Proposal draft 1- Abstract/Introduction

Executive Summary / Abstract

The focus of this research project is on a perceived lack of communication skills in particular interpersonal skills amongst Science fresh graduate teachers. More research will be done to look into the exact communication problems that teachers encounter in their teaching career. To address this problem further, interviews and surveys will be done to find out what has been done for communication skills in their undertakings as students, in this way, we hope to come up with improvements to supplement any lack of communication skills. In addition, we aim to get further insights from professional or senior educators to provide us with a better understanding of this problem.

Introduction

NUSEU had requested students to undertake a project, aiming to research on the needs and the lack thereof communications skills in various industries. We have accepted their mandate and undertaken this project so as to contribute to the ongoing efforts to make NUS one of the world’s leading universities. This proposal outlines the main problem identified, our research findings thus far that support the existence of this problem, the possible benefits of further research in our industry of interest, MOE as well as a detailed methodology of our primary research.
We chose MOE because as Faculty of Science students, the education sector is something that is close to our hearts as we will be prospective employees in that industry. Besides that, through our very own NUS undergraduate experiences, we realized that communication skills are not integrated in most if not all science modules. We thus foresee the probable lack of communication skills among NUS Science undergraduates.
Furthermore, news reports and press releases on the complaints filed against school teachers have enlightened us on the importance of communication in the teaching profession as well as the undeniable issue that more needs to be done. Great interest is expressed in exploring this area of lack of communications amongst teachers and through this research we hope to propose something at the NUS level that will serve as the first step towards raising awareness about this problem and resolving it.