Book Chapters

Seng Chee suggests taking a learning-centric approach, rather than a techno-centric approach, for the integration of technology for adult education and lifelong learning. He argues that the anchor point for design consideration should be the goals and purposes of adult learning and the corresponding learning approaches, which will help to identify pertinent technological support. Learning design should be applied based on relevant theories so as to engage adult learners towards achieving their learning goals. He presents three approaches of technology-supported learning: knowledge as acquisition supported by technologies as a tutor, learning as participation supported by Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning tools and learning as knowledge creation supported by Web 2.0 tools.

A group of researchers had been working on a longitudinal mobile learning (m-learning) project in a primary school in Singapore. A curriculum design framework was proposed in the beginning of the project to guide the two-year design-enactment-reflection-refinement cycles of the mobilized curriculum. In this chapter, we narrate our implementation research approach by presenting a post hoc analysis of how the curriculum was progressively transformed for seamless learning (a learning notion that advocates perpetual learning across contexts) and how the design taps on the affordances for m-learning. The evaluation illuminates how various types of learning activities are systematically introduced in the two years of science curriculum to nurture inquiry learning across both formal and informal contexts, thus supporting notions of authentic learning. This chapter contributes to the literature on how to address challenges in translating learning theories and integrating mobile technology affordances into curriculum development and sustainable classroom practices.

According to the Singapore Ministry of Education Kindergarten Curriculum Framework (Ministry of Education, Singapore, Nurturing early learners: a curriculum framework for kindergartens in Singapore. Retrieved on January 15, 2016 from http://www.moe.gov.sg/education/preschool/files/kindergarten-curriculum-framework.pdf, 2012), purposeful play is a pedagogical approach to actively engage children in exploring, developing, and applying knowledge and skills in an enjoyable manner. To achieve this broad objective, lessons have to be purposefully planned by taking into consideration children’s interests and abilities. This chapter describes a group of Singaporean preschool children (aged 6) learning about ways to categorize different types of leaves through purposeful play at the Singapore Botanic Gardens. We discuss the affordances of purposeful play in this naturalistic learning context as illuminated through the teacher-student and student-student social interactions. Through this work, we want to demonstrate how purposeful play, when properly planned and capitalized on, could contribute to children’s science experiential learning and understanding. Preschool teachers may be interested to learn how they can purposefully plan their lessons to create diverse affordances for children. This study also contributes to the early childhood literature, which has limited empirical studies about Singaporean preschool science education.

In Taiwan, students on the vocational track can choose, at around the age of 14, to enter five-year junior college programs at institutes of technology. These programs provide five years of intensive study in applied science, business, or foreign languages. In this chapter, I examine the professional trajectories of six young women who graduated in 2009 with junior college diplomas in English. Using a critical view of the language as pure potential ideology (Park 2016) as a theoretical lens, I discuss the young women’s motivations for choosing, while still quite young, to commit themselves to five years of intensive foreign language study, the aspirations that they had during their five-year course of study, and the realities they ended up experiencing. While some participants had the good fortune of encountering only situations that facilitated deployment of their foreign language skills, others were forced to contend with uneven playing fields that constrained their professional development. Those in a position to influence students in the process of cultivating their linguistic abilities should thus consciously propagate counter-hegemonic discourses, reminding learners that, in the inequitable world we live in, hard work and perseverance will very often not be sufficient for realizing professional aspirations.