Educational Research AY2018/2019

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.

This study aimed to examine the effect of Scripted Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) on students’ individual writing. The Spiral Model of Collaborative Knowledge Improvement (SMCKI) pedagogical approach (Chen, Zhang, Wen, Looi & Yeo, 2019) was employed as the CSCL script to support the CSCL environment. Being exploratory in nature, a one-group pretest-posttest experimental design was employed. Two cycles of intervention were administered to the experimental class. During each cycle, the students engaged in collaborative learning (CoL) process through the five-phase SMCKI to construct three elements of the descriptive writing, namely speech, action, and emotion-based on a picture stimulus. Commencing with the phase 1 individual ideation, followed by phase 2 intra-group synergy, each member with the group explored upon the writing ideas populated by each member and fine-tuned the posts. Phase 3 inter-group critique leverage on class-level effort to feedback on the group effort of the descriptive writing elements. Phase 4 intra-group refinement reconvene within-group effort to refine the writing elements based on feedback from other groups. Concluding one cycle is the final phase where students consolidate all learning into an individual writing work. Multi-faceted data collected include pre-and post-survey, pre-writing, artefacts during the five-phase SMCKI and classroom observation video. Results revealed that the SMCKI script did help enhance students’ individual writing.

This research study examined and compared the performance of primary one students in terms of their oral and written proficiency in Chinese for the same picture description task. A total of 273 primary one students participated in an elicitation task where they were asked to describe a picture through speech and in written sentences. Their narrative abilities can be scored in terms of their standard in vocabulary and sentence structure, more specifically the total number of words, repeated words and unique words that were used by the primary one students. The results displayed a significant gap between their oral and written narrative abilities, whereby their oral proficiency was evidently more developed as compared to their written proficiency.

Mindfulness and democratic attitudes in teachers seem to overlap in promoting teacher-student relationships and student learning in classrooms. To examine if there are positive associations between teachers' mindfulness and democratic attitudes, the current study examined relationships between dispositional mindfulness and teacher attitudes (democratic and autocratic) among 50 pre-service teachers in Singapore. Correlation analyses revealed a positive relationship between teachers ' democratic attitudes and their dispositional mindfulness and significant associations between specific components of mindfulness (Observing, Describing and Non-reactivity) and teachers' democratic and autocratic attitudes. A marginally significant difference was shown in democratic attitudes according to the experience of International Practicum (IP), where teachers with IP experience have lower democratic attitudes. This is contrary to what existing literature predicts. Overall , this study's findings can potentially provide directions for future programmes in Singapore to promote mindfulness and democratic attitudes in prospective teachers .

The flipped classroom approach is an instructional approach that incorporates computer-based learning outside of classroom and collaborative learning in the classroom (Bishop & Verleger, 2013). In this approach, teachers prepared resources on specific concepts and content that they would like to teach the students by integrating the use of technology. Students, on the other hand, would be assigned to complete certain tasks such as viewing videos, PowerPoint slide and online assignment via the Learning Management System (LMS) portal before coming to class. In this way, students can learn at their own pace until they are able to grasp the content. Therefore, this research would firstly, find out how schools implemented the flipped classroom. Secondly, this research aims to find out the strengths of the flipped classroom in terms of students’ performance, students’ attitude and teachers’ attitude. Thirdly, this research also aims to find out the challenges of implementing the flipped classroom. For this research, 11 empirical studies that were published in reputable journals from different countries were selected for the meta-analysis.