ABSTRACT

Singapore is known as a high-performing country with high-quality teachers and is considered a model system for educational benchmarking. Still, many accolades for the system address teachers’ productivity in raising student achievement, which could reinforce a partial understanding of teacher quality in the system. Aiming at developing a more comprehensive and balanced understanding of the concept of teacher quality, this study explores the perspectives of two primary stakeholders in education in Singapore: the policymakers and the teachers. Although both groups value teachers’ role in students’ all-round development rather than mere academic achievement, they present different perspectives regarding the purpose and significance of teacher quality and its key factors. The policymakers perceive teacher quality as an apparatus for nation building and make it a target for bureaucratic control, whereas teachers consider the ‘self’ of individual teachers a key driver for quality teaching that caters to students. It is indicated that the current situation prioritizes the policymakers’ preference of productivity approach regarding teacher quality. However, this may overlook the significance of teachers’ selves and their efforts at care and student engagement, which could reduce teaching to a merely performative act.

摘要

新加坡以拥有高素质教师的高绩效国家而闻名，被认为是教育基准的典范体系。尽管如此，该系统的许多赞誉都体现了教师在提高学生成绩方面的生产力，这可以加强对系统中教师质量的部分理解。为了对教师素质的概念有更全面和平衡的理解，本研究探讨了新加坡教育的两个主要利益相关者的观点：政策制定者和教师。尽管这两个群体都重视教师在学生全面发展中的作用而不仅仅是学业成就，但他们对教师素质的目的和意义及其关键因素提出了不同的观点。政策制定者将教师质量视为国家建设的工具，并将其作为官僚控制的目标，而教师则认为教师个人的“自我”是面向学生的优质教学的关键驱动力。这表明，当前的情况优先考虑决策者对教师质量的生产力方法的偏好。然而，这可能会忽视教师自身的重要性以及他们在关怀和学生参与方面所做的努力，这可能会将教学简化为一种纯粹的表演行为。