Peter Sen Kee Seow

• PhD
• Education Research Scientist at National Institute of Education

An international overview of how policy makers, curriculum developers, and school practitioners can integrate computational thinking into K–12 curricula. In today's digital society, computational thinking (CT) is a critical component of all children's education. In Computational Thinking Curricula in K–12, editors Harold Abelson and Siu-Cheung Kong...

Singapore is a centralized–decentralized education system which recognizes that learning needs to integrate content–disciplinary understandings with twenty-first-century orientations and outcomes. Schools are given autonomy for innovations. One such initiative is FutureSchools. FutureSchools are exemplar schools with successes in technology-mediate...

This paper argues that algorithm design in the sense of computational thinking (CT) does not involve only routinized procedural applications void of deep conceptual understanding of mathematics. By using the programming language Flowgroithm, we demonstrate how classroom tasks centred around algorithm design may be used to activate creatively founde...

School partnerships have been put in place to support the decentralization efforts of scaling technologically mediated pedagogical innovations in Singapore. This chapter unpacks one such partnership between two schools. Misalignment between the two school contexts (rules, community and division of labour and roles) explain the resulting partnership...

Innovation diffusion is a complex process that is undertaken in various ways. The use of ICT-based educational tools have been mandated through the national policy on ICT Masterplan which is at its 4th iteration currently. In line with this, the edulab funding programme is a structure that is put in place to encourage schools to spread innovations....

Despite the increasing presence of computational thinking (CT) in the mathematics context, the connection between CT and mathematics in a practical classroom context is an important area for further research. This study intends to investigate the impact of CT activities in the topic of number patterns on the learning performance of secondary studen...

Teacher learning is key for quality teaching and learning. Schools leverage situated teacher learning to develop teachers’ capacities. However, situated teacher learning is ambiguous. How teachers learn is shaped by socio-cultural factors. This paper elaborates upon a case study of situated teacher learning in Singapore in which teachers learn in a...

The twenty-first century compels schools to shift towards dialogic, student-centred learning orientations. This change involves developing teachers’ capacities to innovatively balance teacher-directed and student-centred approaches to provide students with quality learning experiences. This chapter describes a Singapore school’s change journey in w...

Many countries that recognise the importance of Computational Thinking (CT) skills are implementing curriculum changes to integrate the development of these skills and to introduce programming into formal school education. In countries such as the United Kingdom, Lithuania, Finland, Korea and Japan, initiatives and policies are made to introduce th...

Unplugged activities have been one approach to introduce computational thinking (CT) to students before any form of coding is involved. This paper reports on a study that examines the evaluation of the types of CT skills inculcated through an unplugged activity. Students in a grade 9 class were engaged in an unplugged activity on sorting before bei...

The main goal of this research is to understand how young children use mobile technology such as smartphones to traverse different learning contexts and harness a constellation of resources to make sense of their science learning in daily lives. We adopted Rogoff’s sociocultural lens of transformation of participation that helps us understand how s...

Bridging formal and informal learning to enable students’ engaged learning is a core tenet of seamless learning. Addressing the limitations of the current studies on the innovative design and implementation of seamless learning scenarios, this chapter presents one well-designed and implemented curricular initiative at the primary school level, name...

This paper describes two mobile learning journeys in the zoo using either smartphones or tablets, and a mobile learning application SamEx, all designed and implemented as part of a research study in a Singapore primary school. Out-of-school semi-formal learning activities such as zoo trips present standard curricular topics where students go out of...

Many educational research projects focused on designing curricular innovation or establishing design principles for guiding curriculum design and teacher facilitation that work well within specific contexts. When the curriculum is scaled up from one class to all classes in one grade level in a school, the design principles need to be fine-tuned ite...

Research suggests that cooperative interactions are associated with enhanced cognitive and affective outcomes. This paper describes eight principles that can be used to promote such interactions among students working in online environments. The principles derive from a well-established approach to education, known variously as cooperative learning...

This study presents and examines SamEx, a mobile learning system used by 305 students in formal and informal learning in a primary school in Singapore. Students use SamEx in situ to capture media such as pictures, video clips and audio recordings, comment on them, and share them with their peers. In this paper we report on the experiences of studen...

This paper presents experiences from a seamless mobile learning project in Singapore. It describes SamEx mobile learning application design by focusing on the possibilities for self-directed learning and the role of virtual badges gathered by the students during their one year SamEx usage. All the activities were structured by the teachers and scaf...

This paper presents experiences from a seamless mobile learning project in Singapore. Although the project included a variety of seamless mobile learning designs, this paper focuses on only one, and that is a mobile learning application SamEx in support of a specific learning scenario - an outdoor ZOO field trip. The paper describes SamEx design by...

This paper shares the theoretical and methodological frameworks that are deployed in a 3-year study to examine how Singapore primary school students leverage on mobile technology for seamless learning. This notion of seamless learning refers to the integrated and synergistic effects of learning in both formal and informal settings, which is distrib...

With the realization that more research is needed to explore external factors (e.g., pedagogy, parental involvement in the context of K-12 learning) and internal factors (e.g., prior knowledge, motivation) underlying student-centered mobile learning, the present study conceptually and empirically explores how the theories and methodologies of self-...

Content-based reading texts play a vital role in the acquisition of knowledge and information in various fields of studies. Reading these texts at higher institution demands a great deal of effort from the students who are learners of English as a Second Language (ESL). These students who are generally school leavers, whose level or reading exposur...