(Source:Shanghai Education•Global Education News,China Higher Education Training Center subscription number,June 17, 2021)
Singapore is one of the important service and shipping centers in Asia and the fourth largest international financial center in the world. As a multicultural country of immigrants, its higher education has formed a complete system after only more than 40 years of development. As a model of higher education in Singapore, Nanyang Technological University's high-quality education and excellent management results have attracted the favor of many overseas students. Singapore's talent-seeking policy has made a large number of talents willing to stay and work in Singapore after graduation. This has not only effectively promoted the development and progress of Singapore's economy, but also accumulated a diversified talent team.
The National Institute of Education (NIE) of Nanyang Technological University was established in July 1991, but its history can be traced back to the Teachers' Training College established in 1950. NIE is an independent college of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the only teacher education college in Singapore. It is responsible for teacher education at all levels in Singapore, providing primary and secondary teacher preparation courses, as well as training courses for in-service teachers, department heads and principals. NIE trains undergraduate, master's and doctoral students in multiple majors, including general education, mother tongue education, music education, art education, family education, physical education, special education, algebra, cognitive psychology and developmental psychology, comparative literature, and postcolonial literature. As the only teacher training college in Singapore, NIE has been committed to providing students with high-quality pre-service training and in-service teacher professional development training for many years. At the same time, it also provides research and consulting services to the education sector in Singapore and the region with its superior soft and hard conditions. The addition of NIE has enabled Nanyang Technological University to rapidly develop into a comprehensive university with both liberal arts and sciences, and has become one of the top 50 institutions of higher learning in the world according to QS. This truly reflects its educational spirit of "innovating high technology to establish a globally outstanding university; providing all-round education to cultivate interdisciplinary liberal arts talents".
NIE’s “Tree Roots” Quality Assurance System
The concept of "tree roots set the foundation" comes from the Confucian "Confucius Family Sayings". Confucius said: "If you can manage a country like this, even if you want to insult it, how can you achieve it? Since Zhou Dynasty, Houji has accumulated many deeds. Merit is due to the noble land, and Gong Liu pays attention to benevolence. When it comes to the Taiwang Tufu, he is willing to be virtuous, and his roots are rooted in Yu Yu. Houji, Gongliu, Danfu, etc. all valued benevolence, accumulated good deeds, accumulated merits, and transformed the people with virtue. Only when this foundation was established was the rule of the Zhou Dynasty. "Basic Mo" thinking is an important way of thinking in ancient Chinese philosophy, and was also used and elaborated by Confucius. When he discussed benevolence and various thoughts and opinions related to benevolence, "Basic Mo" thinking ran through it, that is, he used the basic theory to analyze problems and draw opinions. Take the trunk as the basis and the branches as the ends. Then, applying the philosophical thinking of "rooting the foundation" in the teaching quality concept can well clarify the fundamental tasks of teaching quality assurance.
The quality concept of “Treating the roots” has become the quality goal of every faculty member at NIE, allowing them to psychologically and behaviorally adhere to the institution’s unified quality concept to conduct teaching and academic research, and achieve the goal of common progress through sharing and academic interaction among faculty and staff.
NIE divides education quality into product quality, teaching quality and institutional quality (see Figure 1). Gradually transitioning from the original quality control to quality assurance, effective teaching quality assurance is the systematic measurement of the prevention of errors compared with set standards, monitoring processes and feedback loops. Problems that may arise in teaching should be prevented and corrected at the source. NIE's fundamental definition of teaching quality is very clear, which is to cultivate educational professionals. Based on the comprehensive quality assurance theory, the preset curriculum plans and curriculum standards will be continuously improved through implementation, observation, feedback, reflection, re-planning, re-implementation, re-observation, re-feedback and re-reflection, so that students can better master educational methods, educational concepts and educational technologies in NIE, and provide educational generalists to the education sector.
Product quality.Product quality is student quality, which is mainly composed of student participation quality and academic quality. Guide students to participate in classroom interaction during the learning process, emphasize thinking, collaboration, and expression, diversify evaluation of students' learning results, and cultivate innovative teaching and education management talents with good character, cross-cultural communication skills, self-learning ability, and strong sense of citizenship.
Teaching quality.Mainly composed of professional expertise, academic authority, and student feedback. Singapore cherishes and loves talents. NIE attaches great importance to the introduction of teaching talents and has a strict set of recruitment and employment standards. For the majors and courses offered by NIE, experts and professors from related majors from world-renowned universities such as Harvard University and Cambridge University are introduced to participate in w88 casino teaching and academic management. NIE pays attention to continuous academic research, and the sharing and promotion mechanism among teachers allows teachers to have a good working and academic atmosphere. It pays attention to students' evaluation and feedback of teachers' teaching, constantly adjusts teaching methods through diversified evaluation mechanisms, and cultivates students' critical thinking and problem-solving abilities with problem-oriented teaching methods. The bilingual and even multilingual abilities of experts and professors have also promoted NIE's service scope to become international. More and more educators come to NIE for training and academic visits.
Institutional quality.NIE takes serving students, improving work procedures, paying attention to employee performance, and improving facility functions as the core of its educational quality. Studying at NIE can directly experience its complete curriculum, substantial course content, professional professors and instructors, advanced teaching concepts, information-based learning environment, and rich academic atmosphere.
