CRPP - Research Reports

"The Singapore Pedagogy Coding Scheme (SPCS) was designed as part of the Core Research Program of the Centre for Research in Pedagogy and Practice, Singapore. It comprises the coding manual and the coding instrument. The SPCS was used over a 2-year period (2004-2006) in over 1,000 primary and secondary lessons from more than 55 schools, covering key curriculum areas." -- p. 1.

Teachers design learning tasks as the basis of everyday practice, and their ability to effectively manipulate these tasks dynamically demonstrates how quickly they can respond to changes in student performance with different levels of task complexity. This paper examines the design options for learning tasks in the discipline of history as teachers make the tasks more structured and scaffold their students’ processes so that they can complete each task. The manipulation of five dimensions has been used as part of a professional development program to help teachers vary tasks demands as their students begin to demonstrate competence and self-reliance on their own understanding.

This report presents an early description of Malay families and their literacy beliefs and practices. It is based on the pilot phase of an ongoing study that examines the complex literacy lives of 5-year old kindergarten children within the milieu of their home environment. Grounded on sociocultural theory, the study brings into focus the literacies co-constructed by Malay adults and their children. In the pilot phase, three target children from different socio-economic background were selected. Several visits were made to their homes each lasting between 2 to 5 hours over an 8-month period. Interviews with adult members of the families and observations of the children interacting with their siblings and adults in literacy-related events suggest that these children have access to different opportunities for literacy learning as well as contrasting cultural resources and repertoires of literacy practice. These differences will position them differently with respect to the curriculum to which they have to adapt once they start formal schooling. Against the backdrop of Malay educational underachievement vis-à-vis the other ethnic groups, the findings present a case for schools to learn more about the out-of-school literacy practices of Malay children and to see them and their families in a way that can have a positive impact on their educational attainment.

This paper reports on a study of the spelling errors for Singaporean primary school children to dictated targets words in English. The children were drawn from Primary 2 and Primary 5 classes. The aim of the investigation was to see if the errors produced by the Singaporean children could be attributed to Mother Tongue influences, to influences from Singaporean English or if they showed similar patterns to those produced by native English speaking spellers at similar stages. The paper found the errors produced in the Primary 2 classes to be influenced by phonology and thus influence from Singaporean English, but found both classes different from their native speaking counterparts in the way they processed final inflected clusters.

"Mathematical problem solving (MPS) is at the centre of the Singapore Mathematics programme's framework. How has the programme been integrated into the school system? This study investigates three aspects: teachers' classroom practices, students' problem-solving heuristics, and students' metacognitive behaviours in paired problem solving. "-- [p. 1] of executive summary.

"While academic and media discourses have paid considerable attention to students' achievements in standardised language and literacy examinations, which typically assess a narrow set of literacy skills, there is a dearth of studies of Singapore classrooms that describe and critically assess the full range of literate practices which students are given access to. In the wake of the pro-active 1998 national initiative of Thinking Schools, Learning Nation, a new syllabus in subject English and a revised, inquiry-based curricula in content subjects like Science were launched, and a new, hybrid subject in upper secondary, Social Studies, which foregrounds critical thinking, was created - all of these initiatives making for new and broader literacy demands, for which many teachers have not been sufficiently professionally prepared."-- [p. 1] of executive summary.

Unlike learning management systems that allow the instructor to organize resources in a predetermined structure which prescribes a fixed learning strategy, G-portal was developed to provide digital assets that will are used by students to solve an authentic problem based on real world resources. In contrast to learning management systems (LMS) that allow the teacher to organize resources in some predetermined structure which then prescribes a fixed learning strategy, digital libraries such as the G-portal provide users the opportunity to take control of their choice of resources, ways of representing and using these resources, creating new resources and even developing their own learning strategies. The G-portal developmental project was initiated as an attempt to improve on the existing capabilities of digital repositories and the move into multimodal representations, in that it hosts In order to effectively deploy the G-portal at local schools and test the effectiveness of the various capabilities of G-portal and the associated learning styles, a project was conducted to develop digital assets and to examine the usability and capabilities of the G-portal.

