Inspiration from 'Confessions of a Shopaholic' led this team to explore how comics can be used for mathematics instruction about percentages. In this article, the authors describe how they conceptualised and developed a teaching package that uses comics to teach percentage concepts to Grade 7 students (age 13 to 14) in Singapore. It goes on to…

This paper explores the impact of the course "Teaching and Learning of Mathematics (Grades 7 and 8)" for the preparation of pre-service secondary mathematics teachers. It examines how pre-service teachers perceived mathematical problem solving and communicating mathematical knowledge before and after the course. The main objective of the…

When inquiry-based learning is designed for a collaborative context, the interactions that arise in the learning environment can become fairly complex. While the learning effectiveness of such learning environments has been reported in the literature, there have been fewer studies on the students' learning processes. To address this, the article…

A common area of difficulty and frustration for low achieving students is the operations involving negative numbers. The main objective of our innovations in this area with two classes of Year 7 low achieving students was to develop positive feelings towards mathematics, in particular of an appreciation for the "reasonableness" and clear…

This article describes a lesson study on the area of a parallelogram for year 7 students. In Singapore, students in secondary schools are streamed into ability bands. Normal (Academic) is the label for the middle band. The teachers were convinced that Lesson Study provided a valuable platform for professional development. The authors followed the…

School-based curriculum innovations, including those in science education, are usually not adequately evaluated, if at all. Furthermore, current procedures and instruments for programme evaluations are often unable to support evidence-based decision-making. We suggest that adopting fidelity of implementation (FOI) criteria from healthcare research…

Though discussion of the teacher factor in ICT-enabled science learning abounds in the literature, the investigation of Teacher Enactments (TEs) of ICT-facilitated lessons through exploring teaching practices is still under-explored and under-recognized. Current studies are still lacking in evidence-based findings of TEs based on the investigation…

This study is to investigate the effectiveness of using mobile devices such as iPhone/iPad/android phone/tablet to facilitate mobile learning in aural skills. The application "Auralbook" was designed in 2011 by an engineer/musician to use mobile devices to learn aural skills. This application enables students to sing, record, clap and…

This paper presents case studies of two teachers at Crescent Girl's School (an all-girls high school in Singapore) who implemented strategies learned through a teacher professional development program called 21st Century Learning Design (21CLD). Policymakers often state requirements for teachers to focus on 21st century (21C) competencies without…

This paper proposes the identification and use of principle-based pedagogical patterns to help teachers to translate design principles into actionable teaching activities, and to scaffold student learning with sufficient flexibility and creativity. A set of pedagogical patterns for networked Second language (L2) learning, categorized and…

The purpose of this research paper is to detail how reflective journal writing can be used to facilitate science students' curiosity and engagement in laboratory work. This study advocates reflective journal writing as an instructional tool and a student-created learning resource that can serve additional formative assessment purposes. The…