Tan, Steven Kwang San

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.

The effective teaching of National Education requires from the teacher a sense of commitment and personal conviction. The teacher has to demonstrate confidence in what is said and taught in class, and more importantly, through his or her personal values and convictions. In other words, the teacher is required to be patriotic. This paper examines the different types of patriotism among our trainee teachers, and how these types of patriotism influence their citizenship values, their perceptions of the importance of National Education, and the extent to which National Education is viewed as government propaganda. The results revealed four homogenous clusters that differed significantly in terms of perceptions of citizenship, importance of National Education, and the extent to which National Education is viewed as government propaganda.

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.

In the past 2 decades, major progress in understanding the relationship between physical education (PE) instructional processes and learning outcomes had been made. Improved observational methods for assessing instructional processes and the use of this information to better understand the teaching and learning context have contributed to this knowledge. However, the general quality of Singapore school PE instruction is relatively unknown due to a relative paucity of research in this area. The development and use of an appropriate observation protocol for use in a PE lesson context can help record one or more instructional processes pertinent to PE in a school setting. The purpose of this study was to provide an analysis of activity structures in PE classes across the different grade levels. Data for this study were drawn primarily from 35 videotaped PE lessons across 8 schools in 19 content areas. The presentation will provide insights to the different activity structures most commonly observed in the different PE grade settings. Furthermore, opportunities for students to achieve the different objectives of PE as indicated in the PE curriculum will also be highlighted, together with recommendations to support the teaching and learning of PE in schools.

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.