Singaporean Primary School Research Articles

Using Brain-Breaks® as a Technology Tool to Increase Attitude towards Physical Activity among Students in Singapore.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of classroom-based Brain Breaks® Physical Activity Solution in Southeast Asia Singaporean primary school students and their attitude towards physical activity (PA) over a ten-week intervention. A total of 113 participants (8–11 years old) were randomly assigned to either an experimental (EG) or a control group (CG), with six classes to each group; the Brain Breaks® group (EG: six classes) and the Control group (CG: six classes). All EG members participated in a Brain Breaks® video intervention (three–five min) during academic classes and the CG continued their lessons as per normal. The student’s attitudes towards PA in both research conditions were evaluated using the self–reported Attitudes toward Physical Activity Scale (APAS), applied before and after intervention. The effects of the intervention on APAS scores were analysed using a mixed model analysis of variance with Time as within-subject and Group as between-subject factors. The analysis revealed evidence in support of the positive effect of classroom video interventions such as Brain Breaks® on student’s attitudes toward benefits, importance, learning, self-efficacy, fun, fitness, and trying to do their personal best in PA. The Brain Breaks® intervention provided a positive significant impact on students in Singapore. This study also revealed that interactive technology tools implemented into the school curriculum benefit students in terms of health and education.

Structure-reinforced privilege: educational inequality in the Singaporean primary school choice system

ABSTRACT Parents around the globe are increasingly understood to contribute to educational inequality through their choice of schools. This important critique risks minimising the way choice systems may favour certain parents over others. A case study of Singapore and its primary school enrolment process helps illustrate how parent’s interactions with school choice systems reinforce some parent’s privileges leading to structure-reinforced privilege. Using a discourse analysis of newspaper coverage and a Singaporean parent website to observe how parents communicate their preferences, we demonstrate that the complex primary enrolment system creates confusion and anxiety among parents, and allows privileged parents to gain an admissions advantage in perceived elite schools. Numerous admission preferences, while initially intended to strengthen family-school ties, rewards those with resources, furthering the perception and reality of economic inequality. The Singaporean primary enrolment case offers ideas for how to simplify school choice systems giving priority to families with limited resources.

The COVID-19 school closure effect on students’ print and digital leisure reading

Adopting an explanatory sequential mixed methods design, this study examined Singaporean primary school students’ changes in reading enjoyment, reading amount, and their access to resources in print and digital formats during the COVID-19 school closure. Survey data showed reading was a more preferred leisure activity during the school closure. Students’ reading enjoyment prior to the closure was positively correlated with changes in their reading enjoyment and reading amount during the closure, for both print and digital formats. Despite the ubiquity of devices, devices were underutilised for reading purposes. Students demonstrated a clear preference for print reading over reading digitally both before and during the school closure and relied more on home than online resources for reading materials. Changes in time spent on devices during school closure were not related to changes in digital reading amount, but negatively related to changes in reading enjoyment and print reading amount over the same period, suggesting more time on devices may not naturally lead to more reading digitally. Qualitative results revealed several challenges students faced with reading digitally. While students were digital natives in terms of using technology for entertainment purposes, they had difficulty locating digital reading materials as few students were socialised into using technology for reading. When it comes to reading, we propose that primary school students are print natives who are generally more familiar with reading in print and prefer print. Some inherent limitations of digital reading that restrict continuous reading (e.g., eye strain, reliance on power supply, cumbersome navigability) may prevent students from embracing the new form of reading.

Home school relations in Singaporean primary schools: teachers’, parents’ and children’s views

ABSTRACTBy providing descriptive evidence from an ethnographic study at three Singaporean primary schools, this paper reveals how participants in children’s education perceive and account for the relations they shape between home and school. Through analyses of interview data from teachers, parents, and children, the article demonstrates the potential effects of the actions of parents and teachers on the structure of the childhoods of a particular group of nine-year-olds. Findings are that children’s lives are mostly centred on their schools, which provide academic and values education. Parents, too, ascribe importance to holistic education; this, their aspirations for the future, and their attention to the individual needs of their children motivated them to agentively support their children’s education at home by teaching and organising educational, sporting, and cultural activities. Therefore, home/school relations structured rather curricularised childhoods for most children in the study.

