Seow, Peter Sen Kee

This paper presents experiences from a seamless mobile learning project in Singapore. Although the project included a variety of seamless mobile learning designs, this paper focuses on only one, and that is a mobile learning application SamEx in support of a specific learning scenario – an outdoor ZOO field trip. The paper describes SamEx design by focusing on virtual badges gathered by the students during their ZOO trip. The trip was structured by the teachers and scaffolded by SamEx system contextually triggered questions and prompts. The paper describes experiences from the ZOO trip done with SamEx, gives an elaborate example of a student’s learning experience during the trip, and concludes by examining different types of student profiles according to their badge usage and SamEx social engagement.

Program design is crucial in youth development, mentoring, after-school, and community-based programs. However, current approaches to youth program design are often limited by: 1) lack of clarity in intended program outcomes; 2) difficulties in adjusting programs to different contexts; and 3) long-term program sustainability. This paper addresses these challenges by exploring the application of Design-Based Implementation Research (DBIR) and conjecture mapping in designing a youth program in Singapore. By emphasizing targeted outcomes, contextual considerations, and stakeholder experiences, the DBIR approach offers a promising solution to enhance youth program design. This paper demonstrates the effectiveness of DBIR and conjecture mapping in improving program design, while also acknowledging and discussing the contextual limitations and considerations of this approach.

Design research has been the major methodology when learning sciences researchers design and implement interventions to bring education change in schools. However, how to promote systematic and sustainable change in design research remains a big challenge. The study is part of a three-year project that brought a seamless learning innovation to transform primary three (P3) and four science learning. During the first year enactment, we had one teacher and one P3 experimental class. We followed the same teacher and class to Primary four. Another teacher and experimental class joined the project at P4. Audio/video recordings of teacher-researcher weekly meetings, research team weekly meeting minutes, selected audio/video recordings of science lessons and field notes, teacher reflection and interview audios, and student artefacts were collected over about three years of time. We identified teacher to be the major agency for sustainable education change. We apply a Structure/Agency framework and a teacher qualification model when describing and analyzing teacher learning and teacher change during the seamless learning project. Our results showed teacher knowledge, belief, and practice change was facilitated and constrained by the school environment and the change was not of the same pace and synchronized but affected by each other. The paper provides empirical data and analytical framework for teacher change in design research context.

Studying teacher enactment of an innovation helps us understand the process of effective spread of a curricular innovation to teachers who have differing levels of content readiness, pedagogical orientations, teaching competency, different student profiles, and professional development experiences. Towards this, we explore how different teachers in the same grade level appropriated a common science curriculum enabled by mobile technologies in their classrooms. The innovative science curriculum: Mobilized 5E (Engage–Explore–Explain–Elaborate–Evaluate) Science Curriculum was developed through an iterative cycle of design-based research. As curriculum designs were not self-sufficient by themselves, the enactments of the teachers differed in how they leveraged on students' artifacts, how they integrated the technology into the class, the ways in which they interacted with the students, and how they scaffolded students' activities in a mobile learning setting. In this study, the teachers' enactments of mobilized 5E lessons were observed, analyzed and compared, with the aim of exploring the differences of lesson enactment amongst them. The results showed that teachers' different pedagogical orientations affected their instructions, especially their ways of technology integration in the class, and their patterns of interactions with the students. Based on the exploration of the teacher enactment of the mobilized 5E curriculum, implications are drawn concerning the implementation of innovative curricula implementation and the supports for teacher professional development of such innovation with the ultimate purpose of sustaining and scaling.

The paper presents a study on a partnership between schools, a community welfare organization, Science Centre and the National Institute of Education to design, study and implement new approaches of learning for lower track students. Singapore as an inclusive society has sought to address the diverse educational needs of children in the country. This partnership seeks to ignite students’ interest in learning Science and address the affective needs in learning, which includes developing students’ confidence, competence and social skills. Leveraging on the diverse expertise and experiences, the partners designed tinkering activities to anchor students’ learning experiences in exploring, testing and constructing Science ideas. The activities are designed and enacted with linkages to the existing Science curriculum. However, setting a partnership with stakeholders from different backgrounds and domains is challenging. We will describe the journey of setting up the partnership, developing shared goals, building capacity and knowledge, and designing for learning. Also, we will share students’ learning and affective outcomes because of the partnership and participation in the designed tinkering activities. Our goal is to highlight how meaningful partnerships can be formed to better understand and meet lower track students learning and affective needs through collective social responsibility according to the familiar proverb “It takes a village to raise a child”.

Over a year of time, we co-designed primary three science curriculum to integrate 1:1 mobile technology with teachers. The form teacher of the experimental class in a Singapore school enacted the curriculum as her regular teaching. This paper proposes a cyclic model of how to “mobilize” the curriculum in align with the national primary science syllabus. Preliminary results of the enactment are also presented.

In this paper, we describe how the use of physical computing devices like an embroidery machine and TurtleStitch software can be used to engage learners in coding and developing their Computational Thinking (CT) skills. Two lessons are described on how novice learners can create geometric patterns with code while applying CT skills. In the first lesson, students learn to create polygon shapes such as square, triangle, pentagon, and hexagon. Through abstraction, pattern recognition, and algorithmic thinking, they must develop a modularized code block to create a polygon with sides and length of the polygon as input parameters. In the second lesson, they must create pinwheel geometric patterns through decomposition, pattern recognition and algorithmic thinking. The accompanying approaches such as tinkering, creating, debugging persevering, and collaborating were used to develop CT skills as learners generate geometric patterns with block-based codes in TurtleStitch. The use of embroidery machines and coding on TurtleStitch can provide opportunities for novice learners to develop coding and computation thinking skills as they creatively generate patterns with codes that can be embroidered in a tangible textile form.

This study investigates how underserved children in the community develop Computational Thinking skills through learning physical computing with the support from older tutor volunteers. The children learned to construct physical computing projects by learning to code the micro:bit, and using various input sensors and controlling output devices. We observed the students and their interaction with the mentors to understand how they develop their Computational Thinking skills as they construct the projects. From our findings, learning with tutors can provide the support in developing Computational Thinking skills in the children.

Studying teacher enactment of an innovation helps us understand the process of effective spread of a curricular innovation to teachers who have differing levels of content readiness, pedagogical orientations, and different student profiles. Towards this, we explore how different teachers in the same grade level appropriated a common science curriculum enabled by mobile technologies in their classrooms. As curriculum designs are not self-sufficient by themselves, the enactments of the teachers differ in how they leverage on students’ artifacts, how they integrate the technology into the class and in which way they interact with students in a mobile learning setting. We draw implications for the innovative curricula implementation and for teacher professional development of such innovations with the ultimate purpose of scaling and sustaining.