One of the key thrusts in Singapore’s Thinking Schools, Learning Nation (TSLN) educational vision, launched in 1997, is the emphasis on critical thinking in schools. This entails pedagogical changes and challenges for teachers, especially, in terms of their knowledge, dispositions and practices of critical thinking, which are argued to be fundamental in fulfilling the TSLN thrust. Although TSLN is now 10 years into its implementation, to date, there has been little research undertaken to determine the efficacy of the implementation of the critical thinking policy thrust through the perspectives and voices of both teachers and students — the key stakeholders of education and the ultimate agents in the successful implementation of educational initiatives. Therefore, in gaining an in-depth understanding of teachers’ and students’ perspectives of the implementation of critical thinking from the ‘swampy lowlands’, a qualitative case study approach was used. Six government school teachers and their students participated in the case study and data were gathered through lesson observations, interviews, and the analysis of documents. / Findings suggest that a multitude of interrelated systemic and contextual factors, which are predisposed by underlying ‘technocratic and instrumental rationalities’ that govern Singaporean education, remain major barriers to the realisation of TSLN’s critical thinking thrust. The study found that there are gaps and uncertainties in the teachers’ knowledge base of critical thinking and that the incorporation of critical thinking as part of their pedagogy and classroom practice is marginal. Student data corroborate the general lack of emphasis and the limited role of critical thinking in the classroom and they indicate that the hegemony of both school curricula and high stakes examination perpetuate rote learning and didactic pedagogies. / Implications of the study suggest the need to reorientate teacher education and professional development programmes with the explicit aim of transforming teachers’ knowledge base and dispositions to engage with the pedagogical changes that TSLN’s critical thinking policy thrust necessitates. However, to effect deep change and realize the core aspiration of ‘thinking learners’, there must not only be restructuring; reculturing also needs to occur across and beyond the educational system. Importantly, such changes need to be primarily informed by the reconceptualisation of teachers — from mere ‘technicians’ to ‘transformative intellectuals’ — and teachers’ work — from ‘technical work’ to ‘intellectual work’. It is also vital that teachers who are entrusted with the task of developing ‘thinking learners’ under TSLN teach curricula and work in school contexts that explicitly encourage, value and reward critical thinking.

The study involved BTec National (level 3) engineering students studying at a large Further Education College in the South West region. The disciplines of Electrical/Electronic, Mechanical, Operations and Maintenance, Manufacturing, Telecommunications and Fabrication where all included in the study. Several students were sent by their employers on day release programmes and apprenticeships, and these formed the majority of the part time students. There were also other employed students who attended full time for terms 1 and 3 as part of a block release programme. The remaining students were full time, and mainly 16-18 years old. The study focused upon the core mathematics module everyone studied, and mathematical resources which were available through a virtual learning environment. The resources used layering, enabling earlier work to be built on and applied. Two separate cohorts were studied after substantial changes had been made to the qualification standards. The main findings were that the mathematics resources were very useful support, had a significant positive impact on student success, and enhanced the student experience. They helped part time students, especially, to improve their confidence and their achievements. The unlimited availability of these resources were a major consideration in their usefulness. The use of layering within the mathematics unit enabled better recall and comprehension.

The purpose of this study was to compare Turkey and the European Union (EU) regarding aspects (use, self-confidence and attitude) of students&rsquo / information and communication technologies (ICT), the relationships between ICT aspects and mathematical and problem solving literacy performances, and to understand education policy makers&rsquo / perceptions on ICT in Turkey. A multimethod (quantitative and qualitative) research design was used in this study. Country groups &ndash / an EU member group, a new EU member group and Turkey- were formed on the basis of the status of a country in the EU, and that of having ICT data in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2003. This study has three focuses. The first focus of the present study was to examine similarities and differences in ICT use, self-confidence in ICT and attitudes toward computers in students from Turkey and the EU. The sample of this focus was those students from the EU member group (N=56,610), the new EU member group (N=24,834) and Turkey (N=3,231) who participated in the PISA 2003. Multivariate analysis of covariance - controlling students&rsquo / economic, social and cultural status (ESCS) and attitudes toward computers- and univariate analysis of covariance -controlling ESCS- were conducted to see whether students&rsquo / ICT aspects differ across country groups. The first focus of the present study indicated that Turkish students have lower self-confidence in using computer and the Internet and they use the Internet less frequently than students in the EU. Contrary to this, the findings of this focus revealed that Turkish students have relatively more positive attitudes toward computers and they use program/software more frequently than do students in the EU. The second focus of the present study was to model the relationships among ICT factors and mathematical and problem solving literacy performances of Turkish and the EU students. The sample of this focus was those students from the EU member group (N=57,787), the new EU member group (N=25,359) and Turkey (N=3,590) who participated in the PISA 2003. The proposed path analytic models were separately tested for each country group. The second focus revealed that students&rsquo / socioeconomic and cultural status and selfconfidence in routine computer tasks have positive and medium level relationships with their mathematical and problem solving literacy performances, for all country groups. Furthermore, students&rsquo / self-confidence in Internet tasks had a positive and low level relationship with these performances for all country groups. On the other hand, it was found that students&rsquo / frequency of computer and Internet use and their self-confidence in high-level computer tasks have generally negative and small relationships with these literacy performances in all country groups. The third focus aimed to investigate education policy makers&rsquo / perceptions of the ICT policy making and implementation process in Turkey, and their evaluations of the findings of the quantitative phase of this study. The participants of this focus consisted of seven education policy makers from the Ministry of National Education and universities in Turkey. The data, collected with interviews, were content-analyzed by coding data, identifying, and relating the categories and sub-categories, that is, open, axial and selective coding were conducted respectively. In the third focus of the present study, participants specified the primary issues of ICT policy making and the implementing process in Turkey and made suggestions on these issues. Participants frequently related the findings of the quantitative phase of this study to the economic, social and cultural status of students.

