Our Curators
Ria Zita George
Chief Curator
Ria is an educator and a published researcher who has co-authored papers with education researchers from Finland & Singapore. She holds a Master's degree in Curriculum and Teaching from the prestigious Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, renowned for its cutting-edge research and curriculum in the field of education. Ria holds an MBA degree from IMT Ghaziabad. Her solid foundation in technical education is established by her B.Tech degree from NIT Calicut, a premier institution in engineering education. Her diverse and high-caliber educational background positions her uniquely in the realm of educational leadership and innovation.
Reasearch
01.
Teacher practical reasoning when implementing curriculum reforms: A case study from Singapore
Published in: Education beyond Crisis
This study based in Singapore traces teachers’ “practical reasoning ladders” based on their heuristic goal system and rational laddering, which plays important mediating roles between knowledge, beliefs, and contextual demands. The main argument of this paper is that studying teacher “practical reasoning” can contribute to a better understanding of how teachers respond to the “Teach Less Learn More” initiative in Singapore. Although this study is situated in Singapore, it touches upon the fundamental issues, such as curriculum implementation, teacher practical reasoning, and teacher agency that educational researchers, practitioners, and policymakers are concerned within many other contexts
02
An intercultural blended lesson study for teaching an in-service teacher education course: A collaborative study between Singapore and Finland teacher educators
Published in: Teacher professional learning through lesson study in virtual and hybrid environments.
In this study, the team investigated how lesson study can be adapted into a blended format to support collaborations between teacher educators who work in Singapore and the other in Finland, to explore how they themselves could grow professionally and foster student learning. In spite of the challenges, this blended lesson study project helped the team to (1) make the students' thinking more explicit via classroom assessment, (2) engage students in the critical analysis of alternative perspectives for reflecting upon their professional practices, and (3) provide feedback to the teacher educators on how to tap into different pedagogical approaches to help students find relevance between various theories and practice. The team identified four elements that fostered teacher educators' professional growth: explicating respective cultural understandings of teaching and learning, discussing student learning evidence to inform instructional decisions, hybridizing different perspectives, and intercultural reflections. These four elements formed a framework of blended intercultural lesson study for teacher educators' professional learning.