Kenneth Yang Teck Lim

Leveraging Online Communities in Fostering Adaptive Schools.

There has long been a call for schools to prepare students for the twenty-first century where skills and dispositions differ significantly from much of what has historically characterized formal education. The knowledge based economy calls for policy and pedagogical efforts that would transform schools. Schools are to foster communities of learners. This paper suggests that para-communities may be points of leverage in the fostering of adaptive schools. A critical analysis is done on the differences between para-communities (such as online communities) and schools; and an argument is made that they each serve differing goals and should be left distinct because they achieve different societal and economic demands.

Effectiveness of collaborative learning with 3D virtual worlds

Virtual worlds have affordances to enhance collaborative learning in authentic contexts. Despite the potential of collaborative learning with a virtual world, few studies investigated whether it is more effective in student achievements than teacher-directed instruction. This study investigated the effectiveness of collaborative problem solving and collaborative observation using virtual worlds. Secondary school students ( n = 101) participated in the study as part of their coursework in three geography classes. This study found that collaborative problem solving and observation were more effective in facilitating and maintaining intrinsic motivation than teacher-directed instruction. Students in the collaborative observation condition outperformed those in the other conditions when it came to knowledge gains. Lastly, collaborative problem solving and observation were more beneficial for group performance than teacher-directed instruction. These results were discussed in regard to the impacts of interactive learning and the cognitive load of using virtual worlds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Augmenting Spatial Intelligence in the Geography Classroom

This paper describes part of the results of a study investigating how adolescents, between the ages of 14 and 15, construct and share meaning about their local environments. Specifically, the results presented focus on how adolescents perceive and interpret spatial and three-dimensional data presented in various formats, such as in terms of virtually-rendered objects, photo-realistic panoramas, and traditional maps. The research was undertaken with a view to informing more effective teaching of map-skills through the improvement of aspects of spatial intelligence. Participants were required to undertake both a pre- and a post-test, which were identical in task. These tests involved having the participants match a series of computer-rendered three dimensional objects with similar objects rendered from the same perspective, as well as to deduce the axis of rotation and viewing perspective of a QuickTime VR cylindrical panorama when presented with a map of the same area. The pre- and post-tests were separated by an intervention activity in the field, designed around the format of a Structured Academic Controversy. Data obtained from the pre- and post-test results indicates that with regard to the rotation of objects and orientation of perspectives, some performance gains were significant amongst both males and females.

Adaptivities in the Singapore Education System: From Great to Excellent

This chapter explores how educational research invested in the Singapore education system enables Singapore to adapt and progress. Singapore has been characterised as a ‘great’ system because students have consistently excelled in international benchmark examinations. By analysing educational research conducted across various levels of the system, the chapter attempts to understand the underpinning reasons for why and how the system has achieved such a status. These research findings provide a snapshot of the pedagogical innovations implemented across the system to inform how Singapore can shift from great to excellent. Moving forward, transformations towards twenty-first century teaching and learning goals are encouraged. The system needs to be adaptive in different ways at various levels and yet be aligned towards a shared vision. From the analyses and discussion, the move from ‘great’ to ‘excellent’ appears to focus on qualitative dimensions such as teacher quality for student-centred outcomes over and above the typical quantitative measures. The chapter hopes to bring across the stance that this shift requires a change process with key investments on human capital, namely, the teachers in the system through a long and gradual process.

An Epistemic Shift: A Literacy of Adaptivity as Critical for Twenty-First Century Learning

Many so-called twenty-first century literacies are not new; it is only that they are particularly germane to our present times. Dispositions and skills such as collaboration and media literacy are more critical now than ever, because of the degree of inter-connectedness potentially afforded to social beings. Due to the near-immediate feedback which arises from membership of social networks, decisions made at the individual level have – now more than ever – potential social consequences which impact upon the collective whole. Understandings of inter-connectedness should therefore extend beyond the rhetoric of Web 2.0 social networking as a communicative-medium, to conversations around rapid iterative cycles, and real-time situated metacognition (thinking about one’s thinking) as a result of both the potential reach and impact of the decision-making process afforded by games and other forms of digital and social media. In this chapter we outline the need for an epistemic shift in thinking about what it means to foster twenty-first century soft -skills and literacies. While in the past, instructional paradigms in which content knowledge is taught to students were generally adopted, we argue that soft-skills are less ‘taught’ than ‘caught’. The epistemic shift in thinking that we call for is consistent with social-constructivist notions rather than objectivist views of knowing. The participatory metaphor of learning advocated by social-constructivism posits that knowing is a process in which learners participate in activities and interactions through which learning and knowledge are constructed (Hung D, Chen D-T. Educ Media Int 38(1):3–12, 2001).