Previous studies have shown that teachers and students using English as the medium of instruction (EMI) in science classrooms encounter many language challenges with teaching and learning processes. Problems include the limited English communication skills of science teachers, the lack of EMI training for science teachers, the students' different language abilities and science teachers' beliefs that they are not responsible for addressing students' language needs in science. Teachers' lack of language awareness has led to poor teaching practices and limited interactions in the classrooms. This lack of language awareness, in turn, suggests that there are limited opportunities for students to learn English as a second language in the science classroom. This study extends the research on EMI classroom interactions in Hong Kong (Lo and Macaro, 2012) to the previously unexamined context of senior secondary science classrooms. A total of 19 teachers and 545 students from grades 10 and 11 EMI science class were recruited in Hong Kong from 'early-full EMI' schools (full EMI instruction from grades 7 to 12) and 'late-partial EMI' schools (Chinese medium from grades 7 to 9 and partial EMI instruction from grades 10 to 12). The project used multiple sources of qualitative data (i.e. semi-structured interviews and 33 videotaped classroom observations) to explore the similarities and differences in classroom interactions during the first and second years of the senior science curriculum (grades 10 and 11) in the two types of EMI schools. This project also investigated these science teachers' and students' perceptions of EMI teaching and learning processes, their preference of instructional language and their beliefs about teaching and learning in the EMI environment. Interviews also probed teachers' language awareness, teachers' and students' belief about EMI, students' self-concepts in science (students' perceptions or beliefs about their ability to do well in science, see Wilkins, 2004)) and their perceptions of language challenges and coping strategies in EMI classrooms. The results from the observational data show similar interactional patterns in both early-full and late-partial EMI science classrooms when measured as percentages of interaction time, distribution of time between teacher and student talk and frequency of pedagogical functions. However, the nature of the interactions is different. In late-partial EMI schools, overall, there are more (but shorter) student initiations and responses, more use of higher-order questions from the teachers but less direct feedback to students. Both teachers and students tend to use their L1 more. In both types of schools, there was less interaction time and a lower maximum length of student turns and more L1 use in grade 11 than in grade 10. The discourse analysis of the four biology lesson transcripts also shows that both early-full and late-partial EMI students predominantly produced incomplete sentences consisting of short, technical nouns or noun phrases referring to scientific items. Science teachers rarely made any attempts to correct their students' language mistakes, nor did they encourage students to produce a complete sentence. This lack of teacher feedback on students' L2 language production perhaps reflects the fact that EMI science teachers rarely provide comprehensible input to facilitate students' L2 language learning. These findings suggest the important role of the teacher's modified input in teacher-student interaction in developing students' content knowledge and language skills. The adoption of EMI appears to lead to the development of students' comprehension of content knowledge more than development of their language production skills. As a result of their language shortfalls, the students' L2 productive skills remain under-developed despite English instruction. This lack of language support by teachers appears to indicate a gap between the aims of the EMI policy and its implementation. The interview and questionnaire data show that the science teachers from both the early-full and late-partial EMI schools held many of the same views about their EMI teaching experiences, but they differed in their attitudes towards the value of English language skills and their language awareness. The early-full EMI teachers believed English language skills were important and these early-full teachers have a higher language awareness than the late-partial EMI science teachers. Students from both types of schools also held similar views about their EMI learning, indicating that they welcome the adoption of EMI instruction. However, while the late-partial EMI students see EMI as an opportunity to improve their English, those in the early-full EMI schools believe that EMI discouraged them from learning. By providing an evidence-based, pedagogically focused analysis of teacher and student classroom interactions and their perceptions, this research sheds light on ways to improve the quality of instructional practices in different EMI classrooms in Hong Kong and in similar contexts around the world.

From the moment children are born, they begin a lifetime journey of learning about themselves and their surroundings. With the establishment of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, it mandates that all children receive a high-quality education in a positive school climate. Regardless of the school the child attends or the neighborhood in which the child lives, proper and quality education and resources must be provided and made available in order for the child to be academically successful. The purpose of this ex post facto study was to investigate the relationship between the FCAT 2.0 mathematics scores of public middle school students in Miami-Dade County, Florida and the concentrations of a school’s racial and ethnic make-up (Whites, Blacks, and Hispanics), English for Speakers of other Languages (ESOL) population, socio-economic status (SES), and school climate. The research question of this study was: Is there a significant relationship between the FCAT 2.0 Mathematics scores and racial and ethnic concentration of public middle school students in Miami-Dade County when controlling SES, ESOL student population, and school climate for the 2010-2011 school year? The instruments used to collect the data were the FCAT 2.0 and Miami-Dade County Public Schools (M-DCPS) School Climate Survey. The study found that Economically Disadvantaged (SES) students socio-economic status had the strongest correlation with the FCAT 2.0 mathematics scores (r = -.830). The next strongest correlation was with the number of students who agreed that their school climate was positive and helped them learn (r = .741) and the third strongest correlation was a school percentage of White students (r = .668). The study concluded that the FCAT 2.0 mathematics scores of M-DCPS middle school students have a significant relationship with socio-economic status, school climate, and racial concentration.