Continuing with our benchmarking efforts since sending our academic team members to learn from international practitioners at the 2023 Early Childhood Australia national conference in late October 2023, the KLC International Institute (KLCII)’s senior management team made a learning journey to Taiwan in April 2024, visiting different pre-school ecosystems with partners from different universities, from Tao Yuan in the north to Taitung in the south.
In addition to examining inclusive practices, we also studied, from those who had been championing the different needs for the last three decades, the evolution of Taiwan’s multi-partite support structure and comprehensive approach to enable every child with special needs to develop to their fullest potential. Our friends from Taiwan were most gracious to share their challenges, their certification programme and requirements for diagnosis and evaluation of children with additional needs. They also affirmed KLCII concerning our efforts and encouraged us to be resilient with our best hopes to shape the future of Early Childhood Education in Singapore for the best interests of children, parents and teachers. We were also greatly impressed with how a particular village successfully incorporated intergenerational programmes within its village facilitating their silver-haired generation to acquire new skills while allowing children to develop social-emotional skills showing care to the elderly.
Learning Journey to Little Whale Non-profit Kindergarten (小鯨魚非營利幼兒園) in Taitung, Taiwan
We also gleaned many precious insights on what to do next in terms of teacher skills equipping and realised the importance of nurturing teachers’ dispositions to persist in continuing to observe and study each child in the class for their strengths and inroads to growth, despite their learning or behavioral challenges, in the hope of benefitting all parties over time. Contrary to our inclinations to create distraction-free environments for children, one of the ‘aha’ moments for us was when an expert explained why it is necessary to allow for distractions within the environment, in order for children to develop executive functions such as working memory and inhibitory control.
Learning Journey to Dong Men Elementary School (東門國小) in Taipei, Taiwan
This is coherent with our value that every child is special. Each child has a unique destiny not constrained by current performance, even in a largely meritocratic environment.
Within the near future, it is our hope that every teacher can design and facilitate, not just typical children, and not just divergent children, but a mixed group of children to grow and learn together, leveraging on the uniqueness of every child for mutual benefit and with increasing respect for one another.
While this may seem to be a lofty aspiration, the Taiwan learning journey has given us glimpses of hope that it is possible. And so, the KLCII research team is currently reimagining, in the context of our current ecosystem, what would be the most effective configurations and what inclusive classroom practice skills our early childhood teachers would need to be re-equipped with, in order to realize this vision. Through our study, the team is also exploring if there are strategic levers that we could suggest to and work with our national regulatory authorities on, which do not require too major a change to further optimize the effectiveness of the way pre-schools are run in Singapore.
If you are interested in partnering with us to more effectively implement inclusive classrooms that address the needs of every child, please contact us at [email protected].
