Lim C.P. 2007 - Effective Integration of PDF

Lim, C.P. (2007).
Effective integration of ICT in Singapore schools: Pedagogical and policy

implications. Educational Technology Research and Development, 55(1), 83-116.
ICT in Singapore Schools
Running head:
Effective Integration of ICT in Singapore Schools:

Pedagogical and Policy Implications
Cher Ping, Lim
Associate Professor of Teaching and Learning

School of Education
Edith Cowan University
Bradford Street, Mt. Lawley

Perth 6050, Western Australia
c.lim@ecu.edu.au
ICT in Singapore Schools 1
Effective Integration of ICT in Singapore Schools:
Pedagogical and Policy Implications
Abstract
This paper examines and analyzes where and how information and communication
technologies (ICT) are integrated in Singapore schools to engage students in higher order
thinking activities. Taking the activity system as a unit of analysis, the study documents the
actual processes and sociocultural elements that engage students in higher order thinking. By
employing methods such as observations, focus group discussions with students, and face-to-
face interviews with teachers, ICT-coordinators and principals, an account of how the activity
systems within and between classrooms, and the schools are generated. Based on the analysis
of the data from ten schools, issues in the learning environment are discussed: Necessary
(classroom management and orienting activities) and sufficient conditions (scaffolding
activities and supporting school policies) for effective ICT integration in the classroom. The
account also highlights the constraints of time and lack of knowledge and experience in the
contexts that the teachers are working under, and how these constraints are addressed by
supporting school policies in the larger sociocultural setting of the school. This account
provides a sample of pedagogical and sociocultural issues that are discussed over the course
and at the end of the project. Like a good guidebook, the study sensitizes the audience to
what is likely to happen given a particular objective, constraint or design.

Introduction
Research studies in education have shown that information and communication
technologies (ICT) coupled with the necessary pedagogical strategies engage students in
higher order thinking (Oliver & Hannafin, 2000; Jonassen & Carr, 2000; Kearney &
Treagust, 2001). The primary motivation for integrating ICT in education is this belief that it
supports students in their own constructive thinking, allows them to transcend their cognitive
limitations, and engages them in cognitive operations that they may not have been capable of
otherwise (Salomon, 1993). In Singapore, the Masterplan for ICT in Education (MP1) was
launched in April 1997. The main goal of MP1 was to ensure that schools integrated ICT in
their curriculum so as to develop a culture of thinking, lifelong learning and social
responsibility (Ministry of Education, 1997). To meet these goals, four key dimensions of the ICT
masterplan were identified. They included curriculum and assessment, learning resources, teacher
development, and physical and technological infrastructure.
MP1 was implemented in three phases: Phase I in 1997, Phase II in 1998, and Phase III in
1999. Schools that had a history of effective use of ICT in their curriculum were chosen to be the
demonstration schools. These demonstration schools, known as Phase I schools, provided the rest of
the schools in Singapore with concrete, local models of innovation in teaching and learning strategies,
and in school administration using ICT. ICT was integrated into all subject areas at the primary
school, secondary school and junior college levels. There were extensive use of the Internet, software
designed for the curriculum, open tools such as word-processing, spreadsheet, and mindmapping
packages, and learning management systems. In these lessons, ICT was employed to facilitate the shift
of learning from information receiving towards finding, collating, and synthesizing relevant
information, and from learning to apply information to solving problems and communicating ideas
effectively. The use of ICT also strengthened the teacher's repertoire of skills and opened up a wider
array of learning resources for students to access. This provided a greater degree of independent
learning, encouraging more able students to expand their horizons beyond the standard curriculum.
The rich, interactive capability of ICT-mediated learning resources also motivated and engaged
weaker students, and allowed them to learn at an appropriate pace. To support the learner autonomy of
the students, teachers provided them with worksheets and checklists, and engaged them in dialogues
to scaffold the learning processes.
MP1 has given schools in Singapore a strong and broad base to integrate ICT in the
curriculum and other school activities. By 2002, there was a basic ICT infrastructure, a starter pack of
content and learning resources, a fair level of ICT competency among teachers and students. More
importantly, there were changes in the learning and teaching approaches adopted by schools. As the
process of ICT integration in Singapore schools reached a considerable level of maturity and
stability (the second Masterplan was implemented in 2002), the pertinent question was: How
has ICT been integrated in Singapore schools such that students engage in higher order
thinking? In December 2000, the author, together with a team of four others from the
Learning Sciences and Technologies Academic Group and a member from the Ministry of
Education (Singapore), proposed a research study, “Effective integration of ICT in Singapore
schools: Pedagogical and Policy Implications’, to be funded under the Education Research
Fund of the Ministry of Education (MOE) and National Institute of Education (NIE). The
main objective of the three-year project was to examine and analyze where and how ICT was
integrated in Singapore schools such that students were engaged in higher order thinking.
In this study, ICT integration is interpreted as ICT functioning as an integral or
mediated tool to accomplish specific teaching or learning activities to meet certain
instructional objectives. For ICT to be effectively integrated in schools, it should be used as a

