Creating a Technology-rich Authentic Learning Environment (TALE): Using a mobile app to engage students in real world learning for Elements of Business Skills
The current study was a translational study on creating educational effectiveness in secondary schools with students from the Normal (Technical) (NT) stream studying the Elements of Business Skills (EBS) subject. This expanded on an earlier study at NIE with EBS students (Koh, 2012) that investigated whether students learnt better when they were able to make meaningful connections between the school curriculum and their learning experiences outside of school at workplace environments. The findings revealed that experiential learning gained from the authentic environment of students’ work attachment contributed to their conceptual understanding of the EBS subject. The study also noted a cross transfer of knowledge and skills from the classroom to the workplace and vice-versa. The aim of this TALE study was to investigate how technology, in the form of a mobile learning application, can enable redesign of the formal curriculum to be expanded to seamlessly accommodate learning that occurs outside of classrooms to align with the goals of the ICT mp4. Mobile learning can be defined as “any kind of learning that takes place inside or outside traditional learning environment via mobile devices [that] are able to move with the learner to allow learning anytime, anywhere” (Alavi, Nematbakhsh, & Zeraati, 2018, p. 113).
Helping dyslexic students to write: Process writing approach
This paper explores the use of process writing approach as an instructional method for teachers to help dyslexic students write. The author examines the writing difficulties faced by dyslexic students and discusses how both mainstream teachers and teachers specializing in teaching dyslexic students can help dyslexic students with their writing through the use of the process writing approach.
Socio-cognitive approach to teaching writing: Impact on pupils' compositions
Most of the existing studies on academic writing were conducted in ESL/EFL university settings. Further research targeted at other educational settings such as primary schools, which are quite different from the university settings previously studied, for students in different stages of their studies, will advance our understanding of student writing broadly. In 2016, the Journal of Second Language Writing will devote an entire issue to English language writing in elementary classrooms across contexts, calling for studies to address the difficulties that young students face in their learning, as well as the kind of support they do or should receive during classes. Therefore, research that investigates how English language writing is taught in primary school classrooms, outside of EFL/ESL contexts, is of much current interest, but sufficient existing knowledge is still lacking. The present study will fill this research gap identified. A further rationale for understanding the teaching of English language writing at the primary school level is that existing studies in Singapore do not explicate the effect of explicit writing instruction on primary school students in genres other than argumentative essays. To the best of our knowledge, there have been only two studies (Koh, 2002; Neo, 2004) that yielded empirical data on the English language writing of primary school children in Singapore. The proposed research will contribute to addressing these observations raised specifically for the weaker learners. A starting point of the proposed research is to analyse and document how primary English language teachers in Singapore teach writing in traditional writing classes. In particular, we seek to understand how different genres of writing are taught in English language writing classes in a Singapore primary school. Extensive classroom observation data will be collected to support this analysis. Another goal of the proposed research is to design and implement a writing programme based on a socio-cognitive approach. We will test the advantages of this approach relative to the traditional teaching methods, by identifying and understanding how it may impact the quality of writing produced by underachievers in the primary school. Based on the classroom observation data collected about the traditional teaching methods, we will design and implement writing tasks for the intervention programme that are relevant to the students' lives and socio-cultural environment. The results will yield findings that are likely generalizable across English language writing classrooms, thereby helping students who are struggling generally with the learning of writing and compositions.
Knowledge, beliefs and syllabus implementation: A study of English language teachers in Singapore
Effects of explicit teaching of comprehension strategies in a Singapore secondary school
This study is an investigation into pupil's comprehension abilities, specifically the issue of whether students can improve their question answering and inferential skills after explicit teaching of two inferential comprehension strategies.
The present study assumes that secondary pupils are in need of explicit teaching of reading strategies. This is especially true of students who are second language learners in the Singapore context.
The Study involved 46 students in secondary five ( 17 years old ) from the Normal (Academic) course attending a co-educational government secondary in Singapore.
There are five phases to the study. The first phase consists of a pre-test to assess students' general comprehension abilities prior to explicit teaching of the two inferential strategies. A questionnaire is also administered at this stage to analyse students' attitudes towards comprehension. The second phase of the study involves the explicit teaching of the two selected inferential strategies, namely Johnson's Ten Major Inference Types and Raphael's Question Answer Relationship (QAR) for a period of five weeks over 7 lessons. The third phase of the administration of the post-test to assess if students' comprehension skills, including inferential abilities, have improved. In the fourth phase of the study, the students' answers are analysed in terms of Raphael's Question Answering Relationship categories of Right There(RT) [literal], Put it Together(PIT) ]Inferential] and Author and You (AY) [Inferential] to see how the high and low groups in comprehension abilities differ or are similar in their use of the strategies taught as well as to assess if one group shows more improvement than the other in their inferential abilities. In the fifth phase of the study, a further questionnaire is given to elicit students' comprehension strategies and attitude towards comprehension. The responses to this questionnaire are contrasted with the responses to the first questionnaire to assess to what extent students' perceptions of their comprehension abilities have undergone changes. ' Students' views regarding the benefits of the explicit teaching of the comprehension strategies are elicited by another set of questionnaires form the last phase of the study.
The results show that the students improved in their inferential comprehension abilities to some extent as 100% of the students scored higher on the post-test.
Analysis of the students' performance in the he various categories of Raphael's Question-Answering Relationship revealed that the training enhanced the inferential comprehension abilities of the low group more than the high group though both groups had shown strong improvement in the PIT categories.
Findings from the questionnaires revealed unanimous agreement among the subjects that the two strategies taught were beneficial as they perceived themselves to have improved in their general comprehension abilities. Besides, 98% felt strongly that the explicit teaching of the two comprehension strategies should be carried out for other students as it was beneficial.
Socio-cognitive approach to teaching writing: Impact on pupils’ compositions.
Mediation in a socio-cognitive approach to writing for elementary students: Instructional scaffolding
This research investigates how elementary teachers mediate the learning of writing through a socio-cognitive approach. The study reveals how in effective instructions for writing development, teachers can build narrative knowledge in a socio-cognitive approach through these types of instructional scaffolding: explicit outcomes and expectations, modelling, bridging, contextualizing, schema building, re-presenting text and developing metacognition. The study also illustrates through examples, the use of the instructional scaffolding functions by two teachers mediating between students’ current knowledge levels in writing in English and the requisite expert understandings of the narrative genre in actual classroom practice. The adapted instructional scaffolding functions proposed in this article enrich the field of learning and teaching of writing by providing a means for teachers to mediate the learning of writing. The study also highlights the value of qualitative interpretive approaches in contributing to the domain of pedagogical approaches in writing for elementary students.
Teaching reading comprehension in lower secondary: An examination of the new English syllabus
Pre-service teachers’ ICT knowledge, attitude and use of ICT for learning and teaching
There has been some research into ICT in pre-service teacher training (see Aslan and Zhu, 2014; Teo, 2009; Yücel, Acun, Tarman & Mete, 2010; Aslan & Zhu, 2014). In investigating 1230 Singaporean pre-service teachers' ICT competencies, pedagogical beliefs, and their beliefs on the espoused use of ICT, Chai (2010) affirmed the link between the pre-service teachers' ICT competencies, their pedagogical beliefs and their espoused use of ICT. However Chai (2010) has also highlighted the need to do further research as ‘the relationship between teachers' level of ICT skills and how they would use ICT in classroom is however an area that has not received much attention’ (p. 388).