens in those classrooms.
4:29	And that was back in 2004.
4:31	OK, now, almost 20 years later, more than 20 years later, if I were to go into classroom now and I've been watching a lot of videos of lessons, I can confidently say that that cookie cutter approach where you see almost the same thing being taught to all the students is now very, very different.
4:50	The nature of teaching and learning is so varied now that if you were to go into the same topic in five different schools taught by 10 different teachers, they will all be different.
5:02	The content or the outcomes might be the same, but the way the teachers teach, the kinds of interactions that happens, the kinds of talk that happens in the classroom, they're all different.
5:13	So the, the in first immediate thing that we can see right, is 20 years of changes in terms of pedagogies that happens in the classroom.
5:23	And it is quite a significant change.
5:26	Teachers are now given a lot of autonomy and a lot of freedom in deciding what is it that they want to teach in response to the needs of their students.
5:38	So then would you, how would you pick out then really the key points of from the research or maybe for the black boy, for the black box itself and what the key base research points or the key based, I would say, conclusions that you think are important to highlight in the efforts that have been made within the past 20 years.
5:59	OK, when when we think about what happens in a classroom, we always look at 3 particular things.
6:06	We look at the kinds of knowledge emphasis that the teachers make.
6:11	We look at the kinds of interactions that happens in the classroom and we look at the kinds of assessment practises that teachers do in the classroom.
6:18	So in terms of knowledge, for example, the idea of moving around say factual knowledge, right, the delivery or the transmission of factual knowledge to emphasising conceptual understanding, to emphasising meta cognitive understanding.
6:36	So that's what knowledge is all about.
6:38	The different kinds of knowledge that the teachers can bring into the classroom for the students to learn about.
6:45	In 2004, the emphasis was very clearly on factual knowledge, on preparing students for the PSLE... now over the years, over 20 years, we begin to see that change or the shift away from factual knowledge.
7:06	It's still important, but more time is spent on conceptual knowledge, for example, on making connections between different ideas, different concepts, making connections between what the students know in the classroom and what they know at all or in the environment in terms of science, for example.
7:22	So all those kinds of conceptual connections are being made to help students better understand why this subject is important for them to live.
7:30	That's the needle that we see shifting across 20 years that that move towards deeper conceptual understanding, the move towards deeper matter, cognitive understanding, the more the move towards more self-directed learning that happens.
7:44	That's in terms of knowledge interaction is also interesting as well.
7:47	Because back then the teacher is the sage on the stage, right?
7:53	So the, the environment in the classroom has not changed for probably 100 years perhaps.
8:01	You have 4 walls, you have the chair tables and you have chairs and you have the teacher in front, right?
8:06	But that's the nature of any kind of classroom because you only have one person who's the adult or the expert and the rest of them are trying to learn from this expert, right?
8:25	What we can change is the nature of the talk that happens in the classroom.
8:34	The teacher in 2004, when we'd observed, then goes through what's known as a very traditional IRE format.
8:40	The teacher initiates something, the student responds, and then the teacher evaluates that response, that the IRE structure.
8:48	And that is very common because that's a very fantastic and effective way in which teachers can check to make sure that the students understand something.
8:57	Right now that still happens because that's very, very fast and a very effective tool in the teachers toolkits.
8:58	But what we're beginning to see is a lot more pair and group work happening.
9:02	So students get into pairs and they're exchanging ideas and they're brainstorming and they're talking to one another, whether it's in pairs or groups.
9:10	We also beginning to see teachers also using ideas such as dialogic teaching, So whole class discussions...
9:27	And ask another student to respond to that.
9:29	And then the the idea gets moved around the classroom.
9:32	It continues to build and change a Co construction of knowledge between the teacher and the student.
9:39	So the the teacher is no longer telling the students what I know.
9:43	The teacher is actually working through some of the students understanding and misunderstandings and coming up with this.
9:49	This is important for you to understand right.
9:52	Then when it comes to assessment back in 2004, it is really just prepare for exam, right?
9:58	That, that was, that was it, you know, the, the teaching to the test kind of a mode.
10:02	Now we're seeing that move towards more formative forms of assessment, assessment for learning where teachers are giving formative feedback to the students.
10:10	Teachers are using different forms of assessment practises such as peer assessment, self-assessment, exit cards, etcetera, and all that.
