Educational Research AY2019/2020

This paper focuses on the commonly misspelled and misused lexical items found in the primary five students’ essays. Upon identifying and organizing the misspelled and misused lexical items, this paper will analyse the reasons for the incorrect spelling and provide possible solutions to reduce the frequency of misspelled words made by primary school students. These findings will also benefit teachers who are teaching Chinese language as they can emphasise on these easily misspelled words in class to prevent students from making the same mistakes.

Although Singapore students excelled in numerous international comparative studies in mathematics in general, findings from the 2007 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) on the performance of low-attainers indicate that the low-attainers in Singapore were not as competent as their counterparts in other Asian countries. Specifically, the low-attainers’ worst performing component was word problems on whole numbers and measurement (Koay, Chang & Ghani, 2012). This paper performs a systematic literature review to examine the principles underpinning specific interventions that have been developed to benefit low-attainers and proposes a framework to guide the planning of mathematics lessons for measurement word problems to engage the low-attainers. The analysis of the characteristics of low-attainers indicate a common trend where they were largely similar. Direct instruction and representations are found to be the common instructional design moves for the low-attainers.

The rising number of sporting inactivity in Singapore highlights the need to look more closely into measures to encourage continued sports participation. Studies have shown that positive relationship between sporting experiences as a child and adult exercise behaviour. Therefore, PE teachers play a crucial role in creating an environment that builds students’ autonomous motivation; an essential component for continued participation in sports and physical activity. This study was designed to systematically review literatures related to autonomy-supportive intervention programme (ASIP) with PE teachers. After conducting an intensive search on various databases and removing duplicates, 10 studies were identified and included for further analysis. Overall, the ASIP was effective in increasing teachers’ autonomy-supportive behaviour thereby fostering more self-determined forms of motivation towards sports and physical activity amongst children and adolescent. Hence, it is recommended for Singapore PE teachers to participate in ASIP to develop a more autonomy-supportive teaching style.

This paper examines how primary school pupils in Singapore use language in group work. Using a combination of sociocultural discourse analysis, linguistic analysis, and contextual pedagogic analysis, one primary 1 and one primary 3 group’s interactions during their English lessons were analysed in detail. Looking specifically into how pupils’ language indicate their metacognitive and metalinguistic awareness, the analyses suggest the importance of language competence in enabling more effective group talk about language. At the same time, in this multilingual context, metalinguistic awareness often appears not in the form of academic language but rather in a conversational, non-standard Singapore Colloquial English. The study also finds that pupils’ over-emphasis on task completion and grammar might disrupt development of metacognitive and metalinguistic awareness.

The present study was designed to investigate students’ patterns of Tamil language usage over development and Tamil teachers’ attitudes towards Tamil. The study centred on exploring the factors that were expected to affect students’ use of Tamil. The study included teachers from various grade levels and the participants were asked to complete an online survey. The study revealed that teachers believe oral language development and developing speaking skills are the most relevant purposes of teaching. It also revealed that home support, early oral language development and confidence are key contributors to students’ Tamil language usage.

This study examined how Malay Language primary school teachers view Malay Language teaching and learning. A survey about teaching belief and attitude was completed by 33 teachers, and one-to-one in dept interviews were conducted to 6 teachers. The data gave an insight of the challenges Mother Tongue teachers faced during Malay Language lessons in primary school setting. These insights suggest that the main challenge is students’ diversity which is influenced by Singapore’s language planning and bilingual policy. Even though the teachers believe they have a role to play in their classroom to overcome its challenges, it is important to continue to provide avenue for teachers to voice and address their concerns in order to support teachers in teaching and learning.

Studies have shown that while Singapore students are highly literate, they may not necessarily enjoy reading. Reports of Singapore students ranking highly for reading achievement but not reading enjoyment, coupled with a recorded decline in pleasure reading underscores the need to inculcate positive reading habits- with an emphasis on pleasure reading. This study draws upon six case studies of primary school students to examine pleasure reading habits and preferences of preadolescents aged 9 to 12 years old. Data was collected by administering a Title Recognition Test, followed by semi-structured interviews.

Many research efforts that were placed on collaboration scripts over the years focused on enhancing the collaborative learning process and its impact on the domain learning. This literature review examined the use of collaboration scripts specifically in the Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) environment in Singapore’s Chinese language classroom. The analysis was based on 30 studies published between 2009 and 2019. Findings from the analysis showed that collaboration scripts are commonly used in CSCL Chinese language learning lesson, with macro scripts more frequently used than micro scripts. Furthermore, results showed that collaboration scripts were more frequently used in vocabulary learning lessons in primary schools and writing lessons in secondary schools. The current study highlights the benefits of supporting Chinese language learning with collaboration script. The need for more focus on micro-scripting to help learners acquire the target language is discussed.