Diffusion in the Use of Teacher-designed Mathematics Instructions Materials in Singapore Schools: A School-level and Domain-specific Analysis

LEONG Yew Hoong, CHOY Ban Heng and CHIN Sze Looi

National Institute of Education
Nanyang Technological University
Singapore

Published in The Mathematician Educator, 2023, Vol 4, No. 1, pp 1-22.

Abstract

Successful diffusion of innovation at scale is hard to find, much less one that originates from ‘the ground’. In recent years, the practice of Secondary Mathematics teachers in Singapore designing and using teacher-designed instructional materials (known as “worksheets” locally) has become pervasive across many schools. It is an “innovation” that was not driven by policy mandates; rather, the initiation and spread started from the schools. Taking an oral history approach to elicit recollections from main actors who lived through the spread of worksheet-use in the schools they worked in, this paper is a report of the diffusion processes in these schools. Non-trivial insights can be gleaned from these experiences that may potentially inform efforts to spread domain-specific educational innovations at scale.

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