Pedagogical philosophy underpinning one-day, one-problem

Abstract

Within the overarching educational objective in Singapore of developing youth for life as confident individuals who are self-directed learners, active contributors and concerned citizens, the specialised purpose of polytechnics is training para-professional manpower for the local economy. Recognising that the broad transformation envisaged here necessarily entails a physical modification of each individual, when designing the pedagogical scheme for Republic Polytechnic, education was conceptualised as a synergistic phenomenon of co-evolutionary enculturation in a human collective in order to make better sense of reality. This was envisioned to be achievable through active engagement of learners in peer groups under the guidance of development-oriented caring individuals who have a reasonable understanding of the realities of the world in general and at least one relevant specialised economic sector in particular. The main classroom strategy is nurturing by deliberate intervention for promoting co-evolution of groups in desirable directions. The overall purpose is to enable the graduates to become adaptable to changing circumstances and remain as active participants of economic and other spheres of life, as procedural knowledge becomes obsolete over time at an ever increasing pace. Rejected are the notions that each individual has a predetermined fixed potential, mind and body are separate, and knowledge is a collection external to humans. A learning work-cycle of 1 day duration was chosen in view of the diversity of knowledge facets expected to be addressed in a diploma programme, that many human work routines follow a day-based cycle, and that it allows for focussing on a single academic activity on a given day. A problem-based learning approach was adopted for structuring the daily routine. For student assessment, significant weighting was allocated to the engagement components of the pedagogy, along with testing for subject understanding, in view of the substantial role played by interaction among individuals in their educational transformation.