Purpose: The present qualitative paper examined the changes in students' motivation before and after lesson study for learning community implementation at a primary school in Singapore. Design/methodology/approach: Student focus group discussions (FGDs) were conducted with six students from each of the classes involved in the research lessons.…

Little published research has investigated how students interact with authentic audiences. By conducting a two-year classroom-based research intervention with 617 students from three government-aided primary schools in Singapore, this study examined the effect of the socio-cognitive and motivation-and-learning (SCML) approach on students' writing…

My dissertation is a qualitative design-based research study that explores Singaporean elementary school students' documentation and reflection practices in a maker learning environment. In this work, I build upon literature from Constructionism, Metacognition, and formative assessment methods. I investigate the following research questions…

There has been a decrease in the motivation levels of primary school students towards learning their native language. In Singapore, the native language is also known as the Mother Tongue Language (MTL). There is also a need for more research on Experiential Learning in primary schools worldwide and MTL classrooms in Singapore. Using the basic…

This study seeks to understand the "what" and the "why" of student engagement by investigating the "aims" that students pursue through engagement (i.e., their achievement goals) and the "reasons" driving such engagement (i.e., their motivation). Self-report instruments measuring students' motivational…

Nonlinear Pedagogy is an exploratory approach to teaching and learning Physical Education that can be potentially effective to help children acquire relevant twenty-first century competencies. Underpinned by Ecological Dynamics, the focus of Nonlinear Pedagogy is on the learner and includes the provision of less prescriptive instructions and…

Motivational constructs and students' engagements have great impacts on students' mathematics achievements, yet they have not been theoretically investigated using international large-scale assessment data. This study utilized the mathematics data of the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study 2011 to conduct a comparative and…

Seamless language learning promises to be an effective learning approach that addresses the limitations of classroom-only language learning. It leverages mobile technologies to facilitate holistic and perpetual learning experiences that bridge different locations, times, technologies or social settings. Despite the emergence of studies on seamless…

This study aimed at investigating the impact of entering high-ability classes on the academic self-concept of high-ability primary girls in Singapore. Participants in this study are 91 Primary 4 girls, 30 high-ability pupils, and 61 pupils from classes that include high-, middle-, and low-ability pupils. This study utilized a mixed-method…

This research paper explores students' motivation and teachers' teaching practices towards the writing of compositions in the conventional paper-based (paper and pencil) and the online blogs mode. Six classes of Grade 5 (224 students) and four English teachers in an elementary-level future school in Singapore were involved in this study. A total…

The internal/external frame of reference (I/E) model and dimensional comparison theory posit paradoxical relations between achievement (ACH) and self-concept (SC) in mathematics (M) and verbal (V) domains; ACH in each domain positively affects SC in the matching domain (e.g., MACH to MSC) but negatively in the nonmatching domain (e.g., MACH to…

I will describe a program that I developed to motivate grade five elementary school learners of English in Singapore to put more time and effort into learning English by enhancing their vision of their Ideal second language (L2) self and making their goals for learning English more clear and specific. The Ideal L2 self is the representation of the…

In this ethnographic study, the musical behaviours of 28 primary school children in Singapore were examined for their meaning and diversity as they engaged in the school day. A large part of these children's musical behaviours stemmed from their exposure to the mass media. Children's musical inventions emerged in the context of play, occasionally…

Student motivation may have significant influences on essential academic outcomes. However, students' motivation may decline as they grow older. This study examined six motivation constructs (self-efficacy, interest, mastery goal orientation, engagement, avoidance coping, and effort withdrawal) of students from 78 schools in Singapore (N = 4214)…

Teachable agent is a type of pedagogical agent which instantiates Learning-by-Teaching theory through simulating a "naive" learner in order to motivate students to teach it. This paper discusses the limitation of existing teachable agents and incorporates intrinsic motivation to the agent model to enable teachable agents with initiative…