Moving Beyond Grades to Purposeful Learning - Lessons from Singaporean Research

This book explores future directions in Singaporean education as it moves beyond its historically formative goals of survival, efficiency and performance, and its emphasis on grades and formal credentialing. It examines the future of education via the 4Life framework, a four-form model for purposeful learning centered around social-emotional regulation and the well-being of the individual learner: Life-long learning, the learning that occurs over a learner's lifespan; Life-deep learning, a deep understanding of learned content and adaptive expertise; Life-wide learning, learning in multiple contexts besides the school environment; and Life-wise learning, learning which focuses on the learner's values, morals, character and historical empathy. This book also illustrates how purposeful learning serves to equip learners with the knowledge, skills, dispositions and competencies they need to thrive as adaptive workers in the economy of the future.

Professor David Hung is currently Dean of the Office of Education Research. He is a Professor at the National Institute of Education with teaching and research interests in learning, in particular, social-cultural orientations to cognition and communities of practice. He is also Head of EduLab at the Office of Education Research, an initiative designed to surface and spread ground-up Information and Communication Technology-based pedagogical innovations. He was the former Head of Educational Research Administration and Communication, Office of Education Research. He is currently a contributing editor of Educational Technology.

Professor Hung has conducted research in Learning and Instructional Technologies, Constructivism and Social Constructivism, Learning in Communities of Practice, and other related topics in the field, in recent years. Professor Hung's publications are internationally known, and he is well-recognised in the learning sciences.