REALITIES OF CURRICULUM

AND TEACHING: REVELATIONS

FROM SINGAPORE TEACHERS
META-REFLECTIONS

MEMBERS:
NEZANNA
JANNAH
NASHRAH
FATIHAH
FADHLAH

Introduction
Retrospective re-search, continual reexamination, and critique of practices in
teaching
Details and complexities of the past with
the present and bring forward to the future
Frameworks and guidelines could guide in
reflecting
Helps professionals to understand why and
what they do.

 Gaining insights into experiences to be

more focused on and purposeful
Can be done as an individual or as a group
depending on the goals
Self-reflection illuminates personal practices
of an individuals classroom teaching
Peer-reflection informs collective and group
practices.
In this paper, we relied on self-reflection

Purposes
to illuminate problems and issues
Singapore teachers face in
curriculum work and strategies to
manage them
to challenge and delimit the
boundaries of reflections
to test out the idea that teachers
would reflect more critically

Methodology
Roles : insiders of educational research and outsiders
to facilitate the reflection process
Subjects : four Singapore teachers
Using teachers initial reflections related to their
professional and create new questions and make
comments
The two questions asked were:
(1) Describe your experience in science curriculum
making and teaching;
(2) What are some factors you consider in reflecting on
the curriculum and teaching? How are these factors
important or significant

Jessie

Gordo
n

PROBLEM
IN
CURRICUL
UM WORK

Sonia

Cathy

JESSIE
English, Mathematics, Social Studies and Science
teacher
Problems:
teacher does not understand well the learning
outcomes
most of the teachers teach according to the materials
in the textbook
limited access to and opportunity in writing, planning,
designing and revising the school science curriculum
less sharing of reflection among teachers due to small
numbers of teachers
too many subjects for each teacher

Cathy
Teacher's background
biology teacher
teach value education
form teacher
member of discipline committee
subject coordinator

Reflective
ongoing
reflect thing generally
prefer to walk in a park and talk
about controversial issue with her
friends
she thinks that school shouldnot
have structured reflected session
reason: it gives this very personal
and meaningful activity of very baad
reputation

SONIA
Teachers background
the head of science department in school
teach students with privilege family
backgrounds
the students are generally high-performing
in charge of the administrative and
curriculum matters in the science
department
Her other task is to mentor beginning
teachers who join the school

REFLECTING & REFLECTION

Reflect upon the general approaches
to teaching after the major
examinations
Engage in reflections that centered
on pupils science learning
experience
She found out that dialoguing
stimulated the teachers to question
their own beliefs and system

GORDON
Teachers background
Male teacher teaching in an all-girls secondary
school.
teach a diverse group of students with very
different family backgrounds and also of diverse
intellectual abilities.
Science and Biology teacher

in charge of the school band and I assist my

colleague in mentoring pre-service interns
who are attached to my department.

REFLECTING &
REFLECTIONS
discovered that I had many misunderstanding
and misconceptions about my teaching subject
biology.
thought that perhaps my teachers did not
really have the time to explain concepts in
detail to such a big class and hence the
misunderstandings and misconceptions.
exposed to the method of curriculum planning,
Understanding by Design it got me thinking
about what am I teaching in the classroom

 consider the level of students I am

teaching and their abilities
less judgmental and to be more open
to ideas.

ANALYSIS OF TEACHER REFLECTIONS

AND META-REFLECTIONS
View curriculum according to their
experiences, beliefs about
reflections, teaching and learning,
personalities, and the school
structure

CONCLUSIONS AND
IMPLICATIONS
The teachers repeated resistance, ignorance, or hesitance to
address the critical issues implied that reflections needed to be
carefully solicited by some intricate means.
their experiences about curriculum and their practices within an
education system that is dominantly centralized and highly
routinized. Schools have a set of fixed science syllabus that is
geared towards the national examinations and teachers generally
have to teach to the test. As such, their experiences with
authentic curriculum planning and design are at the best one of
interpretation and implementation of a curriculum that is
prescribed.
In spite of this seemingly constrained context, these four
teachers differed in their experiences as science teachers, both in
terms of their ideas about the curriculum and
their ideas about reflecting on their professional practices.