NIE’s teaching quality management strategy
NIE's teaching quality management strategy is to pursue excellent quality management goals and do its best to provide every student with an excellent education and management training system to ensure that students can cope with various challenges in the education industry in the future, thereby contributing to Singapore's education, technology, economy and social development. Through its transformative and inspiring teaching methods and its leadership in the three pillars of the teaching system, namely rapid response, excellent teaching quality and effective linkage mechanisms, NIE has provided Singapore's education system with batch after batch of educators with solid professional knowledge, critical thinking and forward-looking ideas.
The "response" proposed in the three pillars of the NIE teaching system emphasizes the ability of the college to respond in a timely manner to changes in internal and external demands. External "response" refers to responding to society's expectations and needs for educational talents in accordance with the development trend of economic globalization, designing and planning market-oriented courses and majors that meet social talent needs, and providing education and management talents to the Singapore education system; internal "response" aims to continuously adjust the teaching and management model according to the development needs of NIE, take student development as its own responsibility, and continue to enhance the competitiveness and influence of NIE based on national needs.
Excellent teaching quality is guaranteed through comprehensive teaching quality management, a sound teaching quality assurance system and an efficient teaching management system. Its teaching quality assurance system covers course quality management, examination management, diversified evaluation and efficient ICT-BASED technology. Scientific and rigorous internal and external evaluations can effectively improve the w88 casino's quality concept, promote better w88 casino management processes, improve teachers' teaching abilities, and thus continuously improve teaching quality.
The Ministry of Education of Singapore and Nanyang Technological University insist on using the latest evaluation theory, combined with hiring consultants, experts and off-campus professional evaluation institutions to improve and innovate work models and continuously improve work effectiveness. They evaluate and review the teaching quality from the aspects of teaching results, teaching methods, teaching deployment, teaching evaluation and review, etc., constantly adjust teaching methods, improve teaching capabilities, and achieve the purpose of consolidating teaching results.
The effective linkage mechanism comes from NIE's efficient matrix organizational structure (see Figure 2), which promotes the linkage mechanism between various teaching departments and administrative departments, and improves the efficiency of teaching quality management and administrative management. There is no barrier to communication between departments, and each department performs its duties. Teaching and management plans are decided through academic meetings, administrative meetings, etc., and adjustment plans or reform goals are confirmed through task emails from the relevant academic and administrative heads of the college. Under the established goals, complete functional tasks such as domestic and overseas enrollment, orderly teaching, scientific research and innovation, academic seminars, international cooperation and student services.
NIE’s teaching quality assurance internal audit process
NIE has a set of continuously improving academic quality assurance procedures - the internal audit mechanism, which aims to promptly correct inappropriate teaching behaviors or evaluation mechanisms based on the changing teaching status. This assurance process improves the current teaching behavior or academic evaluation mechanism through background research, problem summary, solution proposal, and implementation standards and processes. NIE pays special attention to the confidentiality of test questions in the examination management process, which is also the main manifestation of NIE's fair evaluation of student outcomes and management of the entire teaching process.
In July 2011, the academic department of NIE received an internal audit report from Price Waterhouse Coopers. The internal auditor submitted an internal audit report on examination management to NIE through data analysis of the circulation of test questions, the process of examination paper review and the scoring standards during the examination process. It is hoped that the academic department will rectify the examination paper circulation and scoring workflow. The suggestions are as follows:
1. Before submitting the official examination papers, the instructor should tear the replaced papers into pieces and discard them to reduce the possibility of leakage of the papers. Before the exam begins, only one photocopy of the exam paper will be printed and handed over to the Examinations Office for safekeeping.
2. The marking teacher should independently check the accuracy of the examination score marking, and should mark the marking comments on the examination answer book to facilitate marking standards, error verification and accountability.
3. The marking teacher should sign his or her name on the answer book to indicate that the answers have been commented and the comments have been listed on the scoring form to facilitate re-review and accountability by the internal auditor. Teachers should keep course annotations, internal mark lists, and examination transcripts, and implementation standards between academic groups should be consistent.
4. According to Nanyang Technological University’s regulations on examination management, examination papers should be retained for one year.
Examination quality management is an important part of the w88 casino's internal teaching quality assurance system. From the perspective of the components of the teaching quality assurance system, it is necessary to build a systematic and complete college examination quality management mechanism through effective publicity and training, detailed question scoring standards and rigorous examination process management, efficient information technology support and timely information communication and feedback.
NIE’s teaching quality assurance internal audit program’s mechanism for implementing internal audit reports is worth learning from. After the department heads of each department receive the internal auditor’s report, they will send it to every relevant teacher as soon as possible. Discussion and study of the internal audit report in subsequent teaching meetings organized by each department is an indispensable item on the meeting agenda. After the meeting, based on the content of the internal audit report, the person in charge of each course collected the improvement content of the teachers in their respective courses and compiled it into an improvement report, which was submitted to the superior department of the course through the department head. For graduate courses, submit to the Graduate w88 casino. In the subsequent semester teaching process, each course leader will follow up the contents of the rectification report one by one, discuss the problems and gains in the improvement process with the teachers, and evaluate the effectiveness of the improvement mainly based on teachers' feelings and student feedback.
From the above internal auditor report on examination management, it is found that NIE's internal audit working mechanism covers the supervision and review of the entire teaching process, provides timely correction and improvement in examination quality management work, and also provides improvement suggestions for the planning and implementation of the next stage of teaching and management work, thus promoting the continuous improvement of teaching quality standards, helping teachers to continuously standardize teaching processes, unify quality standards, and achieve consistent teaching quality goals.