"A literature search of Singapore materials reveals that there has been very little research done on the quality of children's literature written in Malay. This raises an important pedagogical issue as it suggests that Malay children's literature may not be widely read or used in and outside of the classroom. Compared to the vast number of children's books available in English, very little is available in Malay and very little is known about the quality of children's books written in Malay. ... This study was designed to produce research that could lead to the development of an annotated bibliography of children's books written in Malay that could serve as a resource for both teachers and parents alike."-- [p. 1-2].

"This report describes the 2003/2004 developmental work undertaken by CRPP staff in the Core Research Program and initial results from two of the six panels in the Core Research Program. It is a "first cut" descriptive report. More comprehensive and complex data sets and analytic papers will be available from the middle of 2005, with more complex analyses on pedagogical patterns, linkages to achievement, and teacher and school effects." -- p. 2 of executive summary.

"This report presents the initial findings of research in progress, based on classroom data from the Centre of Research for Pedagogy and Practice (CRPP) Core Research Program. It is a description of Malay language pedagogical practice using CRPP's Singapore Pedagogy Coding Scheme and Mother Tongue coding menu. The report describes the structure of pedagogical activities within the classroom, how the Malay language classroom is socially organised, and the production of knowledge and transmission of values that take place in these classes. The report concludes with a brief discussion of the major concerns for the teaching and learning of the Malay language, implications for future Malay pedagogical practice in Singapore and the attendant policy implications."-- [p. 1].

The objectives of this research study are to undertake a review of the transcription and discourse coding systems with an emphasis on their suitability for multilingual research and practicality, and to identify sociolinguistic and discourse phenomena that are important for the Centre for Research in Pedagogy and Practice (CRPP) research projects and that can present difficulties for transcription and tagging. The project was conducted to supplement CRPP Core Research Program Panel 4 research, as well as Specific Focus Projects dealing with language development and sociolinguistics. We found that it is possible to simplify transcribers’ task and use transcription systems based on conventional orthographies. Valuable sociolinguistic information can be preserved in the transcript by supplying an appendix in the header. The Language Interaction Data Exchange System (LIDES) system is the most suitable for data with lots of code-switching and code-mixing. The Data Analysis Message Sequence List (DAMSL) dialogue act tagging system is a valuable instrument that can be used in classroom discourse research to supplement the traditional instruments for a better understanding of classroom practices. We recommend using the rewrite rule format to express sociolinguistic details in transcripts economically, as well as testing the Codes for the Human Analysis of Transcripts (CHAT) platform for possible wider application in CRPP projects. We also recommend supplementing the ongoing classroom discourse research with a more detailed study of the communicative acts in the classroom using the DAMSL tagging system.

"The present study aims to - 1. train primary teachers to be reflective teachers and imbue them with good questioning techniques to promote critical and analytical thinking in their pupils, and 2. develop primary pupils into critical thinkers with good logical reasoning skills through the introduction of P4C lessons over three semesters." -- p. 3.

"The aim of this research is to understand how children in English-knowing Malay families learn literacy within the context of their homes, how the families organise themselves around literacy, their beliefs and practices, the ways in which they support their children's literacy, and the ways children position themselves as learners."-- [p. 1] of executive summary.

This research sought to determine the impact of the use of process drama as pedagogy within a structured program of oral language instruction. The focus group for the study were Normal Technical students at Secondary 4 level. The researchers implemented a pre-planned and developmental course of study of ten drama lessons with four groups of students at various schools. The aim was to improve their oral language proficiency. The focus groups were compared against comparison groups from the same schools using tests modelled on the Normal Level Oral English Examination held with this cohort each year in August/September.

