Jennifer Pei-Ling Tan

A pedagogical framework for learning analytics in collaborative inquiry tasks: an example from a teamwork competency awareness program

Many pedagogical models in the field of learning analytics are implicit and do not overtly direct learner behavior. While this allows flexibility of use, this could also result in misaligned practice, and there are calls for more explicit pedagogical models in learning analytics. This paper presents an explicit pedagogical model, the Team and Self Diagnostic Learning (TSDL) framework, in the context of collaborative inquiry tasks. Key informing theories include experiential learning, collaborative learning, and the learning analytics process model. The framework was trialed through a teamwork competency awareness program for 14 year old students. A total of 272 students participated in the program. This paper foregrounds students and teachers evaluative accounts of the program. Findings reveal positive perceptions of the stages of the TSDL framework, despite identified challenges, which points to its potential usefulness for teaching and learning. The TSDL framework aims to provide theoretical clarity of the learning process, and foster alignment between learning analytics and the learning design. The current work provides trial outcomes of a teamwork competency awareness program that used dispositional analytics, and further efforts are underway to develop the discourse layer of the analytic engine. Future work will also be dedicated to application and refinement of the framework for other contexts and participants, both learners and teachers alike.

Situating learning analytics pedagogically: towards an ecological lens

Learning Analytics (LA) is both a growing trend and an increasingly prominent feature of contemporary twenty-first century teaching and learning that has captured the attention and imaginations of ...

Fostering 21st century literacies through a collaborative critical reading and learning analytics environment: user-perceived benefits and problematics

The affordances of learning analytics (LA) are being increasingly harnessed to enhance 21st century (21C) pedagogy and learning. Relatively rare, however, are use cases and empirically based understandings of students actual experiences with LA tools and environments at fostering 21C literacies, especially in secondary schooling and Asian education contexts. This paper addresses this knowledge gap by 1) presenting a first iteration design of a computer-supported collaborative critical reading and LA environment and its 16-week implementation in a Singapore high school; and 2) foregrounding students quantitative and qualitative accounts of the benefits and problematics associated with this learning innovation. We focus the analytic lens on the LA dashboard components that provided visualizations of students reading achievement, 21C learning dispositions, critical literacy competencies and social learning network positioning within the class. The paper aims to provide insights into the potentialities, paradoxes and pathways forward for designing LA that take into consideration the voices of learners as critical stakeholders.

Personal strengths and perceived teacher support as predictors of Singapore students’ academic risk status

Abstract This study explored the relative salience of students’ personal strengths and teacher support in predicting academic risk status. The participants were Secondary One (S1, Grade Seven) students from Singapore who scored below the cohort’s mean score in a national test administered at the end of primary education, and were identified as low risk (n = 309) or high risk (n = 396), based on their S1 achievement score in the English Language subject. Logistic regression analysis was conducted with academic risk status as criterion variable and the following potential predictors: students’ background variables (i.e. socio-economic status, cognitive ability and initial achievement), personal strengths, teacher–student relatedness, and teacher autonomy and competence support. After controlling for the effects of the students’ background variables, teacher trust emerged as the strongest (negative) and most stable predictor of high-risk status; teacher alienation and teacher–student communication were found as significant positive predictors of students’ placement in the high-risk group.

Educating for twenty-first century competencies and future-ready learners: Research perspectives from Singapore

This third millennium has been variously characterized by sociologists, economists, and futurists as the Creative Age (Florida, 2002), the Digital Age (Thomas & Brown, 2011), and the Conceptual Age...

Nurturing grateful and connected twenty-first century learners: Development and evaluation of a socially oriented gratitude intervention

Abstract This study aimed to develop and examine the effects of a socially oriented gratitude intervention (SOGI) on secondary students’ gratitude level and interpersonal relationships. To these ends, we used a quasi-experimental research design: The experimental group (n=46) participated in the two-week intervention during a class subject focusing on character and citizenship education (CCE) while the wait-list control group (n=57) went on with regular CCE activities. All participants completed a questionnaire a week before and a month after the implementation of the SOGI and control activities. The changes in relatedness scores were statistically significant in relation to parents and peers, but not in relation to teachers. In particular, the experimental group generally maintained the quality of their relationship with their parents and peers while the control group reported a decline in these relationship domains. The change in gratitude levels did not differ significantly between the experimental group and control group, but the effect size associated with the mean gratitude change of the experimental group was found to be larger than that of the control group and comparable to what is commonly reported in other published gratitude intervention studies. The students’ feedback reveals the social, cognitive and affective benefits of the SOGI.