10:18	So the, the entire landscape from 2004 to now has changed quite a lot because all these new tools the teachers have in their tool kits...
10:31	We see that happening.
10:32	We see that that is beneficial not just for the teachers in helping to teach ideas and knowledge to the students, but also for students to become more and more engaged in the classroom.
10:43	And, and it is amazing nowadays when you go into the classroom, right, it's noisy because the students are enjoying it and they are very vocal.
10:53	They are trying to understand what is it that the teacher is opening up for them to talk about in the classroom.
11:00	Yeah, things are different and exciting for us because it's always now as a researcher, when we go into a classroom, it's always a surprise for us to see what teachers can do.
11:15	So yeah, things have changed.
11:17	I think it's interesting to see, but also I think from maybe personal experiences, you would see the students coming back saying that they have different variety of activities as compared to perhaps back then.
11:29	Do you think that this is... positive impact towards... understanding concepts and perhaps understanding how subjects apply in real life applications?
11:49	Yeah, it it, it certainly does at at almost the fundamental level, it increases their engagement in the classroom.
11:57	So they're more interested in what they're learning.
11:59	And because they're more interested in what they're learning, they also make an effort sometimes to even go outside the classroom to learn certain new things...
12:13	So the, the level of engagement has certainly increased, especially for students who are sometimes struggling with their burning when the, long-term game.
12:26	So think of education as a long game if you like... that's about 15 years of their life in in a formal education setting.
13:11	So what we do as teachers and educators at the start all the way through, we have to prepare them... into adulthood and into working life, etcetera and all that.
13:21	And we see that shift as well in terms of curriculum no longer content is very important.
13:26	The foundations are important, right, literacy, numeracy, but we also see things like 21st century competencies coming to be important.
13:34	The soft skills, how to communicate, how to speak to other people, right, how to manage your emotions are important now, emotional literacy and all that.
13:43	And, and those are new, new curriculum content that's also coming into our classrooms, into our schools, etcetera.
13:52	So we are preparing students for the future by equipping them with the tools, the knowledge, the skills, the competencies in order for them to thrive in, in the future.
14:05	And, and this is an impossible task because the future is always changing.
14:10	We don't know what's going to happen.
14:13	I think moving on to like, maybe I think that's a nice side way to the second portion.
14:16	If we were to continue, then we're looking at it from a student's perspective and their learning, right.
14:21	But if we switch it up to perhaps the teachers perspective, then based on the past 20 years... what would then be some of the factors that teachers will need to understand in order for them to have a successful teaching and learning environment in the classroom?
14:42	Teachers are increasingly equipped with a number of models of teaching best practises, models of teaching, and one of them is called the Singapore Teaching Practise.
14:57	The Singapore Teaching practise is 1, where the idea is to equip teachers with not just the philosophy of teaching, but the kinds of practises that are important for teachers to understand.
15:12	So looking at, you know, the factors that if you've mentioned beforehand, especially knowing that now that you know recently, Skills Future is also an Ave that teachers are able to tap on.
15:23	And from I guess whatever that you've shared... research... has not only helped students, but has also definitely helped with the provisions for teachers and the support they've been given in recent times.
15:40	And you've always known this thing of like, you know, make sure you listen to your teacher... how do you think that perception has changed in recent times?
15:57	I, I think most, most of us who have been through schooling, you know, as, as a, as a child would remember... we were told to just shut up and listen to the teacher...
16:17	I, I think that nature has changed substantially.
16:21	The, the sage on the stage, the, the teacher who just does all the talking and all that is not the case nowadays.
16:29	We, we see students far more eager to speak up and are not afraid to, to, you know, raise their hand and say that, but, you know, sure, I, I disagree with you, you know, that kind of thing.
16:42	So we, we are seeing a shift in the nature of the kinds of interactions that happens in the classroom.
16:50	And teachers have to accept that kids are coming into classroom and they want to share and they want to speak up, you know.
16:59	And yes, they are there to learn, but they are also there to be given those opportunities... for the teacher to facilitate... and help the students to better understand the content knowledge that they they have to learn, right.
17:22	So I think the need that nature has begun to really change in the way teachers have to, to teach in the classroom, right?
