Moving Towards Problem‐based Learning

Abstract

This paper is based upon the reflections of teachers and students as they experience problem‐based learning (PBL) for the first time. A PBL exercise was integrated into a curriculum‐based Biology field course to meet specific learning requirements of students. The exercise created a new learning environment for both students and teachers, and PBL was evaluated as an educative strategy. The exercise could have been improved through more effective student support. Our experiences of PBL have encouraged us to look for other areas of the curriculum where problem‐based approaches could be incorporated to enrich student learning.     

National Education as a ‘Civics’ Literacy in a Globalized World: The challenges facing education in Singapore

In this paper we discuss the idea of national education in Singapore. National education, broadly speaking, is a civics programme which seeks to instil a sense of place, identity and history in young Singaporeans with a view to developing national pride and commitment. We set this discussion against the backdrop of globalization and the idea of wired communities and argue that any civics programme needs to be more than simply a nationalistic agenda. To do this we have framed national education in Singapore as a civics literacy informed by the idea of multiliteracies. In doing so, we suggest that the pedagogical work of such an approach can help to sustain the nation state of Singapore yet place the civics agenda on a global stage where national education might be seen more appropriately as global education.     

An Examination of English Teachers' Opinions About the Ontario Grade 9 Reading and Writing Test

Interest in the use of large-scale achievement testing for accountability purposes and to drive instructional reform has been increasing in Canada. In the 1995 publications in Interchange, several researchers debated the merits and demerits of standardized achievement testing, including among the latter a tendency to reduce the curriculum and overemphasize routine learning (i.e., "teaching to the test"). Almost no studies have found empirical evidence for such testing's purported benefits. We set out to investigate these issues in Ontario: We present findings from a mail survey designed to find out, from Grade 9 and Grade 10 English teachers in Ontario, their perception of the quality of the Ontario Grade 9 literacy testing program and the effects it has had on the teaching and learning processes. Based on the responses of 107 teachers, our results paint a negative picture of teachers' opinions of the Grade 9 test in terms of its quality and its impact on teaching and learning. Three years after the Grade 9 test was first introduced, Grade 9 and 10 English teachers are still not convinced of its value. Our findings (and those from two other similar surveys) appear to suggest, at least based on teachers' self-reporting, that the purposes of the test — improving the quality of education and learning — as envisioned by the Ontario Ministry of Education and Training have not been met. These findings support those of other assessment impact studies in Canada, namely British Columbia and Alberta, regarding the adverse consequences of large-scale standardized testing (either multiple-choice test or performance-based assessment), and the lack of evidence for its purported positive educational influences. We recommend future research to investigate further the validity and the educational impact of the provincial tests and the reasons responsible for the observed impact or lack of it, and to determine resources, such as teacher training and materials, that are necessary to supplement the provincial testing program's effort to improve teaching and learning.     

Using 9-1-1 call data and the space–time permutation scan statistic for emergency event detection

During medium to large-scale emergency events such as fires or earthquakes, emergency response teams must be deployed to the location of the event in a timely fashion. Information gathered from 9-1-1 call makers is useful for this, but is not always accurate. In this paper, we show how the space–time permutation scan statistic can be used to detect the presence and location of such events by monitoring the overall spatiotemporal pattern of 9-1-1 emergency calls instead. In an analysis of collected 9-1-1 call data, top detected clusters were found to correlate with emergency events as reported on the news, showing the algorithm's usefulness for automatically estimating their location and temporal extent. We show how the detection procedure works in cases where the emergency event generates a small but statistically significant increase in the number of 9-1-1 calls, as well as cases where events must be detected against a large background activity of 9-1-1 calls. We discuss the possible adoption of the proposed algorithm within the next generation digital government framework.     

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