“Why not consider pursuing a master’s degree?”
Clement Ng, 46, an assistant director in adult learning, had a fleeting thought back in 2004 about pursuing a master’s degree. However, it took him 15 years to materialise it. This was not due to a lack of interest, but rather the direction his life took from the time he graduated with an applied mathematics degree to a seemingly unrelated career in marketing and business development. Instead of embarking on a master’s degree, Ng took up a Postgraduate Diploma in Marketing to advance his career.
Having spent more than a decade leading teams in an education setting, Ng’s interest in organisational learning and development, leadership, mentoring, and coaching reignited his desire to upgrade and reskill. As an advocate of lifelong learning and at the nudging of a well-meaning ex-colleague, Ng finally submitted a long-forgotten application that was literally sitting in the application portal for years, to apply for the Master of Arts (Educational Management) offered by the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NIE NTU, Singapore).
The Master of Arts (Educational Management) (MAEM) programme aims to equip education leaders with the knowledge and skills to manage current challenges and apply intellectual approaches to their work. Topics include research methods, organisational development, ethics and leadership, mentoring and leadership succession, and historical and philosophical foundations of theories of educational policy.
“Educational Management allowed me to obtain a better understanding of how the education system combined human and material resources to supervise, plan, strategise, and implement structures to benefit individuals in education settings,” shared Ng. For example, he felt that the theories and concepts of Workplace Learning and Organizational Learning and Development could be applied to Professional Learning as well.
NIE, being an autonomous institute under NTU, Singapore, is ranked among the top 30 education institutions in the world and top five in Asia by Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) ranking. “Looking at the learner profiles of my course-mates, the diversity in nationalities and the industries they came from, it provided varied experiences and opinions to the topics. Such lively discussions created a conducive learning environment and experience that I think would be hard to replicate elsewhere,” said Ng.
If you are like Clement Ng, wishing to embark on a diverse and enriching learning journey, NIE offers an extensive range of graduate programmes in various specialisations intended to develop the critical thinking skills of its students so that they can apply intellectual approaches to their work.
Whether you are an educator or a professional in an education setting, jumpstart your academic pursuit with NIE today. Applications for the January 2024 intake for research programmes are open until July 27, 2023. For more information, visit www.nie.edu.sg/jan2024.
If you missed the NIE Postgraduate & Continuing Education Fair 2023, you can watch programme-related talks and videos here: www.nie.edu.sg/pgce.