For many years, teachers in Singapore have been teaching history as a subject where there is a body of facts that pupils have to remember and recall during examinations. The majority of these teachers were also taught history in a similar manner. In 1998 syllabus revisions took into account the need to include the process of history. Assessment changed and pupils were expected to answer a compulsory sourcebased question. This revision was introduced to schools for the graduating classes in 2001. The first cohort of pupils to sit for national examinations and to answer compulsory source-based questions was 2002. However, because of the lack of lead time from syllabus implementation to the first national examinations, teachers were trained only in setting source-based examination questions and how to mark source-based questions. It is difficult for these teachers to 'know' how to teach historical understanding skills like interpretation and enquiry without proper training given to them. This paper discusses a continuing study and the initial findings on teacher characterisation of historical interpretation and enquiry, four years after source-based questions were included into the syllabi. Based on a pilot study of the research this paper discusses two teachers' characterisation of historical interpretation and enquiry and talks about the implications on this characterisation in training pupils for historical understanding.

Studies on activities to ease children’s transition to school have been conducted in Australia, New Zealand, Europe and the United States during the last 20 years (e.g., Dunlop & Fabian, 2003; Fabian & Dunlop, 2002; Kagan & Newman, 1998; Perry, Dockett, & Howard, 2000; Richardson, 1997). There has, however, been very little published research on this topic in Singapore except for two preschool studies reported by Clarke and Sharpe (2003). The purpose of the present study was to identify factors relating to successful transition to school in Singapore and to develop procedures and materials to support this process. The study was conducted in two phases, with two cohorts of Primary One (P1) students. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected via observations, questionnaires, focus group discussions, individual interviews with the pupils, their parents and teachers, and end-of-year school assessment results. Very few children experienced difficulties settling into school. The parents in the second cohort expressed fewer concerns about insufficient communication with teachers, suggesting that the new initiatives to increase two-way home-school communication had been effective. Parents and children were also very happy with the use of P5 buddies during the first week in school.

This report presents preliminary findings of the pedagogical practices in Tamil Language classrooms in Singapore. As part of the Core Research Program at the Centre for Research in Practice and Pedagogy, data was collected from six primary and six secondary schools selected using random stratified sampling based on school achievement. The instruments used in the data gathering procedure were the Singapore Pedagogy Coding Scheme and the Mother Tongue Pull-down Menu. These two instruments were designed to amass an array of information about classroom pedagogical practices. The categories of observations include the social organisation of classrooms, the nature of classroom talk, the level of student engagement, the ethos of the classroom, the manner in which knowledge is classified as well as the nature of classroom activities. Apart from providing the findings for each of these categories of information, the report also discusses the implications of some of these preliminary findings and gives recommendations with the aim of improving Tamil pedagogical practices in Singapore.

"This project is a case study of building communities of practice (CoPs) among Heads of Departments of Information Technology ((HOD(IT)s) in Singapore schools. As part of the second MasterPlan for Information Technologies in Schools initiated in 2002, there has been a stated goal to employ the CoP approach as a key strategic initiative to develop a more integrated "IT across the curriculum" approach in schools. As part of the same plan it was hoped that there would be a slowing changing pedagogical model that the learning environment might become more learner-centred through the effective integration of the technology. "-- [p. 1].

"The Progress in International Reading Literacy Study 2001 and Trends in Reading Achievement 1991-2001 (2003) reported that Singaporean pupils on average read better than those in comparable non-English as first language countries; and that English-at home Singaporean pupils, now comprising over 40% of the sampled population, surpassed pupils in advanced post-industrial countries like Canada and New Zealand. In the most general comparative terms, these appear to be strong results. However we have very little systematic sense of which combination of pupil background variables interact with which aspects of formal reading instruction. In fact, some of the questions raised by the PIRLS study concerned the extreme variability of Singaporean performance (with standard deviations twice the international average), and the lack of an empirical research based on what is actually done to teach reading in Singapore classrooms."-- [p. 1].

"This report presents the findings of the evaluation of the CARE Powercharged Program delivered to Secondary 1 Normal Technical students in three schools in 2005. ... In Singapore, there are few evaluations conducted on school-based intervention programs. It is necessary to evaluate these programs to ascertain if there are any impacts and what they are. At the same time, there is limited research on students in the Normal Technical stream. Evaluation and research are particularly important as 1) we need to understand students' learning needs, and 2) there is strong interest in understanding, strengthening and improving the learning experience of students in Normal Technical classes in the current policy climate."-- [p. 1] of executive summary.