Quek, Choon Lang

Teachers’ attitudes and beliefs on classroom management contribute significantly to student learning and development. Despite its importance, research in this aspect, however, has still been stymied by the difficulty of measuring teachers’ classroom management attitudes and beliefs. Psychometrically sound instruments to measure teachers’ classroom management attitudes and beliefs are still unavailable for use in Asian classrooms. In view of such reality, this study was intended to evaluate the psychometric properties of the Attitudes and Beliefs of Classroom Control Inventory-Adapted (ABCC-A) in Singapore schools. Construct validation of ABCC-A was conducted in three studies. Participants’ responses to the 27-item ABCC inventory from the first-phase data collection (N = 512) were used in study 1 and study 2. Participants and their responses to the revised ABCC-A inventory from the second-phase data collection were used in study 3. In study 1, half of the first-phase data collection sample (N 1 = 259) was randomly selected for the exploratory factor analysis and reliability test. In the study 2, the other half of first-phase sample (N 2 = 253) will be used for the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) test. In study 3, participants (N 3 = 41) who completed the revised ABCC-A, teacher efficacy scale, and questionnaire on teacher interaction questionnaires in the second-phase data collection will be used for convergent and discriminate validity tests. The CFA of ABCC-A revealed a good model fit of instruction management and people management subscales and acceptable evidence of invariance among different groups of beginning teachers in Singapore primary and secondary schools.

As more education systems integrate mandatory computational thinking (CT) classes into their curricula, understanding how the public perceives this issue is an important step in making educational policies and implementing educational reform. In this paper, we retrieved all accessible texts related to K-12 CT education on the Quora platform. The textual data obtained ranged from June 2010 to September 2022. We then performed topic modeling analysis to identify major topics and uncover meaningful themes of the public responses to CT education initiatives. In general, people expressed positive comments about CT education. However, they were still concerned about the difficulties in learning and education equality for disadvantaged groups. In addition, since CT practices develop students' essential skills in the job market, people may overestimate the outcomes of CT education. Our findings provide insights into public perceptions of children’s CT education. The results of this study can facilitate education policymaking, curriculum design, and further research directions.

This study investigates 80 pre-service teachers’ exploration of using a computer mediated communication tool to design interdisciplinary projects collaboratively. Over a period of six weeks, the pre-service teachers assumed their roles as curriculum designers in project crafting. They were engaged in discussions via the online discussion forums and face-to-face tutorial sessions. Amongst their project groups of 4-5 members, they carried out brainstorming of project ideas, asking questions and decision making about their views and ideas of projects. Their online activities and discussions were analysed quantitatively and qualitatively. The implications and key learning points of their project crafting are discussed in this paper.

This study investigated a blended synchronous learning environment (BSLE), which was designed for a group of master’s students taking a course at a teacher education institute. The BSLE was created for the majority of the students to attend the course face-to-face and at the same time allowed the rest to join the identical sessions using videoconferencing from different locations. The purpose of the study was to find out what learning experiences and perceptions the students had with regard to the design and implementation of the BSLE. Results show that the BSLE could extend certain features of the face-to-face classroom instruction to the online students and the students liked the flexibility and convenience of attending lessons via the two way videoconferencing at remote sites. This study further identified that smooth communication between online students and the instructor and between the online students and classroom students, the engagement of the online students and the redesign of certain instructional activities, balanced attention from the instructor to the classroom students as well as the online students and the quality of the audio were crucial for the environment to be effective.

This study sought to assess the technology-supported Project Work classroom learning environment for 68 Secondary Two (Express stream) students in a school. This Project Work classroom learning environment was unique as it adopted a blended approach – comprising of the regular classroom in which students worked in groups in a face-to-face setting, as well as an online technology-supported platform where students collaborated with overseas team mates on the project. In order to measure the students’ perceptions of such a distinctive environment, a new learning environment questionnaire was developed. An attitude instrument was also developed to capture the students’ attitudes towards Project Work. From the data collected, gaps in the learning environment were identified and the gender differences in the perceptions of the environment were also explored. The associations between the students’ environmental perceptions and their attitudinal outcomes were investigated and the results revealed interesting outcomes. Group interviews were also conducted with small groups of students so as to gain insights into their learning experiences, approaches and problems faced in PW lessons.

The Project work (PW) initiative was introduced by the Ministry of Education, Singapore, to provide students with the opportunities to foster collaborative learning skills, to improve both oral and written communication, to practise creative and critical thinking skills, and to develop self-directed inquiry and life-long learning skills (Ministry of Education, 1999). Although PW has been introduced for a few years, there has not been much research done in the Singapore context, especially in terms of its effect on students’ motivation. To fill the empirical gap, this study examined the extent in which PW promoted students’ intrinsic motivation, as well as satisfied students’ needs for competence, choice and relatedness. Specifically, data was collected from 7 classes of Secondary 2 students with the use of a modified version of the Intrinsic Motivation Inventory (IMI, McAuley, Duncan, & Tammen, 1989) to assess students’ intrinsic motivation and their perceived choice, competence and relatedness in the PW context and in their normal mathematics or science lessons. Comparisons were made to establish whether there was any significant difference in terms of the students’ experiences in the different learning contexts.

Online learning environment is a complex and dynamic learning space for learners to experience social and cognitive processes of knowledge and meaning construction. It has brought about educators’ re-designing of instructional approaches for the emerging constructivist environment Heinich, Molenda, Russell & Smaldino, 2002),translating classroom-based instructions to the Web, incorporating of asynchronous and synchronous communication as well as evaluating web-based instruction (Lynch, 2002). This study investigated 19 pre-service teachers' learning in an online learning environment. These teachers’ online activities were analysed using their individual written reflection logs (end of the module) and a planned forum of discussion notes (out of the three planned forums). Out of the 17 emerging facilitation strategies used by these teachers in this planned forum, 3 highly rated strategies were: Initiating discussions (15.22%), prompting (14.13%) and summarising discussions (10.87%). These teachers also reported 20 facilitation strategies learnt (either by observing their peers’ action taken or acquiring on their own through readings as well as trials and errors) and of which 3 were highly rated: Asking questions (14.71%), summarising (12.75%) and demonstrating leadership (9.8%). It was also found that teacher-facilitators used more strategies than the five strategies introduced to them and they also learnt other facilitation strategies from observing their peers rather than those that they used to facilitate.