“To design something is to translate a blueprint into practice in order to make life better for someone else. And a design-centric approach puts the user and the purpose - in this case, the student and the learning - at the centre of the exploration of how to encourage reading.”
LOH Chin Ee is Associate Professor at the English Language and Literature Department and Associate Dean (Impact & Partnerships) at the Office for Research (OfR) at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Her primary research interest is in literacy and equity, with a focus on adolescent reading and school libraries as well as place-based education and literature.
She is the author of The Space and Practice of Reading: A Case Study of Reading and Social Class in Singapore (Routledge, 2017), The Reading Lives of Teens: Research and Practice (Routledge, 2025), co- editor of Literature Education in the Asia-Pacific: Policies, Practices and Perspectives in Global Times (Routledge, 2018), and various textbooks and anthologies. Her work has been published in Anthropology and Education Quarterly, Changing English, Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literature, Teaching and Teacher Education, among others.
Her most recent study is the Reading Futures Study, a qualitative longitudinal study that tracks secondary school students’ print and digital reading across four years, from 2025 onwards. You can read more about her studies on her project website: https://www.readingbydesignsg.org/
Image by Nur Haryanti Bte Sazali, for NIE
2025, Routledge
Amidst worries about the decline in reading frequency and enjoyment, this edited collection engages with issues of what counts as reading, what kinds of reading matter and how to support teen reading engagement in and out of school.
Contributions from well-known and emerging adolescent literacy researchers across five continents offer multifaceted and complex insights into the reading lives of teens, encouraging readers to consider how reading research can be applied in their own research, policy and practice contexts.
2020, Ethos Books, Singapore
This anthology, a passion project with Esther Vincent, Ann Ang and Angelia Poon collects over 100 poems from Singapore, Asia and around the world. It consists of works by well-known and established as well as newer voices from Singapore authors and beyond.
Targeted for adolescent readers, this anthology encourages the comparative reading of poetry from Singapore and around the globe, and is suitable for use in secondary schools.
2018, Routledge, London & New York
This edited collection provides an overview of English literature education in the Asia-Pacific in global times, bringing to international attention a rich understanding of the trends, issues and challenges specific to nations within the Asia-Pacific region and raising rich insights for literature education in global times.
2017, Routledge, London & New York
Drawing on socio-spatial perspectives, this monograph provides critical insight into how taken-for-granted practices and spaces of reading can be in fact be unacknowledged spaces of inequity.
This book shows how using localized, contextualized approaches sensitive to the home, school, national and global contexts can lead to more targeted policy and practice transformation in the area of reading instruction and intervention.
2013, Ethos Books, Singapore
In this selection of more than 80 poems from Singapore and around the world, poets look afresh at things mundane and universal, from birth to growing up and first love to old age and death.
Works by established Singapore poets such as Boey Kim Cheng, Lee Tzu Pheng, Arthur Yap and Cyril Wong and well-known international poets such as e. e. cummings, Billy Collins, Derek Walcott and Raymond Carver are set alongside poems by younger published poets such as Joshua Ip, Teng Qian Xi and Theophilus Kwek and previously unpublished poems in this refreshing anthology.
2013, Ethos Books, Singapore
In this Teachers’ Guide, Loh Chin Ee, Angelia Poon and Esther Vincent introduce effective and inspirational ideas and strategies for teaching poetry in the secondary Literature classroom that both beginning and veteran teachers of Literature will find useful and invigorating.
Designed as an accompaniment to Little Things: an Anthology of Poetry, the Teachers’ Guide may be used independently as a resource for Literature teaching. Lesson ideas, reproducible handouts as well as rubrics for creative and essay writing are included.
2013, Pearson, Singapore
Written by teachers, curriculum specialists, and teacher educators, this seminal collection documents, in sustained and critical fashion, the realities and possibilities of Literature education in Singapore schools.
A new edition edited by Dennis Yeo, Ann Ang and Suzanne Choo, addressing current issues in Literature teaching and learning, is now available.
