Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://scholarbank.nus.edu.sg/handle/10635/223868
Title: EXPANDED EDUCATION: TOWARDS A NEW LEARNING ENVIRONMENT IN SINGAPORE
Authors: SARAH CAROLYN GERRARD
Keywords: Architecture
Design Track
DT
Master (Architecture)
Tay Kheng Soon
2013/2014 Aki DT
Co-operative learning
Education
School
Issue Date: 25-Jul-2014
Citation: SARAH CAROLYN GERRARD (2014-07-25). EXPANDED EDUCATION: TOWARDS A NEW LEARNING ENVIRONMENT IN SINGAPORE. ScholarBank@NUS Repository.
Abstract: The thesis looks towards a new learning environment in Singapore, where the school is no longer an isolated institute, but an expanded educational centre, which incorporates fundamental curriculum with local businesses, industries, community interest groups within the surrounding neighbourhoods, to foster a society that is connected on a fundamental level through learning and sharing, promoting a self-sustaining and co-dependent community. The philosophy behind the thesis is that in order for society to survive and thrive in Singapore’s diversifying, enlarging and aging future, education must transform, to encompass and engage the local businesses and communities, to offer an education that leads to more adaptable and creative mindsets. The school can no longer be isolated from the community but must be utilized as an asset to enhance the local community identity, through supporting businesses and interest groups, while in turn harnessing the educational potential of these local assets to nourish the education process, creating a self-sustaining society. The current educational system in Singapore is based off of the traditional model which has been in employed in educational institutions across the world since the early school buildings of the Lancastrian Model in the United Kingdom in 1811, with the teacher as the reciter of knowledge, and the students as the recipients, there to absorb said knowledge. Today absorbed knowledge of fact is not enough to compete in the ever advancing and changing world. “The school has been set apart, so isolated from the ordinary conditions and motives of life, [it] is the one place in the world where it is most difficult to get experience.”1 The school must now be a place where students are offered a variety of experiences and learning environments, in which fundamental curriculum is communicated through the understanding of real life, where knowledge is based off of application and exploration, through a more experiential and engaged pedagogy. This thesis looks to tackle the “isolation of the school, it’s isolation from life.”2 through exploring the educational potential in Singapore’s neighborhoods and developing a pilot school, on the site of the existing Henderson Secondary School, which promotes the inclusion of local businesses and the community, to create a more interconnected and expanded education centre at the heart of the community, which aims to promote young entrepreneurs, and local businesses, which in turn will nurture and mold the future of the community and school.
URI: https://scholarbank.nus.edu.sg/handle/10635/223868
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