17:32	No longer the, the, the lecture mode where, you know, the teachers just talking and talking and talking.
17:40	Refer to pitch this on the textbook before the pitch that we, we now see different modalities coming in.
17:46	We now have technology.
17:48	So students have access to the student learning space.
17:51	Students, some of the students in secondary schools now have personal learning devices... and they are able to bring those kinds of things that they've learnt into the classroom.
18:06	So things are changing.
18:09	It's always continuously changing.
18:11	I, I, I, I liken our, our school system to a huge oil tanker, right?
18:16	That's always moving.
18:17	And whenever we try to change parts of it, we always have to be mindful that it is still moving.
18:23	So we cannot, you know, overhaul this thing and make it into a speedboat.
18:26	It's always an all tanker that's moving slowly and we're changing consolidate, but it is always moving in a particular direction.
18:33	And that direction is towards the future.
18:35	It is in a direction towards the 21st century learner... trying to predict what kinds of competency skills knowledge that they and values... in our changing the education system.
18:50	Yeah, I think that's a nice way to consolidate, you know, our conversation thus far.
18:56	And perhaps if there is anything more that a teacher or a student should take note of for the future...
19:16	How do you think or what do you think is the one thing or the two things that they will need to understand or they will need to remember in order to be in the classroom effectively?
19:29	Oh, that there are multiple perspectives to that.
19:34	Very interesting question 11 is, you know, you ask this question of if you're a student, right?
19:41	What, what would it take one day for that student to want to become a teacher, right?
19:46	And, and one of the things that I do in, in NIE, so I teach in NIE as well.
19:52	And one of the things that I always ask students... is remember who your favourite teacher is and why is it that the teacher is your favourite teacher?
20:06	And many of them would say that it is not just this teacher.
20:10	It's nice to them, right?
20:12	So they are kind, they're nice.
20:14	But importantly, those teachers that they remember are the ones that somehow activated their interest and joy in in learning that that keeps them engaged...
20:36	And I tell my student teachers, this is what you need to remember those kinds of skills that your favourite teachers are the ones that you need to help your own students learn one day...
20:57	They, they absorb this and they will become lifelong learners themselves as a result of that, you know, so that that's one perspective.
21:04	The other thing is as teachers, right, our future is fluid.
21:08	It is increasingly unpredictable, the introduction of generative AI nowadays.
21:18	It's amazing that nowadays you can create video just using prompts.
21:23	You know, people are now able to make almost like very short movies using just prompts and, and it can generate that.
21:30	And then you include the music and everything.
21:32	You can now have AI generated singers, right Songs which are fantastic.
21:39	So we, we are at a stage where AI is becoming a very important part of our lives and teachers have to deal with that.
21:49	You know, teachers have to see how they can incorporate all these new tools that youths, children are going to be exposed to and are likely to be far more familiar with them than the adults are.
22:04	OK, wait, how can teachers engage students to leverage those kinds of tools that we have at home and bring it into their learning?
22:13	I think it's going to be one of the biggest challenges that they will face.
22:17	I, I think they need to face that head on.
22:20	They need to learn how to engage students in those kinds of technological advances and, and be mindful of the risks that are involved in it.
22:32	So I, I think both of us are probably at a point in, in our, our lives... that we have access to the calculator, right?
22:43	So in, in, in school, I, my generation... was the generation that had calculators introduced into our classrooms for the first time.
22:54	So, so we, we learn how we learn in mathematics, how to use the calculator to support our mathematics learning and all that kind of stuff.
23:03	Now, if you ask me nowadays to do simple multiplication... I will say I need to bring up my to my phone to calculate everything, right?
23:14	I've, I've lost a very important skill set because technology has replaced the need for me to learn those things.
23:21	If I were to ask my mum, who never had exposure to calculators, she can do mental calculations off the top of her head, right?
23:30	Yes, you have that mental audio issue.
23:33	Should he do? Yeah, kids. Right. And now and, and, and...
23:49	Yeah.
23:50	Tools and kids will increasingly rely on those tools at the expense of their own capacity to think in very critical and creative ways.
24:02	I think that's something that some of the researchers around the world have started to notice.
24:09	There is a recent study from MIT which is showing that people who use ChatGPT, for example, that their brain connectivity... is being affected by the use of ChatGPT...
