Background/Context: The level of satisfaction and well-being teachers experience are important determinants of teaching effectiveness and their decision to stay in the profession. Although school climate is generally associated with teacher outcomes, identifying the aspects that matter most to teacher satisfaction and well-being could contribute…

We examine the challenges and emergent nature of learning during undergraduate internships. Much scholarly inquiry on the latter focuses on internship experiences within traditional professional domains such as medicine, teacher education, and other fields. There is less knowledge about undergraduate interns entering more fluid and recent work…

This paper explores the dimensions of how interest can be sustained in learners, using a case study of a makerspace in a Singapore context. We suggest a framework that synthesises both individual psychological aspects of interest development together with the impact of the socio-cultural environment which include five dimensions: community,…

Research tells us that reading is correlated to academic achievement but how do we motivate students to read? How can schools build reading cultures? Through the case study of a government secondary school in Singapore, I examine how attention to the invisible network of resources that support reading can provide insight into students' resources…

Arts integration research has focused on documenting how the teaching of specific art forms can be integrated with "core" academic subject matters (e.g. science, mathematics and literacy). However, the question of how the teaching of multiple art forms themselves can be integrated in schools remains to be explored by educational…

Among the challenges faced by educators in promoting critical thinking is that of cultural compatibility. Using Singapore as an illustrative case study, this paper explores the cultural challenges and recommended strategies for the teaching of critical thinking in schools. The research for this study is based on a theoretical framework that…

Using a qualitative case-study approach, this small-scale pilot study explores the potential challenges and opportunities faced by early childhood educators in their first year of implementing a dedicated Outdoor Learning Environment (OLE) at their school. Participants include two Kindergarten teachers working at a large international school in…

This qualitative study, examining seven communities in the globalized Asia Pacific area, aimed to investigate Jewish community attitudes toward Hebrew, their heritage language (HL), as influenced by the social environment. The main finding was that the "complex ecology" of context influences attitudes to Hebrew. The article delineates…

The international movement of teachers is a global phenomenon that has seen an increasing number of teachers moving from one country to another. Although developed countries in the West are traditionally seen as attractive migration destinations for teachers, countries in Asia, such as Singapore, are also proving to be a draw for many foreign…

This study identified secondary school students' alternative conceptions (ACs) of climate change and their resistance to instruction. Using a case-based approach, a diagnostic test was administered to Secondary 3 male students in a pre-test and post-test. The ACs identified in the pre-test were on the causes of climate change, the natural…

What teachers attend to, how they make sense of, and respond to critical incidents in the classroom are important for improving teaching. However, seeing and understanding important features of critical incidents can be difficult. In this paper, I propose a notion of productive noticing, which I used to analyse a case study of what teachers…

This study marries collaborative problem solving and learning study in understanding the onset of a cycle of teacher professional development process within school-based professional learning communities (PLCs). It aimed to explore how a PLC carried out collaborative problem finding--a key process involved in collaborative problem solving--that…

The purpose of this study was to survey a sample of high school students in Hawaii and Singapore about what they perceive to be helpful aspects of classroom environments in their learning of science and humanities subjects. The What Is Happening In this Class? (WIHIC) questionnaire was administered in the fall of 2003 to 73 high school students in…

This paper investigates the relationship between activity design and discourse on a mobile learning trail, considering the physical affordances of the real world platform in designing contextual learning experiences. We adopted a "context-oriented" and "process-oriented" pedagogical approach in designing the mobile learning…

This paper explores three potential affordances (social, technical and pedagogical) of wikis in the context of designing 32 teachers' learning of classroom management cases. Two learning environments were designed and two groups of the teacher-participants posted their own written and audio cases, identified problems, discussed and proposed…