puay huat chua

Purpose: Leadership for the implementation of an educational innovation in Singapore was examined by integrating distributed leadership with an ecological perspective of leadership and analysed using the third generation of cultural–historical activity theory. Research Method: The study adopted the naturalistic inquiry approach of a case study of a cluster of six elementary schools in the process of diffusing an educational innovation over one academic year. The research team observed six open classroom sessions and two review sessions at the cluster level. A total of two Ministry officers, one Master Teacher, 10 school leaders, 12 key personnel and 21 teachers were interviewed. Findings: The use of cultural–historical activity theory as an analytical lens provided insights into how different activity systems at the ministry, cluster, and school levels interact in providing leadership for the implementation of the innovation, the tools utilised, the rules/norms which enabled or cons...

This paper examined leadership practices which supported the diffusion of an innovation in a cluster of schools in Singapore, through the lenses of complexity leadership theory (CLT) and ecological leadership. The approach is a qualitative case study, with the unit of analysis bounded by the innovation and a cluster of schools involved in the diffusion effort. The case study involved investigations mainly at four ecological levels: the ministry (macro), the cluster (exo), school/subject department (meso) and teacher (micro), involving nine observations of the cluster's community of teachers in 2019, and interviews or focused group discussions with 33 participants, including ministry officers, school leaders, key personnel and teachers. Findings and Implications: The findings illustrate the diffusion of an innovation through the interactional dynamics of administrative, adaptive, and enabling leadership, how these three CLT roles were performed by formal and informal leaders, del...

Much research about classrooms has focused on what teachers do and their reflections about critical events in their lessons. Comparatively rare are studies that look at how students react to the many incidents and activities that take place during lessons. Students’ perceptions about lesson events form an important but often neglected source of data that can be used to understand the impacts of teaching on learning. This paper reports on some findings of the feelings and thinking of mathematically weak students during mathematics lessons. Four teachers, two from primary (P4) and two from secondary (S1) schools, taught a series of four to six lessons that covered a topic in their scheme of work. During each lesson, the teachers stopped the lesson after some time and administered to their students a one-page in-class reflection checklist about that segment of the lesson. At the same time, the teacher completed a similar reflection checklist from her perspective. This in-class reflecti...

The purpose of the study was to examine the validity of an English translation of the Teacher Metacognition Inventory (TMI) originally developed by Jiang et al. Teaching and Teacher Education, 59, 403-413, (2016) in China with a sample of mathematics teacher in Singapore. A total of 436 valid responses were collected from primary and secondary female and male mathematics teachers with various degrees of experience. This inventory measures teachers’ metacognitive knowledge about self and pedagogy, regulation on planning and monitoring, reflection and experiences. Whereas the original inventory had six dimensions and 28 items, a better fit was found with seven dimensions and 26 items. The extra dimension reflected a split of Teacher Metacognitive Experiences into positive and negative ones. The seven-dimension structure had good reliability and validity. The instrument was also invariant across gender, level (i.e., primary and secondary school teachers) and years of experience. Togeth...

The purpose of this paper is to unravel the roles of Teachers Network (TN), the school clusters and zones in promoting mathematics learning among teachers in Singapore. Specifically, the author draws from the concept of Learning Communities to discuss teachers’ continuing learning in mathematics in these communities. The case study on TN in particular looks at how, at the national level, teachers are trained to create an environment for mathematics sharing and learning through the practice of the Learning Circles (LC) methodology in their schools. At the zonal level, the author describes the work of the Mathematics Centre of Excellence (COE) in their creation of scaffoldings for collaborative learning and sharing of mathematics for schools in the East Zone. Through their activities and programmes, both the TN and the COE spawn learning communities within schools. Issues challenging the roles of TN and of COE in teachers’ continuing professional development and the implications of th...

"The aim of LES is to make the results of OER (Office of Education Research) research available in a concise and digestible manner to interested readers in order to inform policy formation, programme design and pedagogical practice in the education realm in Singapore. This volume, authored by Dr Jeanne Ho, Dr Hairon Salleh and Dr Chua Puay Huat from NIE, focuses on school leadership in Singapore. The authors synthesized local research studies, drawing out four key findings of school leadership. They also provide some recommendations for leadership practice and research in Singapore."--OER.

This is an exploratory study into the individual problem-posing characteristics of 480 Grade 9 Singapore students who were novice problem posers working on two geometric tasks. The students were asked to pose a problem for their friends to solve. Analyses of solvable posed problems were based on the problem type, problem information, solution type and domain knowledge. With the open-ended task, the students tend to over-condition their problems and to produce more problems with implicit assumption. How the findings can contribute to research in problem posing in schools is discussed.