Innovations in Educational Change

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xx

   PDF

2. Innovation and Change from the Chronological View

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1

      PDF

   2. Centralised-Decentralisation in Singapore Education Policymaking

      • Paul Meng-Huat Chua, Yancy Toh, Sujin He, Azilawati Jamaludin, David Hung

      Pages 3-21

   3. Transforming Education for All: Tower Hamlets and Urban District Education Improvement

      • Chris Brown, Chris Husbands, David Woods

      Pages 23-38

3. Innovation and Change from the Systems View

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 39-39

      PDF

   2. Wide-Scale Implementation Through Capacity Building of Senior Leaders: The Case of Teaching Thinking in Israeli Schools

      • Anat Zohar

      Pages 41-63

   3. Spreading Educational Technology Innovations: Cultivating Communities

      • Fei Victor Lim, Yew Meng Kwan, Meng Leng Poh

      Pages 65-83

   4. Towards a Framework of Diffusing Education Innovations at Different Levels of the System

      • Imran Shaari, David Hung, Yusuf Osman

      Pages 85-102

   5. Community-Based Design Research to Sustain Classroom Innovation with ICT

      • Chew Lee Teo

      Pages 103-118

4. Innovation and Change from the School View

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 119-119

      PDF

   2. Negotiating Policy Meanings in School Administrative Practice: Practice, Professionalism, and High-Stakes Accountability in a Shifting Policy Environment

      • James Spillane, Lauren Anderson

      Pages 121-145

   3. School Orientation to Teacher Learning and the Cultivation of Ecologies for Innovation: A National Study of Teachers in England

      • David Pedder, V. Darleen Opfer

      Pages 147-179

   4. Seeding Change: Growing and Sustaining a School’s Culture of Innovativeness

      • Shu-Shing Lee, Peter Seow, David Hung

      Pages 181-203

   5. Diffusing Innovative Pedagogies in Schools in Singapore: Case Studies on School Leaders’ Diffusion Approaches and Their Rationalisations

      • Jun Song Huang

      Pages 205-222

5. Innovation and Change from the Classroom and Learner’s View

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 223-223

      PDF

   2. Exploring the Change in Nature and Efficacy of Learners’ Questions Through Progressive Interaction with the Stanford Mobile Inquiry-based Learning Environment (SMILE)

      • Kenneth Y. T. Lim, Bing Heng Song, Matthew Xiang Kho

      Pages 225-251

   3. Exploring the Dimensions of Interest Sustainability (5Cs Framework): Case Study of Nathan

      • Aik Lim Tan, David Hung, Azilawati Jamaludin

      Pages 253-276

   4. Conclusion: Tenets for Cultivating Ecologies: Towards Sustaining Innovations and Self-Improving Schools

      • David Hung, Shu-Shing Lee, Azilawati Jamaludin, Yancy Toh, Longkai Wu

      Pages 277-290

6. Back Matter

   Pages 291-295

   PDF

This book offers an ecological perspective to understand the opportunities and complexities of spreading and sustaining educational innovations. It explores the imperatives underpinning educational reforms and identifies the role of schools in developing, disseminating, and sustaining changes in Singapore’s educational context. It also includes international case studies that examine the dialectical relationships between structure, people and culture and demonstrate that cultivating ecologies involves leveraging affordances and resources across the education system to create new contexts, synergies and capacities. Further, it argues that educational innovations and reforms also need to consider tacit knowledge and conditions of transfer, which may be ambiguous and challenging.


Few books address the nuances and interactions of innovation and change across levels of the education ecology – from the micro (classroom), meso (organisation / school), exo (partners), macro (policy) and chrono (time scales) levels. The ecological perspective adopted in this book explores the dynamic tensions in order to understand the interplays of policy and school-level influences that contextualize school innovations. By presenting multiple voices and views, it allows impediments and affordances of innovation diffusion to be discussed holistically, which is an integral caveat for nurturing a sustainable ecology that enables innovations.

• Scaling and diffusion
• Singapore education system
• school ecology
• school reforms
• school-based innovations
• systemic studies

• Nanyang Technological University, National Institute of Education, Singapore, Singapore

  David Hung, Shu-Shing Lee, Yancy Toh, Azilawati Jamaludin, Longkai Wu

David Hung is Dean of Education Research at the National Institute of Education, Singapore. He has served as Contributing Editor and Associate Editor for several well-read international academic publications in the learning sciences field and appointed as journal reviewer for various well-established international academic journals. His research interests are in learning and instructional technologies; constructivism, in particular, social constructivism; social cultural orientations to cognition; and communities of practice.

Shu-Shing Lee is a Research Scientist at the NIE, Singapore. Her research interests include teacher learning as well as understanding contextual factors and leverages for spreading and sustaining technology-mediated educational innovations. 


Yancy Toh was a Research Scientist at the Centre for Research in Pedagogy and Practice (CRPP), Office of Education Research (OER). Her research interests include leadership studies, school reforms, innovation diffusion, complex systems, and seamless learning. She is particularly interested in examining the systemic influences that impinge on a school’s capacity to sustain technology-enabled pedagogical innovations for student-centred learning.

Azilawati Jamaludin is an Assistant Professor at the Curriculum, Teaching and Learning Academic Group, National Institute of Education. Her research interests include progressive pedagogies, reform pedagogies, institutional innovations, gamification, game-based interactivity, immersive environments, argumentative knowledge construction, trans-contextual learning, embodiment, embodied knowing, embodied subjectivities, trajectories of becoming, and construction of self.

Longkai Wu is a Research Scientist at the NIE, Singapore. His current research focuses on the design and implementation of technology-enhanced learning activities in classroomsthat help students develop deeper understanding.

Policies and ethics