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.

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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Business Performance & Skills Survey (BPSS)
Jazreel Tan, Simon Freebody, Chia Ying, Prof Johnny Sung
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.
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Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC)
Prof Johnny Sung, Emily Low, Dr Cheng San Chye, Simon Freebody, Sheng Yee Zher, Tan Bao Zhen
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.
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