Early Childhood Development and Education in Singapore

Professor Oon-Seng Tan is Director of the Centre for Research in Child Development at the National Institute of Education (NIE), Singapore. He is an inaugural Chen Yidan Visiting Global Fellow of Harvard University. He is also a Fellow of the International Academy of Education. Prof Tan was previously Director of NIE. He was President of the Educational Research Association of Singapore and President of the APERA. Professor Tan has been an Expert Panel member of the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Fund of Singapore. He is Editor-in-Chief of Educational Research for Policy & Practice (Springer) and Lead-Editor of Asia Pacific Journal of Education (Routledge).  Prof Tan's areas of research include teacher education, psychology and learning. He has authored/edited more than 20 books and over 150 scholarly articles/chapters in these fields. He has delivered keynote addresses globally including the National Science Foundation EHR Distinguished Lecture, AERA Annual Meetings presidential sessions, the Royal Swedish Academy of Science international symposium, and international education ministers’ summits.Professor Kenneth Poon is Associate Professor at the National Institute of Education, Singapore. He also serves concurrently as Associate Dean, Education Research and co-Director of the Centre for Research in Child Development. With over twenty years of experience working with individuals with neurodevelopmental disabilities and their families, his research focuses on the developmental psychopathology of children with neurodevelopmental disabilities as well as children at risk. In his research, he seeks to identify the factors which are associated with the risk and resilience of such children, and to inform practice with this research. Aligned with his experience, Kenneth adopts a lifespan and ecological approach in framing research, which has focused largely on individuals with autism spectrum disorders, intellectual disabilities,as well as quality of life. Dr. Beth A. O’Brien is Principal Research Scientist and Head of Early and Middle Childhood Research at the National Institute of Education, Singapore. Her research focuses on reading development from a cognitive neuroscience perspective, where cognitive models provide a framework to investigate processes for acquiring literacy, and neuroscience methods supplement these models by specifying the neural constraints of such learning mechanisms. Her work includes longitudinal studies of reading and biliteracy development, intervention studies with struggling learners, and the development of assessment tools. She is involved in ongoing projects investigating neural networks for bilingual readers and artificial neural network simulations of individual differences in reading development. Dr Anne Rifkin-Graboi is a Senior Research Scientist and Head of Infancy and Early Childhood Research at The Centre for Child Development, National Institute of Education, Singapore. She is also an Adjunct Investigator at the Singapore Institute for Clinical Sciences, A*STAR.  Anne’s work focuses upon understanding the nature of associations between parent-child relationships and cognitive and emotional skills, especially those related to fronto-limbic processes, including relational memory.  Anne is interested in how variation in these skills, their neural underpinnings, and the pace of their development, may influence later interpersonal relationships, mental health, and academic functioning within specific contexts. Anne has a long history of collaboration with clinicians and neuroscientists, and is certified in attachment measures, a trainer for the Berkeley 6 Year Reunion Procedure, and a certified intervener within the Video Intervention to Promote Positive Parenting and Sensitive Discipline (VIPP-SD).

• 1 Introduction to early childhood development and research in Singapore.- 2 The honeycomb of early childhood development in Singapore.- 3 Uplifting early childhood teacher education.- 4Early learners’ curriculum: Case of Singapore early childhood education working towards quality.- 5 Researching early interventions, inclusion and well-being for children with low income family background in Singapore – For whom and from whose perspective?.- 6 Early childhood intervention for young children with special needs.- 7 Importance of positive environments on infant and early childhood neurodevelopment.- 8 Preschool teachers’ experiences of stress: A pilot study in Singapore.- 9 Mindfulness in early childhood: Developing 21st century competencies.- 10 Developing culturally appropriate tools for psychoeducational assessment of children and families.- 11 Exploratory play in infancy and early childhood.- 12 Emotional competence in early childhood.- 13 Arithmetic skills: What, when and how?.- 14 Bilingual development in the early years: The concept, significance and implications.- 15 Does early language development contribute to socio-emotional functioning in preschool and beyond?.- 16 Epilogue: Moving forward in research and practice in the early childhood sector.