Munirah Shaik Kadir

The science curriculum in Singapore promotes innovation in teaching and learning to encourage children to develop curiosity and the spirit of inquiry. It hopes to build the development of thinking and reflection into the everyday classroom processes and sets to understand the complexities and relate learning to application and alternatives. The end goal is pupils who enjoy and value science. In the area of physics, pupils find it difficult to enjoy and appreciate the subject because they are intimidated by the terminologies, calculations and concepts that require higher- order thinking. Teachers are always looking for new ways to make physics more appealing to the pupils. Past research has shown that when pupils play with concrete models and toys, it arouses curiosity and interest because it is a fun learning experience. Curricula in early childhood education programs throughout the world are built around play because young children respond very well to it and play has shown to contribute to the many aspects of a child’s psychological development. If the level of difficulty of the play activities is raised for older pupils, will play still be a stimulant for their learning and will the learning be effective? Will the pupils respond well to play or find the play experience too childish? These are some of the questions and concerns that have been addressed in the study. This paper reveals how the “play-n-learn” approach was implemented on a group of secondary three pure physics pupils and their response to the experience.

WiREAD+ is a web-based collaborative critical reading and learning analytics environment to scaffold learning and motivate students to develop richer dialogue and quality interactions with peers around multimodal texts. This paper reports on the pilots to scale up the use of WiREAD+ beyond the original context of Secondary School English Language (EL) learning to three distinct educational settings, namely, EL in a primary school, English Literature in a junior college (pre-university), and a tertiary-level Discourse Studies course. We report on learners’ perceptions in response to the use of the system and reflect on the potential and challenges in scaling up the system across different educational contexts, specifically on the three augmentations to the system which we have designed to improve its scalability readiness. Drawing from the findings of the pilot studies, we briefly discuss how we can support the wider adoption and deployment of the system across schools and settings.

We report our research findings on Singaporean student understandings of a topic in modern physics – the photoelectric effect, discuss the possible basis of their understanding, and suggest ways to improve their understanding of this topic. This on-going research involved four junior colleges (JC). The level of the treatment of this topic in JC is similar to that of an introductory undergraduate course. The research was done using pre-test, tutorial instruction and post-test on experimental and control groups in each JC. It was found that there is a significant improvement in the experimental group over the control group for both categories of questions i.e. conceptual questions which are less familiar to our students and questions which are typical of the GCE A-Level exams.

Objectives This study explores the experiences and coping strategies of secondary students as they engaged in learning activities during the pandemic. It investigated the sources of student stress during the pandemic, and the extent to which the pandemic influenced the stress that they usually experience. Method Semi-structured interviews were used to elicit details of the students’ lived experiences as they navigated learning via an online platform, their coping strategies in managing stress. Results With regards to academic experiences, many students found online learning challenging and ineffective and were concerned about their examinations. Under social experiences, many students shared that they missed social and recreational activities during the “circuit breaker”. However, some students demonstrated resilience and were able to see the benefits of going through the pandemic. More students reported academic-related than social-related stress. The students coped with stress in three ways: (1) disengagement, (2) taking active steps and (3) turning to others. Conclusion Academic concerns were a major source of distress among adolescents. Insights that were drawn from the results of the study can be utilized to support students in managing stress and mitigate its adverse effects on student learning and functioning. KEY POINTS What is already known about this topic: (1) The pandemic has a more serious impact on adolescents’ mental health and emotional well-being and many adolescents experience anxiety during this period. (2) Positive reappraisal, strengths use and emotional processing are some strategies used by adolescents to cope with stress during the pandemic. What this topic adds: (1) Although many students found online learning stressful and ineffective, some students in this study had meaningful and positive experiences during the period when they had online lessons at home. (2) Despite the challenges, some students demonstrated resilience and were even able to see the benefits arising from going through the pandemic. Others appreciated spending more time with their family members. (3) Adolescents coped with stress experienced during the pandemic in three ways: (1) disengagement, (2) taking active steps and (3) turning to others.

In this paper, we focus on students’ understanding of the concepts relating to buoyancy: namely, (a) the level of displaced liquid as being dependent on the volume of the object that is submerged in it, and (b) density as a characteristic property of a material which is unaffected by its size. The study used a pretest-posttest control group design. The students were secondary one (grade 7) students. Due to limitation of time, the data in this paper were derived from analysing two classes (N = 72) out of six in the experimental group which experienced the PbI1@School curriculum, and two classes (N=80) out of five in the control group which were taught using the traditional approach. We used two pretests to probe students’ preconceptions of the two concepts (a) and (b) stated above. The common preconceptions identified from students’ answers in the pretests include: the idea that mass and/or weight of the object and the depth at which an already completely immersed object is placed below the surface of the liquid affect the level of displaced liquid. Another common preconception is the idea that the mass/weight of the object determines its buoyancy (i.e. whether it will sink or float). From the reasoning seen in their responses, it was clear that many students, prior to instruction, were not able to distinguish between the concepts of mass, weight, volume and density. Results from our analysis showed the effectiveness of the adapted inquiry-based materials and instruction in developing student conceptual understanding. A good understanding of the common student preconceptions and how instruction can be designed and facilitated to help students resolve their preconceptions to better learn the concepts would be beneficial to physics teachers in secondary school.

This paper reports on crucial factors that could influence students’ learning of Physics at three different stages of their lives: 1) lower secondary school, 2) post-secondary school or tertiary education, and 3) career. A sample of 275 secondary 1 students in a school in Singapore responded to several survey items on a six-point scale (from disagree strongly to agree strongly). The factors derived from the survey items include students’ interest, self-efficacy, competence, and parents’ expectations as internal and external factors, which may influence outcomes such as engagement, future educational aspiration, and career aspiration in physics. By determining the influencing factors and the seriousness of the implications, educators and parents could play their role effectively in cultivating the necessary characteristics in students for their optimum benefit.

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.

Load reduction instruction (LRI) is an instructional approach designed to manage the cognitive load on students as they learn complex learning materials. According to Cognitive Load Theory, complex learning is associated with high cognitive load and when not effectively managed, could impede learning. Inquiry-based learning with hands-on component, where students conduct experiments to find solutions to problems, are known to incur high cognitive load. In this study, we examined the effects on students' educational outcomes when the five key principles of the LRI framework were implemented to reduce the cognitive load of inquiry-based learning with hands-on involvement. Multiple regression analysis was used to compare the educational outcomes of the intervention and control groups. The control group also experienced hands-on inquiry-based learning, but without LRI. Results showed that students in the intervention group had better outcomes, indicating the effectiveness of LRI in managing the high cognitive load of complex instruction.