Cultivating a Remix Movement in an East Asian Culture

This paper aims to introduce the notion of remix as play and as tinkering in the larger context of students’ formal education and informal learning opportunities. It discusses issues of East Asian societal cultures, school practice and home support, with respect to balancing the notions of schoolwork and play. The paper illustrates case examples when play and tinkering are fostered within an examination-based education system. In addition, the paper also describes how the dispositions for play and remix arise through the complex relationships of home, school, cultural environments, the supports and opportunities accorded and personal inclinations, interests and dispositions (Hung et al. Asia Pacific Educ Rev 12(2):161–171, 2011). We propose remix as a key need for societies to flourish in the twenty-first century; we further posit that East Asian societies in particular stand to gain from developing such cultures and dispositions.

Learning Adaptivity Across Contexts

Adaptivity across contexts is an important twenty-first century disposition. Schools nurture adaptive domain experts (students) through teacher apprenticeship in Zones of Proximal Development (ZPD). This paper suggests that such interdisciplinary learning may be achieved by deliberate attempts to bridge between formal and informal contexts. The Zone of Adaptivity Development (ZAD) is proposed to illustrate how adaptivity across contexts might be nurtured with the help of a ‘broker-of-learning’. Metacognitive interactions with brokers-of-learning enable learners to analyse learning incidents in the ZPDs. This facilitates the transfer and adaptation of learning strategies across contexts. A case study is described to show how a broker-of-learning used metacognitive brokering and dialoguing to understand a Grade Four pupil’s learning experiences and helped transfer strategies used in bowling to improve grades in Mathematics. Our observations suggest that adaptivity within contexts and metacognitive brokering are useful to appropriate a disposition of adaptivity across contexts. The ZAD is discussed to highlight its preliminary implications for teaching and learning. Although this is an exploratory study, initial observations and implications are significant because they inform how academically weaker students may perform better by being assisted in the recontextualising and transferring of strategies for learning from one context to another.

The Use of Structured Academic Controversy in a Mobile Environment to Broaden Student Perspectives and Understanding in the Social Sciences

This chapter describes a program designed around the use of handhelds and other mobile devices in a citizenship education program which has been implemented in a school in Singapore, in the Upper Secondary Social Studies syllabus. There is a general assumption that students are equipped with an adequate conceptual understanding of the theme of the macro concept of Conflict, one of the main themes of the syllabus. However, experience shows that this concept remains abstract to 15-year-old students who have limited experience, having been brought up in a relatively safe and secure environment in Singapore. The case studies in the Social Studies syllabus are much more complicated as they are multidimensional, involving clashes of interests, ideas, points of views and emotions. The program aims to afford students learning experiences which provide opportunities for the learning and examination of alternative, and often multiple, perspectives of controversial issues; the students will be given opportunities to discuss and express these perspectives through participation in a structured collaboration activity known as the Structured Academic Controversy (SAC). The pedagogy of the SAC is well known among Singapore teachers in Humanities departments and has been used to provide structure and focus to classroom discussions in various subjects. A primary innovation of this program is that teachers will design SAC activities going beyond face-to-face interactions (as has been the practice in schools, so far). Building upon the work of Lim (Enhancing fieldwork in social studies through remotely conducted structured academic controversies. Teach Learn, 25(2). National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, pp 189–195, 2004, Adolescent collaborative discourse through messaging. In: Aykin N, Preece J (eds), Internationalization, online communities, and social computing: Design and evaluation. 11th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2005), the program investigates how SAC activities can be transposed beyond the confines of the classroom (field-based SAC), as well as augmented through practice using 1:1 handheld devices (mobile-based SAC).

From Seasons to Cisterns: The Nature of Geographical Intuition

This chapter makes the argument that – at least with respect to the relationship between humans and the natural environment and the way this relationship is approached in the formal curriculum – alignment between the assessment of children and their day-to-day lived experience is critical to developing enduring understanding beyond rudimentary textbook recitation. It is suggested that an overlooked element of this alignment has been the role that intuitions about geography play in shaping such understanding and how these intuitions can sometimes be very powerful in lensing understanding either accurately or inaccurately. The challenge – from the point of view of curriculum designers (who are, by definition, disciplinary experts) – is in reminding ourselves of just how subliminal some of these day-to-day lived experiences might be.

On the Nature of Disciplinary Intuitions

The theme of the preceding chapter, namely, the embodied nature of cognitive processes, is continued. Intuition is referred to as innateness in the epigenetics-inspired sense that innate beliefs/understandings/instincts are crucially dependent on interactions between the developing individual and its environment. As for disciplinarity, epistemology is explored in order to establish the nature of knowledge and knowledge boundaries. Through this process of coming to know our computational machinery, the loop is closed with the concept of innate modular computational elements. These modules have their form in response to the regularity of reality. If the external environment constitutes resources for cognition, and there exist innate cognitive modules primed to develop intuitive understandings of the way the world behaves, it is suggested that educators seek to design learning activities and environments in order to develop and surface these otherwise tacit intuitions. Thusly informed by recent advances in the cognitive sciences, Disciplinary Intuitions are defined as innate computational modules of the mind which are in the process of being exercised and developed as the learner interacts with his or her external environment.