Learning environments research in English classrooms

Although learning environments research has thrived for decades in many countries and school subjects, English classroom environment research is still in its infancy. This article paves the way for expanding research on English classroom environments by (1) reviewing the limited past research in English classrooms and (2) reporting the first study of English learning environments in Singaporean primary schools. For a sample of 441 grade 6 students, past research in other subjects was replicated in that a modified version of the What Is Happening In this Class? questionnaire was cross-validated, classroom environment was found to vary with the determinants of student sex and ethnicity, and associations emerged between students’ attitudes and the nature of the classroom environment.

Implementing self-assessment in Singapore primary schools: effects on students’ perceptions of self-assessment

ABSTRACTStudent academic self-assessment engages the students in deliberate reflection about what they are learning and how they are learning it. This intervention study investigated the effects of self-assessment training on students’ perceptions towards self-assessment in two Singaporean primary schools. The study, which used a pretest–posttest design, involved 146 Primary 4 (aged 10) students with 75 students being taught the use of self-assessment (intervention group) and 71 students who did not receive any training (comparison group). Data was collected using a Self-Assessment Questionnaire, wherein the students reported on the domains of knowledge application, independent learning, communication and motivation. The results revealed an improvement in the intervention students’ perceptions towards self-assessment after the use of self-assessment and there were differences between the intervention students and the comparison students. The findings and the implications for students will be discussed in the article.

Exploring the classroom practices of the English Exam Skills Programme for Singaporean primary school children

Exploring the classroom practices of the English Exam Skills Programme for Singaporean primary school children

An Exploratory Study on Singaporean Primary School Students’ Development in Chinese Writing

The study investigated the development of lexical diversity and syntactic complexity, two key indicators of writing quality, in Chinese second language (L2) writing. The Guiraud Index and T-unit length were used to measure lexical and syntactic growth through a cross-sectional design. Seven hundred and sixty-five narrative essays were collected from grade 3–6 students in Singapore’s primary schools. Statistical analyses showed a general upward trend in lexical and syntactic development over the 4 years. In line with a dynamic account, the lexical and syntactic components grew in a non-linear and non-parallel manner with both progress and regress during the process. Furthermore, a trade-off was found between more varied word use and longer sentences in the data, though it faded with grade level. While L2 subsystems tended to compete with each other at earlier stages of language learning, their interactions changed over time. Moreover, variations were observed not only across grade levels but also between learner groups at the same stage of learning. By extending a dynamic approach to writing development at early stages of Chinese learning, the study informs theory regarding the dynamics of L2 growth and has significant implications for the teaching of Chinese writing in the Singapore context.

Promoting social and emotional learning outcomes in physical education: insights from a school-based research project in Singapore

Competition is an integral aspect of many physical education lessons, and one of the central characteristics of units and lessons adopting the Sport Education model. Pedagogy has a key, yet under-researched, role to play in supporting students to develop social and emotional skills that will enable them to cope with situations in which they encounter failure in physical education and sport. This paper reports on research undertaken in a Singaporean primary school that explored the modification of the Sport Education model and utilization of pedagogical strategies to respond to students' limited skills and abilities to handle failure in the context of physical education. The study adopted a qualitative approach and used questionnaires, focus group discussions and structured observations to collect quantitative and qualitative data from students participating in the modified Sport Education unit. The discussion of findings focusses on the effects of confidence-building strategies on the students' emotional resilience in relation to failure and the pedagogical skills needed to facilitate this learning process.

How school leaders perceive the leadership role of middle leaders in Singapore primary schools?

