Koh, Elizabeth

With the ever-pressing twenty-first century demands, such as the need for new knowledge generation and application, schools today are aware of the necessity to change their structures, processes and practices to be relevant. In Singapore’s centralized education system, the Ministry has introduced several decentralization initiatives in the hope of promoting flexibility and innovation within schools. One such initiative is the Integrated Programme (IP). IP schools are expected to redefine existing educational structures, redesign teaching and learning processes and reshape classroom practices to generate diverse learning experiences. This paper describes the case of one school that has embarked on the IP to shed light on the processes involved in curriculum innovation. Our findings reveal three significant processes: negotiating the programme with the school’s vision, finding common ground for buy-in and investing in preparation time. These are instrumental in the development and enactment of IP by teachers and school leaders. These findings and their implications are deliberated on, providing ways that schools can shape and sustain curricular innovations.

Media literacy has become a central concern for educators and researchers in many different contexts around the globe. While researchers have produced a growing number of situated accounts of teachers’ media literacy instruction, few studies have examined the impact of a range of factors on teacher beliefs and professional practice. Drawing on quantitative survey data from 200 Singapore teachers, this article discusses how teachers’ beliefs, media use and aspects of their pedagogic practice interact with key individual and contextual variables and thus impact how media literacy is taught in classrooms, with implications for policy and practice.

WiREAD+ is an augmented web-based collaborative critical reading and learning analytics environment that was developed to scaffold and engage students in collaborative dialogue around online texts. This paper reports on the trial of WiREAD+ for Grade 9 students in two high schools – School 1 (S1) with prior experience and School 2 (S2) that was new to the intervention design. We report on a cross-case analysis of the two schools, focusing on perceived ease of use and usefulness for learning, and reflect on the value and challenges of enacting WiREAD+ across schools of varying prior experience. Drawing from the findings of this cross-case analysis, we consider how we can support the wider adoption and deployment of the system across schools and settings by highlighting obstacles that new participants who might trial such new learning analytics systems might face.

Although learning analytics (LA) dashboard visualizations are increasingly being used to provide feedback to students, literature on the effectiveness of LA dashboards has been inconclusive. To address this, a LA student dashboard visualizing students’ latest data against their own data from previous weeks (i.e., self-referenced data) was designed – informed by Fredrickson’s (2004) broaden-and-build theory, as well as studies highlighting personal best goals (Martin & Elliot, 2016) and the negative effects of peer comparisons (Corrin & de Barba, 2014). The self-referenced LA student dashboard was implemented and evaluated in a Singapore secondary school as part of a larger study, WiREAD. This paper reports on the quantitative impact of the WiREAD self-referenced LA dashboard visualizations on 15-year-old students’ critical reading fluency, cognitive reading engagement, and English language (EL) self-efficacy, as well as students’ qualitative feedback on the usefulness and shortcomings of the LA dashboard.

Teamwork is an important twenty-first-century competency to be nurtured in our young. In this eduLab Information and Communications Technology (ICT) innovation, My Groupwork Buddy (MGB), a techno-pedagogical system, was developed using design-based research for secondary school students in collaborative inquiry projects from any subject domain. Co-designed with a team of researchers, teachers and education officers, MGB aimed to nurture teamwork competency through its blended pedagogical framework, formative assessment measures and a web-based learning analytics system. The innovation was successfully trialled over two and a half years in two schools, across two subjects, and used by 12 teachers and over 200 students. This chapter will examine the enablers and impediments of infusing the innovation from the design team’s perspective. Insights of key conditions for the innovation to take root, and its possible infusion in the school system will be discussed. Practical implications for practice and policy will also be described in light of MGB’s journey in Singapore’s educational context.

A common pedagogical approach to foster creativity and develop talents among gifted students is after-school enrichment programs. However, in practice, there are several issues concerning the conceptualization and implementation of such programs. Since these enrichment programs are typically not part of the core curriculum and scheduled outside curriculum time, these programs are relatively low stakes. As an after-school add-on program, such programs tend to be fragmented and ad hoc in nature. Instead of a systematic program designed to stretch gifted and talented students, with the goal of developing their knowledge and competencies in breadth and depth, the programs that are implemented tend to be pitched at exposure level. To effectively meet the needs of the gifted and talented students, it is imperative to examine the intricacies of these programs. The fidelity has significant implications on the quality of the students’ learning experiences. This article shares the issues and challenges they faced.

Towards gaining a better understanding of the field of the Learning Sciences, this research investigates the research trends over 10 years. It also compares the Learning Sciences with the closely related academic fields of Educational Technology and Educational Psychology. A content analysis is performed on 5187 journal articles drawing from 12 top journals from 2003 to 2012. This content analysis was semi-automated and guided by an initial theoretical frame. The results reveal that research trends in the Learning Sciences have remained largely consistent except in the area of individual differences and affect, which has increased over the years. Key strengths of Learning Sciences include research on small group learning, inquiry, problem solving, argumentation, and mixed-methods. As the LS reflects on its state of practice, it should recognize that the field has achieved many research distinctives, yet, there are several opportunities for further research growth.

The affordances of learning analytics (LA) tools and solutions are being increasingly harnessed for enhancing 21st century pedagogical and learning strategies and outcomes. However, use cases and empirical understandings of students’ experiences with LA tools and environments aimed at fostering 21st century literacies, especially in the K-12 schooling sector and in Asian education contexts remain relatively scarce in the field. Our paper addresses this knowledge gap in two ways. First, we present a first iteration design of a computer-supported collaborative critical reading and LA environment, WiREAD, and its 16-week implementation in a Singapore high school. Second, we foreground students’ evaluative accounts of the benefits and drawbacks associated with this techno-pedagogical innovation. Our analysis of students’ collective sense-making pointed to a number of potentialities and perils associated with the design and use of LA dashboards. Positives included (1) fostering greater self-awareness, reflective and self-regulatory learning dispositions, (2) enhancing learning motivation and engagement, and (3) nurturing connective literacy among students. The motivational value of peer-referenced LA visualisations for stimulating healthy competition and game-like learning was identified, alongside the perils of these serving to demoralise, pressurise and trigger complacency in learners. By focusing on students’ experiences and interpretations of how the LA dashboard visualizations impacted their learning motivation and outcomes, this paper aims to shed insights into the pedagogical complexities of designing LA that considers the voices of learners as a critical stakeholder group.

Teamwork, one of the core competencies for the twenty-first century learner, is a critical skill for work and learning. However, assessing teamwork is complex, in particular, developing a measure of teamwork that is domain-generic and applicable across a wide range of learners. This paper documents one such study that leverages technology to help provide a formative assessment of teamwork. It focuses on the self and peer ratings of a teamwork measure and a pedagogical method, which was trialled as a teamwork awareness programme in a mainstream Secondary School in Singapore. This teamwork awareness programme was incorporated into the school’s Interdisciplinary Project Work curriculum. Findings of students’ experiences of the programme are described. The teamwork competency dimension of ‘team emotional support’ was rated highest amongst students. Also, students’ report gains in teamwork awareness, mixed engagement in reflective practices, and on the real-world relevancy of the programme. Discussions and implications of the findings follow.