mediational tool in these activities to engage students in higher order thinking. Higher order
thinking skills are “goal-directed, multi-step, strategic processes such as designing, decision
making, and problem solving” that require analyzing, evaluating, connecting, imagining,
elaborating and synthesizing (Iowa Department of Education, 1989, p.7). And engagement
entails mindfulness, cognitive effort and attention of the students in the learning environment
(Kearsley & Shneiderman, 1998).
By linking the effective or ineffective integration of ICT in certain classrooms with
particular learning activities, situated within their larger sociocultural context, the study
attempted to build a detailed account of what the participants of the classrooms have done to
make the activities successful, how the activities were supported by their larger sociocultural
context, and what problems were encountered. The specific objectives of the study were to:
• identify and analyze the pedagogical practices of teachers and students in the ICT-
mediated learning environment that engaged students in higher order thinking;
• identify and describe the sociocultural setting elements that promoted or inhibited
the effective integration of ICT in Singapore schools; and
• provide a holistic view of ICT integration to make pedagogical and policy
recommendations.
The research study consisted of two phases. Phase one consisted of a self-reporting
questionnaire that was sent out to all schools in Singapore. One of the main objectives of the
questionnaire was to assess the level of ICT integration in schools by identifying the various
sociocultural elements that influence effective integration of ICT. The other objectives were
to serve as a screening phase to identify the case studies for phase two of the study, and to
refine and guide the direction of phase two of the study. Phase one started in January 2001
with the review of literature of ICT integration and the construction of the questionnaire. The
questionnaire was then piloted and refined before administering the questionnaire to all ICT
coordinators or heads of the ICT department in Singapore schools in April 2001. This group
was selected to be the respondents of the questionnaire as they were most likely to have the
best understanding of the various issues of ICT integration in their respective schools. To
ensure data integrity, the research team went down to the schools of 30 respondents, selected
randomly, to validate the responses in the questionnaire submitted. There were little
discrepancies between the responses of the 30 schools and the observations of the research
team members.
Various modes of questionnaire administration were employed to ensure a high
response rate and they included personal e-mails that directed the respondents to the web-
based questionnaire, personal postal mails with the hardcopy of the questionnaire attached,
and telephone reminders to the non-respondents. After two months, the response rate of the
questionnaire was high at 87.2%. The questionnaire explored different aspects of ICT
integration in schools that included school ICT culture, student use of ICT, teacher use of
ICT, management of ICT resources and staff development. Responses to the questionnaire
were made on a five-point scale in which a three-point description was applied to the items in
the questionnaire: point 1 of the scale was associated with no or little integration of ICT,
point 3 was associated with moderate integration of ICT, and point 5 was associated with
high integration of ICT.

The main findings of phase one included:
• Phase I schools in MP1 have significantly higher student and teacher use of ICT,
greater opportunities for staff development, and more conducive ICT culture than
Phase III schools;
• Independent-autonomous schools have significantly higher teacher and student use
of ICT for teaching and learning than government and government-aided schools;
and
• The correlations among the management of ICT resources, student use of ICT,
teacher use of ICT, staff development and school ICT culture were significant and
highly positive.
Based on the findings of the questionnaire, three recommendations were made: (1) ICT-
integration models for Singapore schools; (2) New strategies for student ICT competency
development in selected government and government-aided schools; and (3) ICT competency
standards for teachers and students (Lim, Khine, Hew, Wong, Divaharan, & Lim, 2003).
Phase two was a collective case study of 10 schools at different levels: five primary
schools, three secondary schools and two junior colleges. The sample of schools at each level
was chosen based on their high degree of ICT integration that had been reported in phase one.
The objective of phase two is to meet all of the specific objectives set, supported by data from
phase one of the study. To gather accounts of different realities that had been constructed by
various groups and individuals in the different environments, qualitative methods were drawn
upon: observations of ICT-mediated lessons, face-to-face interviews with principals, ICT-
coordinators and teachers, and focus group interviews with students. The focus of this paper
is based on the major findings of phase two to examine and analyze where and how ICT are
integrated in Singapore schools to engage students in higher order thinking activities. In
order to provide a descriptive and interpretive account of such an examination and analysis,
the paper considers the whole configuration of events, activities, contents, and interpersonal
processes taking place in the context that ICT have been used. The activity theoretical
framework was adopted to demonstrate the intimate mechanisms that linked ICT, learning
and its sociocultural setting (Lim, 2002; Lim & Hung, 2003).
The Activity Theoretical Framework

