MOE Primary School Design Standard:  Improving Learning Outcome through Advancing Teachers' Well-Being

DESIGN RESEARCH, TEACHER ENGAGEMENT & CO-DESIGN  |   DEGW  x  MINISTRY OF EDUCATION OF  SINGAPORE (2011)

BACKGROUND  | As part of Singapore’s effort to break away from its entrenched exam-driven education, the Ministry of Education (MOE) launched the Primary Education Review & Implementation Committee (PERI) to identify and implement new enablers for holistic childhood education.  Whereas the traditional approach would focus on teaching methods and classroom technology, this pilot school project adopted a participatory approach, looked beyond the physical classroom, and uncovered a critical bottleneck in schools’ support for out-of-classroom pupil-teacher relationship and teachers’ “backstage” experience.  

PROCESS |  Kicked off with an envisioning workshop to gauge stakeholders' change appetite and align their interests. There we discovered a certain hesitation in the teachers to express their individual feelings and point-of-views concerning their working condition in the presence of management. To address this fear, we tapped into their collectivism and drawing skills.  After the follow-up ethnographic study of daily routines, we asked the teachers to help us contextualize our observations by drawing a mind map in group.  The result was an octopus that exposed their frustration with the supporting environment.  We then expanded this “collective” approach into a group paper prototyping workshop that produced three design concepts.  

RESULT  | A brand new Teachers Hub integrated as part of the larger school environment that supports teachers’ basic needs, social experience, teacher-pupil interaction, peer-to-peer learning and external collaboration. The Teacher’s Hub has been incorporated into MOE’s new design norm of primary schools and rolled out across new school building projects.

PUPIL-TEACHER INTERACTIVITY OUTSIDE CLASS was previously neglected as teachers were inaccessible behind closed doors

P2P LEARNING COMMUNITY FOR TEACHERS  through new collaborative/project settings that make cross-school exchange & roundtables easy