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3. PEDAGOGY
Pedagogical Practices
The objectives of the Lower Secondary Art Syllabus are to develop students to be active artists and
informed audiences who are imaginative, critically discerning, confident, curious, innovative; and
who enjoy and respect local, regional and global art and cultures. As art
is a practice-oriented
discipline, the learning of art thus reflects the creative practice. Creative practice is essentially an
inquiry into what we see and experience, and how we experiment with media and processes to
represent our thoughts. Inquiry is thus the heart of art learning and art pedagogy.
To shape students’ qualities and dispositions, how students learn is just as important as what they
learn. In order for us to teach well so that our students learn effectively, we are guided by the
Singapore Curriculum Philosophy (SCP) that describes
our beliefs about learning,
teaching and
assessment. Facilitating and supporting students’ engaged learning requires us to draw reference
from the SCP and the knowledge bases related to teaching and learning, and channel that into our
pedagogical practices as spelt out in the Singapore Teaching Practice (STP).
The STP explicates a set of pedagogical practices that describe
four fundamental teaching
processes presented in Figure 4 below:
Figure 4
: Pedagogical Practices (Singapore Teaching Practice)
These processes are carried out in an iterative cycle of application and reflection to help teachers
deepen their craft and become reflective practitioners.
This section highlights how these four teaching processes are relevant to the learning of Art at the
Lower Secondary levels.