Abstract
Since Singapore became an independent republic, careful language-in-education planning that caters to the economic, social, and political development of the country has never been abated. A notable case in point is the constant reviews and reforms of the curriculum of Chinese language (CL), a school subject required of ethnic Chinese children, to respond to gradual home language shift from CL toward English, which is the medium of instruction, in the country. In 2008, a differentiated Modular Curriculum (MC) began to be implemented in all primary schools. We were subsequently commissioned by the Ministry of Education to evaluate the MC. We analyzed CL teaching materials, observed and coded CL classes, and engaged students and CL teachers through various methods. In this chapter, based on student surveys as well as a teacher survey and focus group discussions, we report some evaluation findings on how students’ interest in CL learning and use changed, how the MC and its underlying principles were perceived by teachers, and what difficulties and challenges teachers experienced under the MC. Based on the findings, we discuss the interface between sociolinguistics, curriculum innovation and reform, and language policy and planning; and underscore boundary crossing in curriculum and program evaluation toward evidence-based language-in-education planning.
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Notes
- 1.
This was not the first time that CL education was reviewed in the country. Prior to this review, two others had been conducted in 1999 and 1992, respectively (Chin, 2018).
- 2.
The project did not involve any direct testing of students’ CL competence. This was purposefully planned for two reasons, in agreement with the MOE. First, during the project period, the MC was implemented nation-wide in all primary schools (i.e., there would not be any proper control group). Thus, it would be impossible to compare CL competence or skill attainment in students under the MC against that of students under the old curriculum. Second, the goal of the MC (and the recommendations of the CLCPRC) was not to boost national achievements, benchmarked on those of any earlier cohorts of students, but to make CL learning interesting to all through setting more realistic and differentiated goals for students from different home language backgrounds.
- 3.
Teachers were collapsed into these two broad groups based on teaching experience because a large majority of them, as mentioned earlier in the Teacher Questionnaire section, were in the early years of CL teaching (0–5 years: 56.9%) and the number of teachers for each of the other ranges of teaching experience was very small.
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Acknowledgement
This chapter is based on a project funded by the Office of Education Research, National Institute of Education (NIE) (#OER52-08ZSH). We are grateful to a number of teachers and students for their participation and school principals for their support. Throughout the project, we received support from the Chinese Language team of the Curriculum Planning and Development Division of the Singapore Ministry of Education (MOE). Although the project was commissioned by the MOE and funded by NIE/MOE, any views expressed in this chapter are ours and do not represent theirs.
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Zhang, D., Zhao, S., Sun, X. (2023). Evaluating the Modular Curriculum of Chinese Language in Singapore Primary Schools: Insights from Students and Teachers. In: Zhang, D., Miller, R.T. (eds) Crossing Boundaries in Researching, Understanding, and Improving Language Education. Educational Linguistics, vol 58. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24078-2_11
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