The knowledge building work in Singapore would not be possible if not for this group of passionate and committed teachers. They value the students’ way of thinking and are always ready to embrace the questions and ideas from their students. If the need arises, these teachers will adapt and change the course of action in class accordingly, with a communal goal of advancing classroom practice, encourage collaboration within and beyond their schools, and contributing to the theoretical understanding of learning sciences and knowledge building.
Andy Ng
School: St. Hilda’s Primary School
Subject designation:
Head of Gifted Education Programme
Social Studies
Maker Education, Research Skills Education, Character and Citizenry Education
Background information (as of 2023):9 years of experience in teaching, 7 years of experience in KB
Research interests: Academic emotions in knowledge creation, Multimodal learning analytics interventions
What does Knowledge Building mean to you as a teacher?
John Dewey once said, “If we teach students of today as how we taught yesterday’s, we rob them of tomorrow.” What if we could teach students of today with teaching methods of tomorrow? What benefits will that reap for our students? To me that is what Knowledge Building is: a microcosm of the hyperconnected, idea-centric world our students will inherit. If we want our students to thrive and contribute to this world, it behests us to expose and equip them for their tomorrow, today.
How has the Knowledge Building Community supported your journey?
The Knowledge Building Community gives me hope that a nexus of professionals is willing and able to explore the frontiers of teaching together. From researchers, I learn the ideal. From practitioners, I learn the pragmatic. From engineers, I learn the architecture. From our leaders, I learn how to harmonize all of the above.
Melvin Chan Joo Seng
School: Chua Chu Kang Secondary School
Subject designation: History (Lead Teacher)
Background information: 14 years of experience in teaching; 10 years of experience in Knowledge Building
Research interests: Pedagogical Leadership; Metacognitive Development ; Interdisciplinary Curriculum ; Historiography and the Teaching of History
KB principle that resonates with my teaching practice:
Pervasive Knowledge Building
In a world of uncertainties and complexities, it is essential for the youths to be collaborative, critical and creative learners—dispositions of future-readiness. With Knowledge Building being internalized as their way of life both in and out of school, I am certain that our youths are completely prepared and empowered to become informed, innovative and inclusive citizens of tomorrow.
What does Knowledge Building mean to you as a teacher?
More than a pedagogy or theory of learning sciences, Knowledge Building is to me the principal iterative DNA of what constitutes and defines every human authentic living experiences—ideas generation, ideas development and ideas reflection. As such, with the familiarity of Knowledge Building to our everyday lives, I am confident that every educator is already a knowledge-builder ourselves. What it takes then is for us to be intentional in contextualizing and conceptualizing the learning experiences for our students in alignment with the building blocks and philosophy of the heart of Knowledge Building.
How has the Knowledge Building Community supported your goals in teaching?
Beyond gaining new insights and understanding, being part of the Knowledge Building Community challenges me to keep innovating, elevating and synthesizing new ideas and ways to deepen my pedagogical and andragogic practices. In the process, I have grown to be an educator who dares to dream and reach for the impossibilities because every idea is a potential avenue for transformation and breakthrough!
Tey Ai Hoon, Janice
School: Riverside Secondary School
Subject designation: History
Background information: 20 years of experience in teaching; 6 years of experience in KB
Research interests: Formative assessment; Stretching and Challenging students
What does Knowledge Building mean to you as a teacher?
Knowledge Building allows me to stretch students’ thinking and empowers them to be critical and reflective thinkers.
How has the Knowledge Building Community supported your journey?
The Knowledge Building Community provide opportunities for me to dialogue with like-minded individuals to learn from one another.
Ushanthini Arumugam
School: St. Hilda’s Primary School
Subject designation: Science
Background information: 11 years of experience in teaching; 8 years of experience in KB
Research interests: Formative assessment; Learning analytics; Scaffolded learning
What does Knowledge Building mean to you as a teacher?
Knowledge Building is a way of life. It positions students as creative agents of their own learning process and knowledge building. As a teacher, Knowledge Building is able to transform the classroom into communal learning space. The future of our classrooms looks promising with practitioners using analytics to gather feedback for meaningful and purposeful classroom discourse.
How has the Knowledge Building Community supported your journey?
The Knowledge Building Community has given me insight into innovative and engaging ways of carrying out a Knowledge Building class. It has also allowed me to share with and learn from other teachers’ KB experiences.
Tan Swee Leng (Mrs. Yeo)
School: Ping Yi Secondary School
Subject designation: Science
Background information: 43 years of experience in teaching; 7 years of experience in KB Research interests: Formative assessment; Scaffolded learning
What does Knowledge Building mean to you as a teacher? No child is left behind. Even the quietest child in the class is given the chance to make his thoughts or argument visual. From the teacher’s perspective, I can push boundaries to stretch the children’s learning.
How has the Knowledge Building Community supported your goals in teaching? The Knowledge Building Community has provided me the opportunity to learn from practitioners and share my experiences. In a traditional classroom situation, only a fraction of students are actively engaged in classroom discourse with one student speaking at any one time whereas in a knowledge building classroom, EVERY voice is heard.
Hisham Haslir
School: Ping Yi Secondary School
Subject designation: Science
Charmaine Tan
School: Unity Secondary School (2019), ELIS (2020)
Subject Designation: English Language and Literature
Research Interest: Collaborative Inquiry, Learning Analytics, Metacognition in Reading and Writing, Subject Literacy
Experience: 15 years of experience as an educator, 6 years of experience in KB
What does Knowledge Building mean to you?:
Knowledge Building means instilling in every student the belief that they have the power to create knowledge, and teaching them to harness the power of shared ideas in knowledge advancement. It is a meaningful work that extends beyond the formal years of education.
How has the KB community supported your journey?:
The KB community has provided me with the technological resources to enact my ideal classroom through the use of Knowledge Forum, and has been a critical friend in helping me to envision better ways of giving students access to feedback and reflection on their own learning. It has also provided opportunities for teachers and students to interact professionally with others towards the common goal of improving the way we teach and learn.
Lin Jiehui
School: Teck Whye Secondary School
Subject designation: Social Studies and Mathematics (Lower Sec)
Research Interest: Upper Secondary Social Studies Curriculum and Syllabus; Assessment & Feedback; Social Science Research Methods.
Experience: 10 years of experience in teaching; 7 years of experience in KB.
What does Knowledge Building mean to you?:
Knowledge Building, with its principles, has guided my teaching and lesson designs of Social Studies. With societal issues becoming increasingly complex, Knowledge Building raises discussions of societal issues to a higher level by allowing students to be engaged in Knowledge Building discourse through the exchanging and improving of unique ideas and perspectives. Ultimately, Knowledge Building offers an innovative way of learning the social sciences. It helps students realise that knowledge and theories in social sciences are more of just an acquisition of facts but to treat them as improvable and constructivist in nature.
How has the KB community supported your journey?:
The community has provided me opportunities to learn from experienced KB practitioners, which contributes to my professional development.
Grace Du
School: Ngee Ann Secondary School
Subject designation: Science
Shahizah Bte Mohd
School: Ping Yi Secondary School
Subject designation: HOD, Science
Ansar Kamsan Muhamad
School: Haig Girls’ Primary School
Subject designation: Science