Our Research
As an institute that champions excellence in Continuing Education and Training, IAL undertakes research projects that examine the various aspects of adult learning and development. The data we gather and the results we analyse enable us to further the advancement of the CET sector in Singapore, and inform policy making and decisions.
Building Singapore’s Talent Pipeline: Understanding the Structures of Opportunity in Corporate Talent Management
Prof Philip Brown, Prof Hugh Lauder, Prof Johnny Sung, Dr Manuel Souto-Otero, Sahara Sadik and Eric Lee
Observations of talent shortage at the higher end of Singapore’s labour market often lead to the assumption that there are particular skill gaps or ‘talent deficit’ in locals. This comparative research on talent management in 30 corporations in Singapore, China and India puts forth an alternative explanation. Rather than any actual ‘talent deficit’ of Singaporeans, the study found that the perceived talent shortage is linked to companies’ ‘War for Talent’ recruitment strategies that rely on elite university systems. Singapore’s fairly flat university system does not signal to companies the elite base that companies can target, leading to Singapore graduates not being favourably positioned as talent in companies. India and China, on the other hand, have a small pool of elite universities that companies can target easily using their ‘War for Talent’ strategies, creating the pipeline of sponsored talent on a trajectory to top jobs. Moreover, local knowledge commands a significant premium in India and China, in contrast to Singapore’s plug-and-play business environment. An expedient but short-sighted response to a ‘War for Talent’ corporate talent strategy is to shift the university system in Singapore towards higher levels of elitism, as is the case with the university systems in India and China. However, this flies in the face of creating a more inclusive society and shared economic prosperity that sit at the heart of SkillsFuture. A sustainable way forward for Singapore is to give due focus to transformational strategies that shift the local corporate landscape towards more inclusive talent approaches. There is now an excellent window of opportunity to do so, as rapidly changing contexts have undermined the efficacy of ‘War for Talent’ strategies.
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Dialogical Teaching: Investigating Awareness of Inquiry and Knowledge Co-Construction among Adult Learners engaged in Dialogic Inquiry
Dr Helen Bound and Assoc Prof Tan Seng Chee
To compete in the knowledge economy of the 21st century, organizations need to innovate and develop new capabilities to harness values of knowledge resources (Carlucci, 2014). Consequently, education of the workforce must adapt to the new business environments in the knowledge economy. In Singapore, the key goals suggested by the Committee on the Future Economy (2017) include the need for workers to develop and apply deep skills and strengthening enterprise abilities to innovate and scale up innovative practices. It is thus imperative to identify and improve adult learning approaches that can enhance the capacity of our workers to be innovative and productive knowledge workers. A promising approach is dialogic teaching, which refers to “a pedagogical approach that involves students in the collaborative construction of meaning and is characterized by shared control over the key aspects of classroom discourse.” (Reznitskaya & Gregory, 2013, p. 114) It gives learners agency and control over their learning processes and topics for inquiry, and more critically, engages them in collaborative meaning making and tapping into their rich experiences as resources for learning. Dialogical inquiry, knowledge building and co-construction, all aspects of this study, are important future readiness capabilities. Yet, research on a dialogic approach to adult learning is limited, internationally and locally. This qualitative project collects a rich range of data from two courses in two different Masters programs conducted at NIE, NTU to address the following research questions: i. How do adult learners in formal graduate courses 1 develop awareness of their inquiry and how do they co-construct knowledge? ii. How do adult learners perceive the relevance and effectiveness of dialogical approach to teaching and learning? iii. What are the implications of the dialogical approach for the practices of adult educators?
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Understanding Adult Learners’ Sense-making to Inform Pedagogical Innovations in Blended Learning
Dr Bi Xiaofang
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.
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