Tan, Aik-Ling

This research reports the considerations influencing task selection for formative assessment among 30 primary school science teachers. Education and assessment are high stake enterprises in this multicultural city-state of Singapore. The 39 participants were chosen through random sampling from six primary schools located at different parts of Singapore. The participants responded to an instrument comprising of activities on the concepts of electrical circuits and conductors. The activities, set in different contexts but based on the same learning outcomes, were presented to the participants as possible tasks to assess students' learning. The participants’ responses to the questions were analysed. The findings revealed that the teachers prioritised students' abilities and their learning over and above other factors. The writers argued that the teachers' focus on students’ abilities may work against the current initiative of inquiry approach towards teaching and learning. While studies on teachers' conceptions on assessment have been undertaken, the contribution of this paper lies in illuminating influences on the implementation of formative assessment in Singapore primary science classrooms.

Biological knowledge for citizenship rests at the nexus of two important concepts -scientific literacy and citizenship education. Scientific literacy, the ability to make sense of and hence decisions related to scientific issues, operates under the broad construct of citizenship. Citizenship education is defined by UNESCO as "educating children, from early childhood, to become clear-thinking and enlightened citizens who participate in decisions concerning society". As society moves further into the 21st century, many of the challenges facing 'sustainable societies' require scientifically literate citizens to participate at multiple societal levels. At the international level, many of the UN Sustainable Development Goals adopted by the world community have a scientific grounding in biology. This suggests that global citizenship education must take cognizance of biological knowledge. Through the theoretical lens of scientific literacy, pressing biological issues of food security, nutrition, biodiversity decline, and climate change are discussed in the chapter, making explicit the importance of biological knowledge for responsible global citizenship. These issues affect citizens at the community and individual levels through decisions linked to matters like food waste, diet, body mass index, and choice of food. Various learning approaches have been used to incorporate these matters into science curricula, such as through real-world learning.

To foster students’ learning of critical-thinking skills, we incorporated ill-structured problems in a Human Diseases module for third-year Life Sciences students. Using a problem-solving rubric and working in groups of three, students attempted to solve problems presented to them. We mediated their discussions by asynchronous online discussion forums (AODFs) as part of mass customisation of learning for 40 students where personalised learning was constrained by structure of the module. We examined the quality of students’ discussion, focusing on the feedback group members provided to one another, using an interpreted Structure of Observed Learning Outcomes (SOLO) taxonomy to code students’ feedback. Our analysis indicated that the students were able to provide uni-structural and multi-structural level in relation to solving an ill-structured problem, even though they are not used to solving ill-structured problems. This indicated that in a mid-size class, while personalised-learning is not always easy, it is possible to mass customise learning for students using common ill-structured problems in a class by mediating problem-solving using student discussions as feedback. However, more can be done to scaffold peer feedback on solving ill-structured problems so that the level of collaborative-learning can be improved in a mass customised model that approaches personalised learning.

Plants are fundamental to the existence of our green planet, but the understanding of plants and the willingness to understand them is deficient. Teachers, students and curriculum developers are mindful of the lack of knowledge and ability to notice plants in our environment. In Singapore we are facing a paradox in plant science education. Known as a garden city, and having a hybrid of an orchid as our national flower, many of our citizens ironically remain blind to what are growing and cultivated around them. Our pupils are not able to name the common plant species. They would prefer to dwell in the air-conditioned comfort of their homes and learn through the computer or the television rather than to have a walk in the forest. Further, our educators merely set limited plant contents in Biology syllabus, and teachers are reluctant to bring plants to the classroom. In this review, we reflect plant science education in Singapore based on the current syllabus at the primary, secondary and junior college levels. We also list a few case studies of specific terms in plant science using various science textbooks and questions from national exams to allow a greater understanding on how plant science is taught and tested. Finally we propose suggestions to improve plant science education in Singapore.

In this paper, we characterize the inquiry practices of four elementary school teachers by means of a pedagogical framework. Our study surfaced core components of inquiry found in theoretically-driven models as well as practices that were regarded as integral to the success of day-to-day science teaching in Singapore. This approach towards describing actual science inquiry practices - a surprisingly neglected area - uncovered nuances in teacher instructions that can impact inquiry-based lessons as well as contribute to a practice-oriented perspective of science teaching. In particular, we found that these teachers attached importance to (a) preparing students for investigations, both cognitively and procedurally; (b) iterating pedagogical components where helping students understand and construct concepts did not follow a planned linear path but involved continuous monitoring for learning; and (c) synthesizing concepts in a consolidation phase. Our findings underscore the dialectical relationship between practice-oriented knowledge and theoretical conceptions of teaching/learning thereby helping educators better appreciate how teachers adapt inquiry science for different contexts.

This paper, as part of a larger ongoing study, presents the use of a multi-layer approach to analyzing teacher noticing for the improvement of teaching practices. Situated in the field of teaching analytics, the use of multimodal sensors and analytics, especially for teacher noticing research, has provided affordances to discover deep insights for improving teaching practices. We collected data from a case study of one teacher over three lessons of science teaching in a secondary school. Multimodal sensors including an eye-tracking device, a microphone, and multiple video cameras were deployed in a classroom. The various sources of data were integrated and a multi-layer analysis was performed to uncover insights into the teaching practice. The findings show that a novice teacher in our case study was able to attend to events in her classroom, with some interpretations and sense-making of the events; some necessary actions were taken based on the teacher’s analysis but in some instances, necessary action was found to be lacking. Prior knowledge and the wealth of experiences or the lack thereof, together with visual cues in the environment, can affect the decision of novice teachers in executing certain actions in a classroom.

The role of language in science learning and teaching has been a focus of science education research for over three decades. This rich body of research has led to the insight that learning the language of science is constitutive of learning science: simultaneously with participating in classroom activities and conversations, describing observations and constructing conceptual understanding, students must begin to appropriate the language of science.