Our Research

The project investigates Singapore adult learners’ learning experiences in blended learning environments focusing on how they ‘experience’ and ‘made sense of’ their learning in and across blended environments and the implications of these processes for pedagogical practices and beliefs. Sense-making is the process by which people give meaning to experience. Such processes contribute to knowledge building, construction and co-construction of knowledge. Besides, the structuring or architecture of different environments can facilitate reflection, and collaboration or can shut it down. Such an understanding of the spaces of learning not only potentially enables us to understand how learners sense make and embody practices, but also their interaction with the spaces in their journey of transformation of understanding, identity and agency.

This project consists of two studies. First, is a comparative analysis on the extent and nature of 'graduate jobs' using the Skills and Learning Study (SLS) and UK skills data. Second, the study investigates the lifelong learning systems and their effects on changes in skills levels and distributions during Upper Secondary and Tertiary Education and Training. This is a comparative project with quantitative and qualitative components. The quantitative component makes use of the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) data and the qualitative component will require qualitative interviews on policy and practice in Singapore.

This project consists of two studies. First, is a comparative analysis on the extent and nature of 'graduate jobs' using the Skills and Learning Study (SLS) and UK skills data. Second, the study investigates the lifelong learning systems and their effects on changes in skills levels and distributions during Upper Secondary and Tertiary Education and Training. This is a comparative project with quantitative and qualitative components. The quantitative component makes use of the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) data and the qualitative component will require qualitative interviews on policy and practice in Singapore.

This study provides a new approach to study skills demand via workplace data. It identifies why and how workplaces demand high skills, paying particular attention to institutional logics (i.e. sectoral environment) that encourage certain business strategies. The analysis will provide information that are critical to the development of the sectoral intervention policy, including workplace quality, leadership quality and management quality, training intensity, skills gaps and future skills needs. Some of these variables will be analysed in conjunction with organisational performance, and will therefore provide an assessment on skills impact.

PIAAC is an initiative of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) that assists governments in assessing, monitoring and analysing the level and distribution of skills among their adult populations as well as the extent of skills use in different contexts.

Current assessment practice in CET is still resource-intensive. Efforts at increasing the productivity of the assessment processes while maintaining rigour and authenticity have not resulted in notable advancements. This study will seek to find out how such processes can be improved by looking into the relationship between assessment design, CET curriculum and learning facilitation and platforms used for assessment; enhancers and barriers to innovative approaches to assessment. It will also look into the experience of assessment for learners, AEs, designers, assessors, providers and employers; future assessment policy and practice in the Singapore CET sector.

This project builds on a model of curriculum developed by Peter Rushbrook (see Bound, Rushbrook & Sivalingam, 2013) that in this report we call the Institute for Adult Learning (IAL) Design Approach (IDeA) Model. The present researchers (Bound and Choy, in consultation with Rushbrook) envisage the model as a tool for designers and facilitators of learning to reflect on their assumptions about curriculum, learning and learners. However, participants also identified many other potential applications, including for structured continuing professional development and as a communication tool at all stages of curriculum development. Given the changing landscape and focus of the continuing education and training sector, these suggestions offer considerable potential to facilitate change; indeed some described the model and heuristic as potentially “transformational”.

This research seeks to know how workers learn as much of the formal provisions for learning and career enhancement are designed for those in stable, ongoing employment with an employer as opposed to many employers. To this end this study asks the following research questions: 1. In what ways does the experience of precarious work contribute to or constrain the learning of these workers? 2. How do precarious workers identify with their work and how does this influence learning opportunities? 3. How can the learning of precarious workers be supported and enhanced?

Locally, the practice of adult education is growing and changing, thus leading to heightened diversity. As such, information regarding AEs in Singapore is sparse and quickly obsolete. Committed investigation is necessary to provide more useful information on AEs.The aim of this research project was to develop a typology of adult educators (AEs) and corresponding careers in Singapore.