Yancy Toh

Yancy received her Professional Doctorate in Education (EdD) from the University of Leicester. Her research interests include leadership, school reforms, innovation diffusion, complex systems and ICT integration. Adopting an ecological perspective in her research studies, she explores the multi-faceted influences that impinge on organizations’ capacity to adapt and innovate. Currently, she is leading research in the area of stewardship with the Stewardship Asia Centre (SAC), Singapore.

Prior to joining SAC, Yancy was a Research Scientist with the Centre for Research in Pedagogy and Practice (CRPP), Office of Education Research (OER), National Institute of Education (NIE), Singapore. She had participated in projects funded by the National Research Foundation and Ministry of Education (MOE) where she received a research portfolio in excess of $1.5 million grant and was featured as one of the promising researchers in NIE’s Research Excellence Report. Her publications include scholarly book chapters, SSCI journals, and working paper series with the OECD and UNESCO.

Yancy was also a member of MOE’s Translational Research, Innovation and Scaling (TRIS) committee. As part of the effort to advance the agenda of the fourth Masterplan for ICT in Education (mp4), the committee looked into the governance of funding programme and made funding recommendations of project proposals submitted by schools and Institutes of Higher Learning. Yancy also provided consultancy inputs to MOE with regard to the efficacy of systemic practices in building schools’ capacity for ICT integration.

Having taught in junior college and polytechnic prior to embarking on academic work, Yancy has embodied a wide repertoire of teaching approaches in the local educational scene, which makes her more attuned to the multi-faceted challenges of change reforms, not only at the policy or organisational level, but also at the practitioner level. She had also worked in the e-learning industry where she oversaw several key projects ranging from the revamp of the Learning Management System to working alongside with subject domain experts to develop courseware for the K12 educational market. With immersion in academia, school and industry, she strives to make theoretical contributions as well as translate research findings into meaningful and germane outcomes for stakeholders.