Tan, Aik-Ling

This project sits at the nexus of pedagogies and human physiological changes during learning. Recent evidences from neuroscience research suggest that there exist intricate relationships between affect and learning. In the proposal, affect include emotions, moods, and emotional climates. Emotions are intense, short lived, and highly conscious affective states that typically have a salient cause and great deal of cognitive content whereas moods are relatively low-intensity, diffuse, and enduring affective states that have no salient antecedent cause and there little cognitive content. (Forgas, 2001, p.15) Emotional climate refers to the collective state of emotional communion among students in a class (Tobin et al. 2013). Stress pertaining to emotions of fear, anger and disgust (Lerner, Gonzalez, Dahl, Hariri, & Taylor, 2007) is one of the affect that is experienced during learning. Stress has been implicated as one of the major contributor to depression, anxiety and heart diseases. An individual's response to stressful situation varies and hence identifying and understanding stressful situations during learning can serve to improve students' learning experiences. Beyond the traditional methods of using self-reported psychometric instruments (such as questionnaires and interviews) to assess stressful situations, technologies can provide critical in-the-moment information about individual physiological changes during learning. Relevant technologies include analysis of facial and/or audio expressions of a person, and biometrics such as oximetry to measure pulse rate and blood oxygen level. These technologies afford both real time analysis of data for instant visualization of information, as well as a record of the information for review after the instructional or learning event.

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.

This report details the three keys aspects of the project ─ (a) the ideas and motivation of teachers to carry out inquiry, (b) students ideas about science learning in school, and (c) factors that could enhance science teacher professional development to carry out inquiry. In elementary science classrooms, we showed that: (1) while teachers express moderate to strong intention to teach science through inquiry they are constrained by numerous components in their classroom context, including goals of instruction, curriculum integration, learning environment, lesson strategies, student disposition and teacher disposition; (2) students value hands-on and collaborative experiences for learning science, suggesting a pedagogy characterized by clear learning goals and valuing a sense of community among learners; and (3) further training should focus on how to, more than why, teach through inquiry, adopting a paradigm that is responsive to different contexts.

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.

"This pilot project investigated the implementation, development and improvement of Science Practical Assessment (SPA) skills at secondary level in Singapore. The researchers profiled and critically examined existing science laboratory practices; collaborated in the planning and prototyping of pedagogic tools for teachers to use in designing and adapting instructional materials for SPA; and evaluated novel teaching, learning and assessment practices towards SPA skill development."-- [p. 1].

The nature and purposes of science education in Singapore have been, for a long time, an area of debate and concern. Ask teachers, curriculum developers, policy makers, science education researchers, scientists or students about the nature and purpose of science education, you will undoubtedly receive many different answers. The issue of interest here is the understanding of what nature and purposes of science education are among some teachers and students in Singapore. In this paper, we problematize the notion that high school students can think and should be able to think like a scientist. We hope that the discussion generated in this paper will contribute to an increased awareness among teachers and researchers about the issues relating to the nature of school science, learning science and the practices in the science classroom. This study examines two students from a class of 23 girls and their perception of what science is together with their biology teacher in a secondary school. In one of the classroom transcripts, the teacher reminded the students several times to ‘think like a scientist!”. This prompted us to question if the assumption that everyone knows how a scientist operate is valid. In this paper, we attempt to use Membership Categorisation Analysis (Freebody, 2003; McHoul and Watson, 1984) to provide insights into some ideas about science which the teacher and two students from the same school community have explicated. Their interview transcripts constitute the main data source in this paper. The results of this study revealed the complexities of issues relating to the introduction of the notion of nature of scientific enterprise in the secondary biology classrooms.

"The objectives of this study are: 1. To describe the perceptions and dilemmas of science inquiry held by both pre-service and in-service elementary teachers; and 2. To characterise the process of enhancing the understandings of inquiry while developing and examining scenario-based inquiry materials".--page 8.

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.