Maureen Lim

Maureen has completed her Master’s degree training in Education (MEd, Early Childhood Education) at the National Institute of Education (NIE) and is presently working as a researcher at NIE. Her dissertation work examines the utility of movement/play-based pedagogy and its effect on pre-schoolers’ learning and social-emotional wellbeing.  Prior to NIE, Maureen was a research assistant at the Agency of Science Technology and Research (ASTAR). Before all of Maureen’s research stint, she begun her journey in education as a student care teacher and tutor after completing her polytechnic education.

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Maureen is a certified pre-school teacher and had three years of teaching experience before embarking on her further trainings at NIE. Maureen was often tasked with teaching and managing children with special needs. Maureen has worked with children with short attention span and help improve their mathematics grades. Possessing strong interpersonal skills, Maureen was able to work closely with special needs children and the parents of those children often provided great feedback regarding the progress that their children have made.

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The fulfilment and satisfaction gained when Maureen observed children grow in their potential has fuelled her passion for teaching. Maureen’s interest in betterment of her understanding and teaching skills for special needs have motivated her to take a degree in psychology. Maureen pursued her degree in Psychology with University at Buffalo, focusing most of her assignments on children and children with special needs and she graduated with second class honours and received a psychology departmental award for attaining excellence in psychology modules.

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Experience during her teaching days as both a pre-school and student care teacher together, and with theories learnt from her undergraduate days spurred Maureen to take on her Master’s degree and embark on research. Maureen’s work in research includes working closely with students (preschool to secondary school), parents and teachers for data collection. Maureen’s projects include working on teachers' perception on the eating behaviours of pre-schoolers (ASTAR), assessment feedback pedagogy (NIE), neuroscience of learning (NIE), and currently, uncovering the mechanisms underlying learning of math concepts in pre-schoolers (NIE).

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The various schools of thought and research experiences acquired at NIE however, were mostly theoretical in nature. To better translate and place her experience and skills acquired during her Master’s training, Maureen felt that she needed to further expand her skills into becoming a therapist to better connect with children with special needs. Her work on a meta-analysis review paper on learning disabilities and neuro-stimulation allowed her to read further into the gaps in the practical world and the help needed for research to reach children with special needs. Maureen feels strongly that it is important that research findings are paired with therapy to attain best outcomes. Consequently, Maureen plans to diversify her skill sets by pursuing a certification in teaching children with special needs in the near future.