Lay Hoon Seah

Designing collaborative knowledge building environments accessible to all learners: Impacts and design challenges

The present study attempted to investigate whether young learners who were new to knowledge building approaches could work towards advancing both individual and collective knowledge, and whether knowledge building could be beneficial to both high-achieving and low-achieving students. Findings reported in this paper are from one and a half-year design research for science learning in one primary school in Singapore. In this study, we closely examined the design and enactment of the Knowledge Building Community model in one class with high-achieving students and two classes with mixed-ability students. The research consists of two phases: Phase I Cultivating a collaborative knowledge building culture and Phase II Progressive Knowledge Building using Knowledge Forum. Data were collected from multiple sources, including knowledge assessment, conceptual understanding tasks, and the content analysis of Knowledge Forum postings. The results in Phase I show that while it is critical for students to monitor and build knowledge for their own understanding, they had difficulties developing such skills. In both phases, we found positive impacts on academic achievements showing improvement of student understanding in the course of reflective thinking and progressive inquiry. Overall, quantitative data suggest that the collaborative knowledge building environment was beneficial for both high-achieving and low-achieving students. We conclude by discussing some of challenges and issues in designing collaborative knowledge building environments for young learners with diverse abilities.

Online Learning Communities in K-12 Settings

This review aims to clarify the concept and boundary of research on online learning communities, identify the major trends of research, and suggest pertinent issues for future research. Four online learning communities, namely, Knowledge Building communities, Quest Atlantis, Virtual Math Team, and Web-based Inquiry Science Environment were reviewed. We compare and contrast the design principles and characteristics of these learning environments along cognitive, social, and technological dimensions. Potential implementation and research issues were discussed, including the contradictions with traditional school cultures and practices, the issues of authenticity versus simulation approach in schools, the cognitive and socio-emotional outcomes of online learning communities, and the possibilities and impact of advances in technologies.

The roles of teachers’ science talk in revealing language demands within diverse elementary school classrooms: a study of teaching heat and temperature in Singapore

ABSTRACT This study of three science teachers’ lessons on heat and temperature seeks to characterise classroom talk that highlighted the ways language is used and to examine the nature of the language demands revealed in constructing, negotiating, arguing and communicating science ideas. The transcripts from the entire instructional units for these teachers’ four culturally and linguistically diverse Grade 4 classes (10 years old) with English as the language of instruction constitute the data for this investigation. Analysis of these transcripts focused on teachers’ talk that made explicit reference to the form or function of the language of science and led to the inductive development of the ‘Attending to Language Demands in Science’ analytical framework. This framework in turn revealed that the major foregrounding purposes of teachers’ talk include labelling, explaining, differentiating, selecting and constructing. Further classification of the instances within these categories revealed the extensive and contextualised nature of the language demands. The results challenge the conventional assumption that basic literacy skills dominate over disciplinary literacy skills in primary school science. Potential uses of the analytical framework that could further expand our understanding of the forms, functions and demands of language used in elementary school science are also discussed.

Understanding Middle School Students’ Difficulties in Explaining Density Differences from a Language Perspective

This study examines how a class of Grade 7 students employed linguistic resources to explain density differences. Drawing from the same data-set as a previous study by, we take a language perspective to investigate the challenges students face in learning the concept of density. Our study thus complements previous research on learning about density which has mostly focussed on the conceptual challenges. The data consist of transcripts of lessons on density and students’ written assignments. Using selected analytical categories from the Systemic Functional Linguistics framework, we first examined students’ use of linguistic resources in their written reports of a practical activity. We then compared the language employed by the students with the instructional language, identifying possible links. Our analysis identified specific aspects of language that the students need to appropriate in order to express an understanding of density that aligns with a scientific perspective. The findings from this study illuminate ways by which teachers could assist students in overcoming the linguistic challenges in explaining density differences, which complement those made by existing studies that focus on conceptual challenges.

Attending to science language demands in multilingual classrooms: a case study

ABSTRACT This case study examines how three science teachers in a secondary school attended to the language demands of science through oral interactions in classes of multilingual students with diverse English proficiencies. It specifically unpacks the intricate role of language in science education, where teachers must address disciplinary-specific language demands as well as build academic language, within a policy environment that stresses English as medium-of-instruction for science education. Thirty-nine video recordings, comprising three full sets of lessons on the topic Human Circulatory System, were analysed. Instances of whole-class discussion during which an aspect of language (e.g. form, meaning or type) was addressed were the focus of analysis. The analysis shows some common features of language support across teachers, especially in terms of teaching scientific terminology, as well as features that provided additional support from one teacher. These features included unpacking the language demands of science beyond discrete terminology and use of students’ language. The article highlights interactions which can contribute to student opportunities for meaning-making in science.