Hung Wei Loong, David

Interdisciplinary project work or interdisciplinary project-based learning places demands on learners and teachers that challenge the traditional practices and structures of modem day schooling. Learning from doing complex, challenging, and interdisciplinary authentic projects requires resourcefulness and planning by the student, tools that support knowledge construction and representation, mechanisms for collaboration and communication, and support for reflection and authentic assessment. This paper argues that activity theory provides an appropriate framework for interdisciplinary work, in particular, the emphasis on (a) intended goals to be achieved; (b) subjects involved; (c) the mediating artifacts; (d) the rules of accomplishing the activity; (e) the community (teachers, experts, and students); (f) and the division of work involved in the project. Computer-mediated supporting environments should attempt to model the activity structures, tools and sign systems, socio-cultural rules, and community expectations {which are commonly interdisciplinary) that subjects or learners must accommodate when acting on some object or goal of learning. After explicating assumptions of activity theory, we describe components of a computer-mediated environments for supporting interdisciplinary and authentic work. These components generally support planning, knowledge construction, collaboration, and assessment. The paper proposes a possible prototype design based on the activity theory framework and discusses the managerial and implementation functions of interdisciplinary work within the proposed system.

Education cannot adopt the linear model of scaling used by the medical sciences. "Gold standards" cannot be replicated without considering process-in -learning & diversity, and student-variedness in classrooms. This article proposes a nuanced model of educational scaling-and-diffusion, describing the scaling (top-down supports) and diffusion efforts (bottom-up innovations from teachers and schools) in Singapore's education landscape. For educational innovations that focus on explicit knowledge, scaling is mechanistic ("roll-outs"), while inquiry-based learning designs are connoted as organic ("diffusion of innovation"). Inquiry-based learning designs focus more on process rather than content dissemination, although content and process are intertwined. Roll-outs are generally sound when disseminating content as products, and in the haste of implementation, we inherently partake in the fallacy that process abilities can likewise be taught as content.

This paper discusses the issue of fostering or building learning communities among heads of department (HoD) in IT in Singapore schools. A preliminary study was conducted among 17 HoDs anchoring on the issues of IT MasterPlan II (MP2) in Singapore. The study reveals the issues of concern for these HoD ITs vis-à-vis the impending need to implement the pedagogically inclined stance of MP2. This paper presents a framework of an evolving community of practitioners (CoP) along a simulation, participation, and codetermined interactions continuum. Simulation, participation, and co-determined interactions are three models of learning, which describe how learners are brought through a scaffolded process within a community experience.

This article provides an overview of research in the Learning Sciences from a Design Research perspective, as it has been framed in Singapore by the National Institute of Education (NIE). The initial research agenda is considered in the light of challenges and the subsequent re-casting of objectives, based on the working out of a tripartite relationship between the NIE, the Ministry of Education, and local schools. A conceptual model is proposed as an attempt to provide structure for new research interventions going forward.

This article describes some of the key affordances for learning of the generic class of handheld computers known variously as smartphones, palmtops, and thumbtop using the Apple iPhone 3G as one of the most mature exemplars of this class-based on the authors' experiences with and reflections about the device over a period of a year. An argument is made that one of its most potentially powerful affordances is that of shifting the paradigm of educational technology away from providing learners with technological solutions ('development for learning') to that of encouraging learners to engage in interdisciplinary thinking about the design of software applications which are authentic and personally meaningful ('learner as developer').