Inquiry-based learning is becoming a widely recognized and used pedagogical approach. However, existing research has largely focused on inquiry learning in science education, neglecting fields such as social studies (SS). In Singapore, inquiry learning in SS received an impetus when a component called "Issue Investigation" (II) was…

Teachers' motivational strategies can be categorised into two types of motivating styles--autonomy-supportive style versus controlling style (Reeve in Educ Psychol 44:159-175, 2009). Several factors can affect the teachers' use of motivational strategies, and student-related factors are some influential reasons. In this study, we focussed on…

Special education in Singapore has evolved considerably during the past two decades with greater enrollments of students with special educational needs in regular mainstream schools. This progressive transformation in Singapore's education towards the inclusion of students with special needs in mainstream classes has been accompanied by…

This article overviews the realities of so-called "low achieving" students in Singapore, efforts to support them better, and the place of educational technology in this support. We undertook a comparative case study of lower tracked Normal Technical (NT) secondary school students and their teachers in two schools in Singapore. We found a…

Three categories of work orientation -- job, career and calling -- have been widely used to characterise how people perceive and behave towards their work. While this typology has been generative, this paper adopts a different perspective (based on Discursive Psychology) by prioritising what and how teachers talk about their work on their own…

Learner-centred educational approaches, like differentiated instruction (DI), have been gaining popularity worldwide through the process of educational borrowing. Teachers' experiences with educational change are complicated when the educational ideas they encounter are transferred from abroad. This mixed method study examined how ten teachers in…

Diagrams are succinct, visual representations of real-world or mathematical objects that serve to communicate properties of the objects and facilitate problem solving. This study explored perceptions of mathematics teachers in Singapore, who are heads of mathematics departments in their respective schools, related to diagrams and their use in the…

As teachers begin to construct an understanding of 'inquiry', and incorporate IBL into their classroom practice, they are challenged to be sensitive to the 'constructivist' nature of the CLD. This paper presents a reflection model structured to trigger thinking about beliefs in teaching and learning in order for teachers to re-examine their…

This study explores how Singapore social studies, geography and history teachers make meaning of the concept of meritocracy and its role in the education system. The findings indicate the participants simultaneously adopted "and" challenged the meritocratic values and beliefs promoted by the Singapore state. The teachers strongly…

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine five Secondary English Language teachers' perceptions and practices of multiliteracies teaching in the context of a decade after multiliteracies was introduced into the English Language syllabus in Singapore. Design/methodology/approach: Adopting a case study approach, the authors observed 12…

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between professional development and teacher self-efficacy, exploring the extent to which various types, either job-embedded or traditional professional development activities, predict teachers' perceived self-efficacy while controlling for several teacher characteristics and school…

Teachers' work in school is said to be under increasing pressure from neoliberal forces. Key constructs that are essential in understanding how teachers cope with these changes are teacher responsibility and teacher accountability, which are closely related within scholarly and everyday contexts although serving different logics and outcomes. By…

The study of variables related to the use of ICT in the classroom is a topic of interest that has been frequently researched. In this paper, after examining the importance of teacher training in explaining the use of ICT in the classroom, we focused on analysing the weight of variables related to teaching practices and the organisational context…

As literacy curricula around the world expand to include multimodal meaning-making, the challenge that remains is how teachers can design engaging and effective learning experiences in this context and the nature of their guidance to students in developing their multimodal literacy. Our paper focuses on the topic of multimodal composing, where…

This paper reports on one aspect of a bigger project: teachers' design of instructional materials. We found a number of design moves used by the teachers in our study. In this paper, we report three of them: Making things explicit, making connections, and resequencing practice examples. [This paper is the fourth in a symposium of four papers. For…