Middle leaders are ‘recognised as a significant source in ensuring that quality education reaches out to pupils’ (Low and Lim 1997, p. 77) for they are ‘the human link between national education policy as manifested in school-level strategic planning … and the teaching staff whose ‘field tactics’ are used to implement such strategies’ (Chew 2008, p. 135). This study investigated the leadership role of middle leaders in Singaporean primary schools, as seen from the perspectives of principals and vice principals. Principals’ perceptions are important as they are the ‘ultimate school leader’ (Hammersley-Fletcher and Brundrett 2008, p. 13) and ‘the extent of the middle leadership remit is delimited by the range and extent of tasks on offer and this is controlled by the head teacher’ (Hammersley-Fletcher and Strain 2009, p. 5). This study used a hermeneutic phenomenological methodology (van Manen 1997) to examine the leadership role of middle leaders in Singapore primary schools. Semi-structured one-on-one interviews were used to collect data from 12 principals and vice principals. The interview data were analysed using an interpretational analysis system adapted from in Tesch (1990, pp. 92–96). The purpose of this paper is to provide a rich description of the leadership role of middle leaders as perceived by the school leaders. Seven major themes were identified: (1) teaching and learning; (2) building vision and setting directions; (3) leading and managing teachers; (4) communicating; (5) continuing leadership development; (6) changing role; and (7) challenges. The findings reported in this paper corroborated with the findings presented in other studies of middle leadership (e.g. Adey and Jones 1998; Blandford 1997; Busher 2005; Busher and Harris 1999; Glover et al. 1999) and illustrated the complexity of the leadership role within the middle of the school hierarchy. The paper concludes with a discussion on the connections with the broader successful school leadership literature.

Modeling primary school pre-service teachers’ Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) for meaningful learning with information and communication technology (ICT)

Within the field of educational technology, Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) has been theorized as a seven-factor construct to describe teacher’s integration of information and communication technology (ICT) in their teaching. However, this framework has yet to be successfully validated through survey instruments. This paper examines the construct validity of a TPACK survey that was contextualized for the pedagogical approaches employed in a 12-week ICT course designed with reference to the TPACK framework for Singaporean primary school pre-service teachers. Using this framework, the researchers were able to uncover five of the seven TPACK constructs which were a better model fit as compared with several extant studies of TPACK surveys. Using these results, pre and post-course structural equation models were constructed to explain the relationships amongst the different constructs of teachers’ TPACK perceptions. It was found that pedagogical knowledge had a direct impact on TPACK at the beginning of the course. As teachers made connections between their technological knowledge and pedagogical knowledge to form technological pedagogical knowledge during the course, the direct relation between pedagogical knowledge and TPACK became insignificant where as the relations between pedagogical knowledge and technological pedagogical knowledge, and technological pedagogical knowledge and TPACK were strengthened. The comparison between the pre and post-course models also revealed that the pre-service teachers’ perceived relations between content knowledge and TPACK changes from insignificant to significant. The implications of these findings and suggestions to improve the construct validation of the TPACK framework are discussed in this paper.

Buddy Reading in a Singaporean Primary School

■ Buddy Reading, a peer tutoring programme, is popularly adopted in Singapore schools to increase the reading proficiency of lower primary children who are not reading at age appropriate levels. However, this programme is rarely subjected to systematic evaluation. In view of this, the present study undertakes an evaluation of the programme as it is implemented in a Singaporean primary school. The evaluation brings to the fore some of the shortcomings inherent in the programme and proposes how the training could be enhanced. The final part of the paper evaluates the effects of the newly proposed training programme and concludes with implications for training and research in the area.

A cognitive perspective on Singaporean primary school pupils' use of reading strategies in learning to read in English

This study is conducted in Singapore, where learning to read in English is regarded as essential because it is offered as a First Language (L1) subject in the curriculum and is stipulated as the medium of instruction in the education system, and the mother tongues are offered as Second Language (L2) subjects, although the majority still learn English as an L2. The paper reports on the reading strategies used by Singaporean primary school pupils from a cognitive perspective, which is part of a larger study that aims to investigate these pupils' language learning strategies. The participants were 18 pupils from three neighbourhood primary schools, in grades Primary 4, 5 and 6. The data were collected from high- and low-proficiency pupils at each of the three grades in each school, who read two texts at each level. Grounded in an information-processing theory and based on successful experiences of scholars using think-aloud for data collection, we asked the pupils to read and report what they were thinking about while reading. The think-aloud protocols were recorded, transcribed verbatim, coded and analysed. The results suggest that participants' flexible and appropriate use of reading strategies varies according to language proficiency and grade level, with the high-proficiency group outperforming its lower-proficiency counterpart and the high-graders outnumbering the lower-graders in terms of the number of strategies that they used. These differences were also exemplified with qualitative findings from case studies. The use of reading strategies differs according to proficiency levels, and the quality of pupils' strategy-use patterns has more significant implications for understanding efficient reading among primary school pupils.

