Title: Designing Quality Authentic Assessment

Author: Tay Hui Yong (2018)

This first title of the series on Assessment in Schools: Principles in Practice aims to make assessment theory accessible by explaining its implications and applications in practice, providing guidance on designing and implementing quality assessment practices, and giving authentic examples from current practices. Editors of this series include Dr Tay, A/P Kelvin Tan and Prof Valentina Klenowski of Queensland University of Technology, Australia. This book seeks to answer the following questions: What is Authentic Assessment? How is authentic assessment different from 'performance assessment' or 'alternative assessment'? How can authentic assessment support learner-centred education, especially when a performance-oriented culture favours pen-and- paper examinations?

Title: The Cambridge Handbook of Instructional Feedback

Editors: Anastasiya Lipnevich and Jeffrey Smith (2018)

This book brings together leading scholars from around the world to provide their most influential thinking on instructional feedback. The chapters range from academic, in-depth reviews of the research on instructional feedback to a case study on how feedback altered the life-course of one author. Furthermore, it features critical subject areas - including mathematics, science, music, and even animal training - and focuses on working at various developmental levels of learners. The affective, non-cognitive aspects of feedback are also targeted; such as how learners react emotionally to receiving feedback. The exploration of the theoretical underpinnings of how feedback changes the course of instruction leads to practical advice on how to give such feedback effectively in a variety of diverse contexts. Anyone interested in researching instructional feedback, or providing it in their class or course, will discover why, when, and where instructional feedback is effective and how best to provide it.

Title: Curriculum Designs for Teachers, by Teachers

(This book is available in NIE Popular Bookstore.)

Editors: Christina Lim-Ratnam, Lucy Fernandez and Mardiana Abu Bakar (2018)

This book is the second compilation of the Curriculum Projects that have been successfully completed by recent cohorts of Management and Leadership in Schools (MLS). Together with Volume 1, this book adds to the collective effort made by Singapore educators in taking up the challenge of developing curricula that would better respond to the needs and interests of students, while referencing the appropriate theories. The book features the following chapter on a project that may be of particular interest, Enhancing the implementation of leadership competencies assessment tool (CAT): A college-wide approach. The project drew upon the Nicholls Model of Curriculum Design which views curriculum design as a continual process that invites feedback and uses it to direct improvements to the design, in this case, of the hosting school's existing Student Leadership CAT. The chapter offers useful points of reference for schools wishing to design and implement its own student leadership development programme.

Title: Curriculum Leadership by Middle Leaders

Editors: Kelvin Tan , Mary Anne Heng , and Christina Lim-Ratnam (2017)

This book focusses on major issues relating to the continuing national and international discourse on curriculum leadership, and highlights the vital role of middle leaders in schools. School leadership has focused primarily on first-order change involving school leaders or principals. This book seeks to put the spotlight on second-order change that involves curriculum leadership and professional development support on the part of middle leaders for more sustainable and long-term change in teaching and learning that will influence what happens in classrooms. With timely and thought-provoking contribution from authors who pursue a range of scholarly interests in multiple educational settings, the book is guided by several underlying questions:

• How might we re-envision curriculum leadership so that it addresses both local and global concerns and aspirations?
• How might we better grasp how middle leaders understand and respond to the pressures of educational reform initiatives?
• How might middle leaders transform pressures into possibilities?

This book will appeal to current teachers, those currently undertaking teacher training and students or academics carrying out research in the field of educational leadership.

Title: Assessment and Learning in Schools

Editors: Leong Wei Shin, Kelvin Tan and Cheng Yuanshan (2015)

The book is a core reading for several NIE assessment courses. It covers an ambitious array of assessment issues and ideas, by addressing central and recurring assessment practices and challenges from diverse perspectives.

The chapters include:

• Purposes and Ethics of Classroom Assessment
• Crafting Assessment Items
• Assessment Rubrics for Learning
• Item Analysis
• Assessment in Non-Cognitive Domains
• Assessing 21st-Century Skills
• Technology and Assessment

Contributors to the book include faculty from three different Academic Groups of NIE: Curriculum, Teaching and Learning (CTL); Psychological Studies (PS); Policy and Leadership Studies (PLS). The variety of theories and perspectives provide educators with practicable access to assessment expertise and scholarship, and inform and equip teachers to address the varied assessment and learning challenges in schools.

Title: Knowledge, Control and Critical Thinking in Singapore

Author: Leonel Lim (2015)

This book was awarded the Critics’ Choice Book Award by the American Educational Studies Association. This monograph which grew out of the author's PhD research on critical thinking in Singapore schools explores issues around the sociology of curriculum. It examines how critical thinking is regulated in Singapore through the process of what the influential sociologist of education Basil Bernstein termed "pedagogic recontextualization". The ability of critical thinking to speak to alternative possibilities and individual autonomy as well as its assumptions of a liberal arrangement of society is problematized in Singapore’s socio-political climate. By examining how such curricular discourses are taken up and enacted in the classrooms of two schools that cater to very different groups in society, the book foregrounds the role of traditional high-status knowledge in the elaboration of class formation and develops a critical understanding of post-developmental state initiatives linked to the parable of modernization in Singapore.

Title: Curriculum Designs For Teachers, By Teachers

Editors: Christina Lim-Ratnam, Lucy Fernandez and Mardiana Abu Bakar (2014)

The first foray into the editing of a professional book based on the MLS Curriculum Projects. Practitioners will not only be able to use the ideas and possibilities gleaned from here but be inspired to reframe and redesign their own curricula as the MLS teams have done.

The book also features this chapter which may be of interest to you:

Leong, W.S. (2014). Assessment with Teaching and Learning: Promises, Problems and Proposals for Practice. In C. Ratnam, L. Fernandez, and M. Bakar (Eds.), Curriculum Designs for Teachers by Teachers, (pp.77-104). Singapore:Pearson.

“FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT CANNOT BE THOUGHT OF JUST AS A PRACTICE TO BE INSERTED IN THE LESSON, BUT RATHER AS COMPLEX EDUCATIONAL AND SOCIAL PROCESSES WITHIN DIFFERENT CLASSROOMS.”

Title: Curriculum and Assessment: A Narrative Approach

Author: Robyn Ewing (2010)

Publisher: Oxford University Press

There are many books on curriculum and assessment, but this book takes a different approach by looking at these two areas through their interrelationships or common 'storylines' and the major characters who shaped thinking in these areas. This narrative approach makes it very accessible reading. The first four chapters are probably of greater interest to our Singapore teachers: 1. Towards some definitions of curriculum and assessment 2. Conflicting ideologies: objectives or outcomes? 3. Implementing the curriculum: a question of quality 4. Evaluation and assessment storylines. But the other chapters will also provoke some reflection e.g., Chapter 5 on inequity of educational opportunity.