the Standards, Productivity and Innovation Board (SPRING Singapore) will be organizing an Education Innovation conference on May 11th.
the Guest-of-Honour will be Lawrence Wong, Minister of State, Ministry of Defence & Ministry of Education.
the conference will be keynoted by Greg Marchi, Global Vice President and Managing Director, Duke Corporate Education and by Rob Morton, Asia Pacific Site Leader, Disney Institute (Singapore).
the programme for the afternoon comprises three tracks, namely 'Organisational Excellence', 'Scalable Knowledge Assets' and 'Experiential Learning'. i am very pleased to share that - thanks be to God alone - the Six Learnings curricular framework and its associated philosophical orientation of Disciplinary Intuitions will be featured in the Experiential Learning track!
truth be told, the Secondary Three students from Ang Mo Kio Secondary School will be the true heroes of the afternoon. this is because i'm pitching our session thusly:
Title: Innovation Through Intuition – The Six Learning Framework as an Example of Designing for Enduring Understanding
The Singapore workforce has sometimes been described as somewhat wanting in terms of independent thinking, articulateness, self-confidence and public-speaking ability. Human Resource workshops and Professional Development sessions go some way towards addressing the training needs of new employees. During this session, the argument will be made that in order for such workshops and training to achieve long-lasting and enduring cultural changes in mindsets and skillsets, the activities and learning environments that participants engage in must be meaningful and authentic to the staff and employees.
Using examples from an extensive school-based project co-designed by teachers and researchers from the NIE which is now in its third year of implementation, the presenters will demonstrate how the principles behind such thoughtfully designed learning environments and training activities have led to the nurturing of cohorts of independent-minded, articulate, motivated and self-directed adolescents who will be active contributors as the next generation of the Singapore workforce. Of particular note is that the project-examples shared are taken from a typical neighbourhood school and are thus broadly applicable.
The session will be structured around the Six Learnings framework for Curricular Design. This framework has been used both internationally and locally in the design of learning environments around a broad range of technological platforms, from games to immersive 3D worlds.
Three hands-on sessions of how the Six Learnings framework develops their Disciplinary Intuitions and First-Principle Understanding; these three sessions are Learning by Being, Learning by Building and Learning by Collaborating.
The idea behind this session is not so much to showcase the research being done in schools by the NIE, but instead to provide evidence to heads-of-industry that a capacity-building Human Resource training programme that pays attention to authenticity and context can indeed result in enduring understanding (say, of corporate values) and a self-motivated workforce.
