New Pedagogies in Teaching and Learning

In understanding the characteristics of a rapidly changing world, uncertainty, unparalleled global changes and technologies growing at an unprecedented rate will certainly shape the way students learn and the way teachers teach. Perhaps educators will need to be more creative, innovative and collaborative. In terms of the topic of climate change, the extensive media coverage and the barrage of information from multiple sources have left individuals with more confusion than clarity on the issue of climate change.
Therefore, the project will examine how we can help teachers and students monitor their learning progress and to identify the areas for improvement. The key is through timely and thoughtful feedback that will help students close the gap in their learning as students embark on self-directed learning. One technological tool that can support rapid feedback of learning is through the use of Augmented Reality (AR). The key feature about AR is its affordance in providing rapid information based on visual cues by overlaying of information onto the current view. This enables the users to see both the real world information and the augmented information on the same platform. While this can be seen as a novelty, the duo perspective (real world information and augmented information) not only provides the students with opportunities to reflect individually or in pairs, the enhanced experience also enables them to remember the information better.
The findings will contribute to the general understanding of students' self-directed learning in climate change and how it can be extended to other topics in geographical education. Further, the use of AR will provide an example of teaching and learning innovation with technological tools.

Though discussion during reading is considered to be beneficial for developing student reading comprehension (e.g. Beck, et al., 1996; Van den Branden, 2000) even experienced teachers can find it difficult to lead engaging discussions with active participation which result in enhanced comprehension. In this paper, we summarize findings from a series of teacher professional development projects undertaken at one primary school in Singapore and discuss implications for a) research in teacher professional development and b) leading richer reading comprehension discussions. Our findings show that reading comprehension discussions can be engaging, active and beneficial and that teachers can learn to lead more useful discussions with support, over time. Teacher post-observation conversations and written reflections revealed various difficulties experienced by teachers including classroom management, moving the discussion forward, and ascertaining whether the discussion fostered student reading comprehension. After presenting data on the type of difficulties faced by teachers, we provide evidence of teachers learning to lead reading comprehension discussions that were more fruitful. We offer suggestions for how teachers can make use of these findings in their own classes and how researchers can build on these findings for their own educational research projects.

This study postulated a mid-range theory on factors for fostering creativity in education by synthesizing evidence-based findings of Anna Craft (1961-2014) on factors that have influenced the mechanics or dynamics of creativity-fostering in schools. 
Two research questions were posed to synthesize Craft’s findings on factors that could foster creativity in schools at a systemic level: What are the factors that could influence creative pedagogy? How do these factors influence the fostering of creativity in schools? 
The study used Noblit and Hare’s (1998) seven-step meta-ethnography. Through a systematic search strategy using 26 electronic databases and hand searches, 568 educational research and policy literature published between 1993 and 2017 have been located. Of which, seven publications that fulfilled the inclusion criteria were interpreted and translated. The interpretative phenomenological analysis (Oxley, 2016) and constant-comparison method of analysis (Strauss & Corbin, 1990) were employed. Third level abstractions or interpretations were generated and were coded for emergence of themes.   
Five themes of factors that could influence creative pedagogy were identified. The themes with their subthemes were (a) “flexible, interests-based, co-constructed curriculum versus fixed, centralized, policy-prescribed curriculum”, (b) “creative-supportive relationships, collaborations, a trusting environment or the lack thereof”, (c) “educators’ stances and teaching practices” with three subthemes: “relevance/non-relevance”, “open/closed mindsets, provisions or not for risk-taking” and “playful exploration”; (d) “educators’ continual or discontinued professional development and personal creative practice”; and (e) “burgeoning or diminishing student and teacher ownership, control and agency”. 
The meta-synthesis study concluded with a line-of-argument synthesis, expressed in a visual representation that weaved out the relationships between these identified influencing factors (themes).