24:28	And one of the key lessons that they point out from their study... is very preliminary but very important.
24:36	One of the interesting findings they did was this was a study that involved university students writing essays.
24:43	I see.
24:53	And then they introduce Chat GPT later on to them.
24:56	And they found that these students who relied not on ChatGPT at the start, but later on are far more productive in their writing as compared to another group which just use ChatGPT.
25:08	Although the timing of the introduction of AI into the pedagogy is actually I think going to be an important thing for researchers to really understand how those new technologies are rewiring our brains the way.
25:24	So I think that's going to be an important year.
25:27	I think that's a good point to kind of conclude our conversation and I think perhaps maybe an interesting question to kind of conclude and tie everything up.
25:39	Since you've already mentioned, you know, what should teachers and researchers even look out for?
25:44	What will be some of the interesting topics that you would think you would want to research given that generating AI is slowly seeping... into both the teaching aspect and the learning aspect...
26:02	What will be some of the very interesting research topics that you think will be interesting or be important to embark on to continue to understand how to have sustained success in the classroom?
26:16	So this is one of the new areas that we are exploring in our research centre, which is this idea of the phrase it takes a village to raise a child, right?
26:30	The idea behind that phrase is very powerful one.
26:33	The idea behind it is that learning and teaching is not just a function of schools and schooling.
26:42	That if you think about it, a child will go through probably 50% of the time in schools and the learning that the other 50% happens is outside of schools, right?
26:53	So we, we, we call it the differences between formal learning... non formal learning... and then there's informal learning that happens outside of schools.
27:09	We're trying to understand how those different kinds of learning in different contexts happens.
27:15	We're trying to understand...
27:21	The other thing that's also interesting for us is when it what does it mean that it takes a village to raise a child?
27:29	Learning isn't just about what happens in the brain.
27:32	Learning is also a function of the environment in which the child lives in.
27:36	If the environment is not conducive, is not optimised for learning, then all the work that we do as teachers will not be as effective, right?
27:47	And the question is, can we then leverage not just the school, but the peers that the child knows, the friends, families for example, or even the community?
28:01	How can all those different aspects come together to really optimise learning for the child?
28:08	So there is a study done in Scotland called the Children's Neighbourhood Scotland.
28:13	It's a project over there. And what they try to do is to look at learning in a very holistic sense...
28:38	Or you bring in people who are interior designers...
28:49	You really want to try and design the environment so that there's one space there that you know, where the child goes into that space.
28:55	It's in a space that they know they're going to get ready to do something serious about them, right?
29:00	So bring in all these different stakeholders to really help to optimise the learning environment for the child so that learning can occur almost naturally, right?
29:29	I think today's conversation has given me a lot of food for thought.
29:32	First of all, the fact that you made me remember who my favourite teacher was.
29:36	It wasn't my math or my science teacher, unfortunately.
29:39	But I think this conversation is very helpful.
29:41	I think you have opened up the doors to a lot of other conversations for the future.
29:45	So thank you so much, Dr Kwek, for your time today.
29:51	Thank you so much for inviting me here.
29:53	Thank you.

More about our guest below

Dr Dennis Kwek

Dr Dennis Kwek is the Centre Director, Centre for Research in Pedagogy and Practice, and Associate Dean (Strategic Engagement), Office of Education Research, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He is also the Head of the CORE Research Office, Office of Education Research as well as an Associate Editor of the Asia Pacific Journal of Education (Taylor & Francis).

He received his Master of Arts (Management Studies, Distinction) and his Bachelor of Science (First Class Honours) in Computer Science (Artificial Intelligence) from the University of Essex, UK. He was conferred his Ph.D in Education from the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore on July 2014. A Senior Research Scientist with over 30 years of research experience in the UK and Singapore, his research interests include system studies in education, policy research, classroom pedagogies, classroom interactions and discourse analysis, sociology and philosophy of education, comparative education, school improvement and teacher professional development.

Dr Kwek is currently leading National Institute of Education’s CORE Research Programme (2004-present), a multi-million-dollar government-funded large-scale baseline suite of empirical studies into Singaporean classroom pedagogies. To date he has been awarded in excess of 16 milion SGD in project grants with over 9 million SGD focusing on the CORE Research Programme.