Cheng, Lu Pien

In this article, we present a case study of six Singaporean elementary school teachers working in a Lesson Study team that prepared them for problem solving instruction. The Lesson Study process included preparing, observing, and critiquing mathematics lessons in the context of solving fractions tasks. By conducting Lesson Study, we anticipated that these teachers would develop greater insight into students’ mathematics, which would influence their classroom practices. Through the process of planning, observing and critiquing and by purposefully listening to students’ explanations, the teachers began to better understand their students’ learning, which in turn could help them develop their students' mathematical knowledge.

In this chapter, we discuss the comics package we have developed to teach lower secondary school statistics of the mathematics curriculum. Most people would think that comics for classroom instruction can at most stop at arousing students’ interest in the subject, especially among the low-attaining students. However, we assert that using comics in teaching lower secondary statistics can introduce the students to much of the statistical processes within contexts that are meaningful to students, invite them to engage in higher order thinking tasks in order to develop their critical thinking ability. We also discuss snapshots of how one teacher enacted the statistics lessons based on our comics teaching package, and two teachers’ response to the comics package.

In Singapore, education is regarded as an investment instead of a social service. Singapore’s Education System has evolved over time and so have school mathematics curricula in Singapore. Mathematics education in Singapore schools in the twenty-first century is still going through a period of change. Mathematics is a compulsory subject up to Grade 10 in Singapore schools. The present-day School Mathematics Curriculum is based on a pentagonal framework with mathematical problem solving as its central focus. In this chapter, we review the developments of Singapore school mathematics curriculum for the past sixty years and describe some of the important features of the intended, attained and implemented aspects of the mathematics curriculum in Singapore. The implementation of the 2019 secondary mathematics syllabus and the 2020 primary mathematics syllabus began in 2020 and 2021, respectively. This chapter also examines the implications and issues related to the implementation of these two syllabuses.

A research project on using comics for teaching mathematics was initiated in one Singapore primary school. One class of Grade 5 (students of age 11–12) students was exposed to comics for mathematics instruction. This paper reports a case study of seven students’ perception of the features of the comics instructional package and how these features impacted their learning of mathematics. The students’ responses in an interview with the researchers were analysed using Thematic Analysis and presented using the Singapore mathematics curriculum framework. Four main features of the comics instructional package: (1) humour; (2) story narrative; (3) scaffolding provided by the questions and (3) visuals and four main themes: Increase in (a) enjoyment; (b) understanding; (c) appreciation of real-world applications of mathematics and (d) participation during lessons; were uncovered. The use of comics could potentially impact positively on developing students’ Attitudes, Skills, Concepts and Processes of the Singapore mathematics curriculum framework in learning mathematics.

The Concrete-Pictorial-Abstract (CPA) approach, based on Bruner’s conception of the enactive, iconic and symbolic modes of representation, is a well-known instructional heuristic advocated by the Singapore Ministry of Education since early 1980’s. Despite its ubiquity as a teaching strategy throughout the entire mathematics education community in Singapore, it is somewhat surprising to see a lack of an account of its theoretical roots. This paper is an attempt to contribute to this discussion on the CPA strategy and its potential role in continuing advancement of quality mathematics education.

In this article, an adaptation of a secondary school mathematics comics-based instructional package for primary school mathematics classroom, and the teachers' and students' perceptions about the use of comics in the classroom are discussed. Further suggestions by the teachers on fine-tuning the package are also discussed.

This paper discusses the use of comics in teaching mathematics in the secondary mathematics classroom. We explicate how the use of comics in teaching mathematics can prepare students for the twenty-first century competencies. We developed an alternative teaching package using comics for two lower secondary mathematics topics. This alternative teaching package consists of (i) several sets of comic strips expounding all related mathematical concepts in a lively way; (ii) tiered practice questions for learning reinforcement; and (iii) a set of proposed lesson outlines with suggestions on how to use the comics for mathematics teaching. We also report how one of the teachers in our study used this teaching package in her mathematics lessons. Her lessons were video-recorded and eleven students were interviewed to help us understand how the mathematics comics lessons were enacted and the students’ perception of comics as instruction. We identified instances in which the teacher tweaked the provided resource to further enhance student learning and incorporated elements of the twenty-first century competencies during her lessons. Through selected student interviews, we also identified instances in which students commented on their gain from the new approach from the perspective of the twenty-first century competencies.