Aplicaciones y oportunidades de mercado

poses tremendous challenges but also appears to undermine the underpinnings of the imported curriculum which stresses on critical thinking and independent learning. To encourage the inclusion of these two areas would also mean a moving away from traditional teaching to the test. The students within Singapore’s education system imbue, to a certain extent, some of the characteristics of Asian learners (Cheng, 2000; Kember & Gow, 1991; Kennedy & Fox, 2013; Tavakol & Dennick, 2010). For example, students tended to be passive in their learning in that they expected more didactic teaching or examination strategies. In sum, their expectation of formal learning needs to be geared towards academic performativity.

Paradox of the Singapore education system. IBDP argues that students need

to engage in global citizenship as denizens of the twenty-first century (Doherty & Shield, 2012; ibo, 2013b; Lai et al., 2014; Loh, 2012) and one way of doing so, is to

imbue critical thinking and encourage students to be independent learners. On the surface, the Singapore educational context appears to advocate similar concepts as seen through the thinking schools initiative (1997) which underlines a “passion for learning among our young” (Goh, 1997). Nevertheless, the then prime minister, Mr Goh Chok Tong admits that this passion is not very robust in Singapore students because of their focus on academic performativity. A further complication is the deregulation of education policies where schools are granted more autonomy in the selection of programmes (Tan, 2009; Tan & Ng, 2007), but the state also introduced policies geared through academic performativity as a countermeasure over the varied curricula adopted by schools. Consequently, this leads to what Tan (2009) describes as “a paradox within deregulation and regulation of education in Singapore” (p. 118). As the findings continually suggest, this paradox is manifested in the continual obsession over academic performativity in schools. As such, though students reported that they enjoyed and regarded online activities as playing a significant role in their learning, contradictions occurred when online tasks clashed with assignments tied to high- stakes examinations. At that point of conflict, online assignments (i.e. often group tasks) became expendable. Furthermore, in the run-up to the examinations, students indicated a preference for teacher feedback on individual work because those were tailored to their specific needs for the examinations and they were not keen on revisiting peer-reviewed groupwork.

Though the education system allows for a decentralisation of the education system and schools are granted autonomy over the programmes that they offer, issues of academic performativity are further complicated by students situated within the Asian context. The IBDP stresses critical thinking skills and independent learning. Whilst past research has observed that Asian students tend to be more reticent and passive and prefer a transmission model of learning (Chan, 1999; Cortazzi & Li, 1996; Flowerdew & Miller, 1995; Jones, 1999; Littlewood, 1999; Wachob, 2000), more recent research (see Thang et al., 2015) on Asian students’ regard on the use of technology in classroom echoes their preference for teacher-centred learning because of their “practical conceptions of learning” that is closely linked with academic performativity (Tavakol & Dennick, 2010, p. 374). This is especially true within a Singapore context

where students are “more performance-oriented … than learning-oriented” (Chang & Ho, 1992). As students shared in the interviews, though most enjoyed the online activities, the priority of these tasks did not factor very highly for them especially when they had other internal assessments, graded work or other more important activities. They were focused not so much on the experience of the IBDP or learning to be critical and independent learners, but more on what grades they could score in the examinations. Hence, they continually emphasised that they would only refer to essays that had teacher and not peer feedback.

Independence through online tasks.However, the findings also showed that

students did not deny that there were actual benefits and most observed that they experienced ‘forced’ independence through the online tasks. In their interviews, when asked about independent research, students reported that independent research was a result of the teacher’s refusal to provide them with the ‘answers’ and hence, in completing the online tasks, they had to research online. These ‘forced’ online tasks, not only afforded them opportunities in conducting research but more importantly, required them to distil the key learning points. Consequently, in retrospect, they were also appreciative of the differing perspectives they garnered in their respective groups.

Yet, despite their acknowledgement that there were benefits, in the earlier half of the research as shown in Interview 2, students were clearly uncomfortable with the new learning pedagogy and their perceived lack of teacher feedback. They often requested for “more pointers and tips” that could help them in the research or claimed that they did not know what to do when there were no detailed instructions. Some plausible causes could be students’ inability to digest the demands of this relatively new programme and most likely, due to their wariness in making mistakes which resulted in what they termed as “wasting time”. Clearly, a fine line separates independent learning and requiring legitimate feedback. Thus, though students appreciated the benefits of blended learning, some felt that they might not necessarily translate into examination scoring gains.

These findings resonate with what researchers have observed on East Asian learners. For instance, Asian learners tend to be more inhibited as compared to their Western counterparts (Kubota, 1999) and their passivity is a result of their desire of wanting to be right and not wanting to lose face (Biggs, 1996; Clark & Gieve, 2006; Gan, 2009; Jin & Cortazzi, 2006; Jones, 1999; Littlewood, 1999; Liu & Littlewood, 1997; Watkins & Biggs, 2001). Similarly, in the interviews, some students mentioned that writing ‘live’ on GoogleDocs meant that there was the pressure of someone viewing their mistakes as they were making it. However, were all the students entirely reticent? After a couple of iterations, there were students who proffered solutions to writing essays on groupwork and maintained that instead, pair work would be more effective. To support this recommendation, students argued that there was little coherence when each of them focused on one part of the essay. In fact, they found it challenging to construct a coherent argument even with prior face-to-face discussion. Clearly, students were taking ownership over their learning. In short, this finding weakens considerably the argument that Asian learners tend to more inhibited.

Examination System. Interestingly, though one can counter-argue that the

examination system dilutes new pedagogical initiatives that are not geared toward high-stakes testing, there are merits to the examination system. Firstly, these students belong to the so-called digital generation which has often been described as not only seeking instant gratification in their search for knowledge but also lacking in desire to engage in any in-depth reading beyond Instagram or a twitter feed (Paul, 2013). Secondly, as Asian learners who are focused on high-stakes examinations, they tended to be more focused on learning for the test. However, the nature of the IBDP’s LangLit assessment and the nature of subjects such as Literature meant that students needed to engage in some form of critical and independent learning and thinking. The pen- and-paper examinations at the end of their two-year course expect them to write and present their ideas coherently.

Whilst others might argue that this could be easily addressed through a memorisation of essay questions, this method would not work for the Paper 1 and 2 examinations. Paper 1 is based on unseen texts which students need to apply their

understanding of linguistic features to deconstruct unseen texts and Paper 2’s questions are six general questions that are unpredictable. IB’s intention was that their choice of these questions could be applied to a whole host of texts that students cover around the world. In other words, the questions are so general that it would not be possible to force-fit a memorised response. It is also critical to consider the localised cultural context which students inhabit. The pervasive academic performativity education system presented formidable obstacles in the use of any pedagogy that appears to deviate from traditional teaching to the test. The findings showed that students were strategic in the management of their online tasks. Their priorities were heavily influenced by academic results and by extension, they displayed strong preferences for heavy “guidance from lecturers” (Margaryan et al., 2011, p. 438).

Implications.Cognisant of these examination-oriented students, the design of

this study adopted a more heavily scaffolded approach in the initial units. Detailed instructions and closely monitored facilitation were strategies used to guide the students in these initial units, but this eventually diminished in the later units as students became more familiar with blended learning. What this means in terms of implementation is that in the design of a blended learning approach, the design needs to be mindful of the assessment demands and classroom teaching pedagogy must continually revisit and refine accordingly.

In summary, students’ experiences of the blended learning approach were heavily influenced by the academic performativity culture of the education system. This contradicts the independent learning aspect of the Western-imported IBDP and dilutes to a certain extent, the students’ learning experiences. Nonetheless, the examination system does, to a limited extent, mandate students to engage more closely with their texts and learning.