Cindy Khoo is Director, Strategic Planning, at the Singapore Prime Minister’s Office – Strategy Group. She is also concurrently Director, Futures; and Director, Corporate Planning & Organisation Development.

She started her career in the Singapore Public Service in the Ministry of Trade and Industry as a trade officer. Since then she has handled multiple portfolios in the Ministry of Health, Prime Minister’s Office – Public Service Division and Ministry of Education.

Prior to joining the Singapore Public Service, she worked in SembCorp Logistics in Shanghai. She holds a B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering and an A.B. in Political Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and a Master in Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

About the session

How can we adequately prepare our students for an unknown future? What essential values, skills and knowledge will help them thrive? Short of accurately predicting it, we can identify some key forces shaping the future of education and work. Shifts in technology, geopolitics and society have led to new knowledge infrastructures and changing learner demographics. What if learning is increasingly decentralised, digital or gamified? What if learners have more diverse life-stages, learning objectives or cultural backgrounds? Let’s take a peek into the future and explore what this could mean for why, how and what we teach.

Mdm Lim Puay Yin was appointed Master Teacher of Geography in 2016. An educator for more than 20 years, she has held various positions including School Staff Developer and Head of Department, at Cedar Girls’ Secondary School, Dunman High School and Raffles Girls’ School (Secondary). Puay Yin is passionate about geography education, and teacher growth and development. Her interests are in learning and teaching for conceptual understanding, curriculum design, Socratic questioning, Hilda Taba’s teaching strategies, formative assessment, and interdisciplinary learning and teaching. A certified Concept-Based Curriculum & Instruction facilitator, Puay Yin works with teachers to develop quality learning and teaching in Singapore classrooms. She has presented workshops at the Australian Geography Teachers Association (AGTA) Conference in 2019 and Geographical Association (GA) Conference in Sheffield, UK, in 2018. Prior to becoming Master Teacher, Mdm Lim Puay Yin was Assistant Director, Professional Development, at Academy of Singapore Teachers. She has been a research assistant at Project Zero’s Interdisciplinary Learning and Teaching Project, Head/Special Projects at Curriculum Policy and Pedagogy Unit, and a geography curriculum officer at Curriculum Planning and Development Division. She has a Master of Education (Learning & Teaching) from Harvard University Graduate School of Education.

About the session

This session examines the teacher’s role as a designer of learning. Should lessons be about the teaching of facts? Or should lessons open with questions to be examined by the teacher and the students? To develop 21^st century competencies, teachers should model thinking by framing learning around important concepts - those fundamental to their disciplines and those that cut across disciplines. Big ideas and key questions drive inquiry and help students to appreciate the world, and consider how humans can be more of a solution and less of a problem, particularly in view of the need to live sustainably. As knowledge expands, teachers need not profess to know everything. Instead, they can learn along with their students and make space for students’ voice by gathering their points of view and how they think.