Tan, Steven Kwang San

Background: A research was carried out previously on Singaporean children, 6- to 9- year-old, assessing their fundamental motor skill proficiency. In the research, results rated for locomotor (LOCO) skills were “average” and “below average” and object control (OC) skills were “poor” and “below average”.

Objective: The objective for writing this systematic review is to make a comparison based on the fundamental motor skill proficiency of Singaporean children with children around the world, age 6- to 9- years old.

Methods: Papers selected for review are those that meet the selection criterion. The criterion are: studies conducted using TGMD-2 test kit and children between the age group of 6- to 9- years. Three other countries were selected in this review: Hong Kong, Portugal and Indonesia.

Results: Hong Kong boys and girls had better FMS proficiency than Singaporean children in both LOCO and OC skills. No significant difference in the FMS raw scores between that of Singaporean and Portuguese boys and girls. Indonesian children were scoring higher than Singaporean children in both LOCO and OC scores. Indonesian children were performing better in OC skills and scoring much higher than Singaporean children.

Conclusion: Singaporean children’s FMS level is low and lower than other countries.

The transition from being students to first-year teachers can be a satisfying journey, and yet has the potential to be a significantly challenging life transition for many beginning teachers, and it is not different for any physical education (PE) teachers. This is especially so when these novice teachers are expected to fulfill similar roles and responsibilities as their more experienced counterparts in the schools. There is without a doubt that teacher education programmes provide the opportunities for these novices to develop their expected skills, knowledge, and attitudes to become qualified teachers. Therefore, it is reasonable for these individuals to learn a lot during their teacher education experiences, and to be effective at some beginning level. However, it is not reasonable to expect them to completely master these skills independently from experience alone, without any sustained and purposeful continuing professional development (CPD) and school-based support during the beginning years of their profession.
For many education systems and government, the difficulties faced by beginning teachers is of grave concern, and points to the need of specialised forms of assistance or support mechanisms, using a variety of CPD strategies, structured induction and mentoring programmes. Scholars have also argued that besides helping beginning teachers, welldesigned and high-quality CPD and school-based mentoring are critical to improving the quality of teachers, schools, and to some extent, student achievement. For the Ministry of Education (MOE), teacher continual learning and professional development, coupled with building a strong core of mentors for the younger generation of teachers, have always been a key thrust in the MOE’s strategic direction to developing a highquality teacher workforce (Heng, 2012). To support this vision, the Academy of Singapore Teachers (AST), and other specialist academies, like Physical Education Sports Teacher Academy (PESTA), have been established to spearhead professional learning and development for the subject-specific fraternity.

This chapter examines the changing socio-cultural and political salience of physical education since independence in Singapore’s schools. A brief history of physical education with developmental changes based on policy orientations across key educational milestones will be presented. Specifically, the chapter will describe significant impetus and policy synergies relevant to the direction and progress of physical education with emphasis on individual’s holistic development, drive towards thinking citizens and lifelong learners, strive for community partnership and collaboration, and enhancement of teachers’ transformative pedagogies.

This chapter focuses on video analysis as a tool to enhance physical education teachers’ pedagogical practices and experienced practitioners’ mentoring skills. It offers a description of how videos have been managed to help beginning physical education teachers (hereafter “beginning teachers”) reflect and improve on their pedagogical performance, and to develop instructional mentors’ (hereafter “mentors”) competence. Exemplary digital videos were created that represented the desired “best practice” teaching actions. Furthermore, digitally recorded beginning teachers’ lessons and mentors’ mentoring episodes facilitated video-aided analysis of beginning teachers’ teaching for self-reflection and subsequent conversations with their mentors. Three Primary and four Secondary beginning teachers and their mentors participated in a year-long professional development, where they learnt pedagogical knowledge and viewed the exemplary videos. Qualitative data of conversations and semi-structured interview transcripts were analysed using the constant comparison method to arrive at themes to describe the influence of video in transforming the professional learning of the beginning teachers and mentors.

Non-proficient demonstration, gross motor skill assessment, and subjective feedback are but a few of the perennial problems in physical education (PE). These problems stand to benefit from a technology-based solution that uses human pose estimation to guide learning. In this approach, a criterion motor action is embedded in a deep-learning algorithm (DLA). A learner can view this motor action on an iPad and uses its kinematic signatures to guide practice. The learner’s movement is captured by the device and the recorded motor action enters the DLA for computation of movement proficiency. The output of the DLA is a quantitative index that informs the learner how well the movement has been executed. In this way, the learner gains timely and objective feedback. A separate device held by the PE teacher collates the quantitative indices from other students in the class. Collectively, the information facilitates the teacher’s selection of instructional strategies.

Guided by Basic Psychological Need Theory, we investigated the combined associations between need satisfaction and need frustration (i.e., need profiles) and their relations with theoretically relevant correlates including mindfulness, physical literacy, physical activity enjoyment, and physical activity. The participants were Singapore based school students (N = 844, Mage = 12.45, SDage = 1.99, boys = 53.1%) who completed a cross-sectional survey. The results of the latent profile analysis identified four distinct need profiles: profile 1–average satisfaction and frustration (n = 364, 44.1%); profile 2–low satisfaction (n = 251, 29.7%), above average frustration; profile 3–very high satisfaction, very low frustration (n = 144, 17.1%); and profile 4–high satisfaction, very high frustration (n = 85, 10.1%). Among these, profile 3 was the most adaptive one; it had the highest levels of mindfulness, physical literacy, physical activity enjoyment, and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity. Experiences of need satisfaction countered the negative effects of need frustration on these correlates. These findings enhance our understanding of students’ psychological need experiences and highlight the need for investigating the combined associations between need satisfaction and need frustration.