Page 16 - Education Change and Economic Development: The Case of Singapore Dr. Goh Chor Boon National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University

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innovations, create new jobs and increase productivity. How can Singapore

nurture creative workers? First, there must be a strong conviction that every
single human being is creative. Strategies would include making openness,
diversity and inclusion as a core agenda for economic and social development

and building an education system that spurs creativity and innovation. 18
Singapore’s innovation-led economic trajectory have increased the value
of people with the right engineering, creative or design skills. These are the

individuals with more human capital – knowledge and skills gained through
education. They know how to maintain what Thomas Friedman terms as
“dynamic stability” – the ability to self-motivate, learn skills for life and to re-
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invent oneself. What all this means is that there is the need to rethink and
revisit the nature of education – and the role of schools - that will allow the
young to face up with the demands of a technologically-driven and rapidly

changing world. The concept of teaching and leading for teachers and principals
respectively has changed in the new millennium. The old paradigm stressed on
didactic teaching to impart subject knowledge and managing the administrative
processes and functions in order for schools to function well. Today, in an ever-

changing landscape, more emphasis is being given to the teacher as a facilitator
of learning, imparting thinking and problem solving skills, and the education

leader as an innovator in initiating change across a spectrum of areas – from
school human resources, instructional leadership, facilitating and mentoring to
the creation of an innovative school culture.

18 In many ways, Singapore's drive towards creating a creative “smart” city brings to
mind Richard Florida’s “3Ts” of economic development – Technology, Talent and
Tolerance. See Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class Revisited (New York:
Basic Books, 2012), Chapter 12.
19 Friedman, Thank you for Being Late, p. 219.