Academically At-risk Adolescents in Singapore: The Importance of Teacher Support in Promoting Academic Engagement

The purpose of this study was to examine the associations of teacher support and teacher–student relationship with the academic engagement of 1469 Secondary 1 (Grade 7) students in Singapore. The students were identified as academically at risk based on the results of a national test given at the end of Primary 6 (Grade 6). Teacher autonomy and competence support, along with trust accorded to teachers, were found as significant positive predictors of the students’ academic engagement. In general, alienation of students from teachers and quality of students’ communication with teachers did not emerge as significant predictors of academic engagement. It was also found that, compared to the students in the high-risk group, the students in the low-risk group tended to be more engaged in class and perceived higher levels of trust and competence support from their teachers. There was no significant difference in the degree of teacher autonomy support that was reported by low-risk and high-risk students. However, teacher autonomy support was found to be the strongest predictor of academic engagement for the entire sample of at-risk students, as well as in separate analyses focusing on high- and low-risk students. Implications for future research and school practice are discussed.

The Role of Authentic Tasks in Promoting Twenty-First Century Learning Dispositions

Authentic tasks are widely acknowledged by educators to foster desirable twenty-first century (21C) learning dispositions in students, particularly in terms of motivated and engaged learning. In mathematics education specifically, authentic tasks are commonly upheld as essential to the development of positive student affect towards mathematics, as well as mathematical problem-solving competencies and its encompassing socio-cognitive processes—reasoning, communication and connections—among learners (Beswick K, Int J Sci Math Educ, 9(2):367–390, 2011). Despite this widespread belief in the value of authentic tasks, there is surprisingly limited empirical evidence on the relationship between the use of authentic tasks in classrooms and productive learning dispositions (Pellegrino and Hilton (eds) Education for life and work: developing transferable knowledge and skills in the 21st century. National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 2013), particularly from the perspective of students as a critical stakeholder group. This chapter attempts to address this knowledge gap.

Collective Creativity Competencies and Collaborative Problem-Solving Outcomes: Insights from the Dialogic Interactions of Singapore Student Teams

The dynamic and non-linear nature of twenty-first century skills and their constitutive interactional processes are posing significant challenges to conventional practices of teaching and assessment today. Despite notable international efforts in the teaching, learning and assessment of collaborative and creative problem-solving skills in recent years, clear empirical insights that illuminate the relationships between students’ creative competencies and their problem-solving success on ill-defined collaborative tasks remain elusive. Our chapter aims to address this knowledge gap by turning the lens of inquiry towards the interactional dialogic processes through which Singapore secondary school students accomplish their collaborative and creative problem-solving tasks. Using data generated from the ATC21S Singapore school trials, and drawing from theoretical and methodological advancements in the fields of creativity and collaborative problem-solving (CPS), we seek to explore the empirical relationships between collective creativity (CC) and CPS. This chapter outlines our conceptualisation and operationalisation of CC as a suite of metacognitive, cognitive and socio-communicative competencies, made manifest in the ‘talk-in-interaction’ of student teams as they engage in and accomplish their CPS tasks. We then use the proposed CC discourse-analytic framework and coding scheme to empirically examine how the features and patterns of dialogic interactions reflecting CC competencies statistically differ between successful and unsuccessful CPS student teams. In conclusion, we reflect on these findings in light of Singapore’s curricular innovation efforts over the past decade that reflect its commitment to providing high quality and future-relevant educational experiences, outcomes and social trajectories for its young people. We hope this chapter will provide readers with more intricate understandings of the empirical associations between creative competencies and CPS outcomes, and of Singapore’s students and its national education social system at large.

Formatively Assessing Teamwork in Technology-Enabled Twenty-First Century Classrooms: Exploratory Findings of a Teamwork Awareness Programme in Singapore.

Abstract Teamwork, one of the core competencies for the twenty-first century learner, is a critical skill for work and learning. However, assessing teamwork is complex, in particular, developing a measure of teamwork that is domain-generic and applicable across a wide range of learners. This paper documents one such study that leverages technology to help provide a formative assessment of teamwork. It focuses on the self and peer ratings of a teamwork measure and a pedagogical method, which was trialled as a teamwork awareness programme in a mainstream Secondary School in Singapore. This teamwork awareness programme was incorporated into the school’s Interdisciplinary Project Work curriculum. Findings of students’ experiences of the programme are described. The teamwork competency dimension of “team emotional support” was rated highest amongst students. Also, students’ report gains in teamwork awareness, mixed engagement in reflective practices, and on the real-world relevancy of the programme. Discussions and implications of the findings follow.