ST80 Guest Editor’s Note

As educators, we always wonder what kinds of learners we should develop in order for them to excel in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) future. Since the future is unknown to teachers now, it is impossible for teachers to teach students all the knowledge and skills they need in the future. So, what can teachers do to prepare for future-ready learners?

To respond to this challenge, a Four-Life Learning Model was proposed by NIE in 2017 to encapsulate learning for the future. The model recognizes four forms of learning, namely life-deep, life-wide, lifelong and life-wise learning. Life-deep learning is about developing deep content knowledge in domain subjects; life-wide learning involves learning and transfer across formal and informal contexts with interdisciplinary understandings; life-long learning connects learning with purpose for continuous knowledge and skills development throughout one’s lifespan; and life-wise learning involves the development of values, morals, characters, well-being and practical wisdom in life.

The Four-Life Learning Model is well connected to MOE initiatives. For example, to foster the joy of learning, we need to build life-long learning dispositions, distill life-deep expertise and promote life-wide interests. Entrepreneurial dare is about leveraging life-deep expertise and content mastery while, at the same time, engaging life-wide learning for boundary crossing between formal and informal contexts and multiple disciplines, in order to effectively think outside of the box.

What needs to be further unpacked are the relationships among the four forms of learning. Are they referring to four different types of learning that have respective unique development trajectories, or are they the characterization of learning from four different lenses? In schools, there is a long tradition focusing on deep content mastery. Have we sufficiently helped students for life-deep learning? How would the other three forms of learning contribute to life-deep learning and vice versa?

Taking on these questions, this issue of SingTeach explores life-deep learning by underscoring the development of adaptive expertise which is to balance efficiency in applying knowledge and innovation in creating novel knowledge and solutions. Conceptual understanding, procedural knowledge and procedural flexibility contribute to the development of adaptive expertise. While recognizing that Singapore schools are adept at developing students’ procedural knowledge and have also increasingly focused on developing students’ conceptual understanding, this issue highlights the importance of developing procedural flexibility and suggests a few ways of doing so.

In addition, the issue also articulates the developments of the four forms of learning to be both the means and ends for each other: the development of life-deep learning contributes to the other three types of learning and vice versa. Together, they contribute to the optimal development of future-ready learners.

For more information on the Four-Life Learning Model, please refer to:

Kwek, D., Hung, D., Koh, T. S., & Tan J. (2017). OER-CRPP Innovations for Pedagogical Change: 5 Lessons. Singapore: National Institute of Education.

Download the report here.