Small corpus studies and ELT: theory and practice

Adopting an explanatory sequential mixed methods design, this study examined Singaporean primary school students’ changes in reading enjoyment, reading amount, and their access to resources in print and digital formats during the COVID-19 school closure. Survey data showed reading was a more preferred leisure activity during the school closure. Students’ reading enjoyment prior to the closure was positively correlated with changes in their reading enjoyment and reading amount during the closure, for both print and digital formats. Despite the ubiquity of devices, devices were underutilised for reading purposes. Students demonstrated a clear preference for print reading over reading digitally both before and during the school closure and relied more on home than online resources for reading materials. Changes in time spent on devices during school closure were not related to changes in digital reading amount, but negatively related to changes in reading enjoyment and print reading amount over the same period, suggesting more time on devices may not naturally lead to more reading digitally. Qualitative results revealed several challenges students faced with reading digitally. While students were digital natives in terms of using technology for entertainment purposes, they had difficulty locating digital reading materials as few students were socialised into using technology for reading. When it comes to reading, we propose that primary school students are print natives who are generally more familiar with reading in print and prefer print. Some inherent limitations of digital reading that restrict continuous reading (e.g., eye strain, reliance on power supply, cumbersome navigability) may prevent students from embracing the new form of reading.

A School Based Intervention Programme for Children with Developmental Coordination Disorder

Using the results of the classification procedures contained in the Movement Assessment Battery for Children (ABC) (Henderson and Sugden, 1992) eighteen children with Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) were identified and took part in a 5 week management programme. The programme was carried out exclusively in three Singaporean primary schools by teachers during curriculum time. The ABC contains two modes of identifying children with movement difficulties plus operational guidelines and suggested activities for the management of children with DCD. The management programme for this study was derived from the ABC manual using the cognitive‐motor approach to intervention in consultation with the teachers. The individual profiles of the children were seen to improve from pre‐ to post‐ intervention suggesting that the management of children with DCD can take place profitability in a school setting once detailed and specific individual planning has been done. And that this process is compatible with the teacher operating within curricula time alone.

A TWO‐STEP PROCEDURE FOR THE IDENTIFICATION OF CHILDREN WITH DEVELOPMENTAL CO‐ORDINATION DISORDER IN SINGAPORE

The prevalence of Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) among 6- to 9- year-old Singaporean primary school children was studied from a random sample (N = 427) through a two-step identification procedure contained within Henderson's and Sugden's Movement Assessment Battery for Children. The prevalence rate from this two step procedure was 4% when the first step included the bottom 15% of the random sample. The two-step procedure moves towards fulfilling the diagnostic criteria for DCD set out by the American Psychiatric Association (DSM-IV) and the World Health Organisation (ICD-10) of a serious motor impairment in the development of motor coordination and significant interference with the activities of daily living not due in children to mental retardation or a known physical disability.

Identification of Children with Movement Problems in Singapore: Usefulness of the Movement ABC Checklist

This investigation is concerned with the identification and assessment of Singaporean primary school children who have developmental coordination disorder (American Psychiatric Association, 1987). The present study forms part of a larger project concerned with the suitability of currently available assessment techniques and intervention programs for use in Singapore. In this paper the usefulness of the Movement ABC Checklist and Test as an assessment instrument is explored. The data on a sample of 212 7- and 8-year-olds compared favorably with data from the standardized sample in the United Kingdom. Age and gender differences were similar, and the effects of increasing task difficulty within the checklist were generally confirmed. The checklist identified 15.6% of children as having movement problems or being at risk, which was close to the value obtained in the U.K. The Movement ABC Test provided evidence of the validity of this figure as it successfully differentiated the selected children from age-matched controls who scored well on the checklist. Although some of the items in both instruments need modification, the results suggest that the Movement ABC package is a workable research tool in the Singaporean context.