Activity theory originates from Soviet cultural-historical psychology (Vygotsky 1978;
Leont’ev 1981), which in turn is rooted in both eighteenth and nineteenth century classical
German philosophy – from Hegel’s idealism to the historical materialism of Marx and
Engels, in which the concept of activity is extensively elaborated. The essence of activity in
psychology is reflected in Leont’ev's (1981, p. 47) assertion:
Human psychology is concerned with the activity of concrete individuals,

which takes place whether in a collective – that is, jointly with other people –
or in a situation in which the subject deals directly with the surrounding world
of objects – e.g. at the potter’s wheel or the writer’s desk. However, if we
removed human activity from the system of social relationships and social life,
it would not exist and would have no structure. With all its varied forms, the
human individual’s activity is a system in the system of social relations. It

does not exist without these relations.
Therefore, human activity is socially bound; an individual never acts directly on or reacts
directly to his/her environment but rather, the activity that is undertaken by the individual to
achieve the object of the environment is mediated by cultural means and tools, and the
dynamic nature of the activity.
Taking activity theory as the theoretical framework provides important insights into
the ICT integration process in Singapore schools. First, it provides a conceptual map to the
major loci among which human cognition is distributed in the learning environment, with ICT
as one of the mediating tools. Second, it includes other people who must be taken into
account simultaneously with the subject as constituents of the activity system. Third,
institutionalized activities are driven by something more robust and enduring than an
individual goal-directed activity, making analysis less problematic. A collective object-

oriented activity system is the prime unit of analysis for activity theory (Leont’ev, 1981;
Engeström, 1987; Cole & Engeström, 1993). And fourth, it considers the history and
developmental phases of the ICT integration process.
Activity System as the Unit of Analysis

Engeström (1987) represents the idea of activity systems as a unit of analysis with an
expanded version of the classical mediational triangle. The classical mediational triangle
represents the basic structure of human cognition that results from tool mediation. Drawing
upon Vygotsky’s (1978) higher and elementary mental functioning, ‘unmediated’

(elementary) functioning occurs along the base of the triangle; while ‘mediated’ (higher)
functioning are interactions between the subject (individual) and object (task) mediated by
tools, at the vertex of the triangle (see Figure 1).

- Insert Figure 1 here -
The expanded version adds the crucial components of community, rules and division
of labor to the classical mediational triangle. Individuals exist in communities where there is
division of labor with the “continuously negotiated distribution of tasks, powers, and
responsibilities among the participants of the activity system” (Cole & Engeström, 1993, p.7).
The relations between the individual (subject) and community are mediated by the
community’s collection of mediating tools, and rules. Rules are “the norms and sanctions
that specify and regulate the expected correct procedures and acceptable interactions among
the participants” (Cole & Engeström, 1993, p.7).
Taking an ICT-mediated lesson in a school as an activity system, the subject is the
student and the object is to understand the relationships among the variables found in an ICT-
mediated simulation package. A pool of ICT and non-ICT tools, including the simulation
package, mediates the interactions between the subject and object. The student belongs to a
community consisting of his/her classmates, teachers and ICT staff mediated by rules and
division of labor. The rules include the school disciplinary rules and more specific ones like
the procedures necessary to run the simulation program. For the division of labor, the student
play the role of scientists, gathering, representing, interpreting, and analyzing data, whereas
the teacher takes on a mediator role where he/she questions, clarifies and summarizes to
support students’ understanding of the relationships among the variables under study.
From the above discussion, the concept of activity system had provided a seminal
formulation in a Vygotskian approach of a unit of analysis that serves as the starting point for
a sociocultural approach towards the study of ICT in schools: “real activities of real people”
over time (Cole, 1985, p. 159). To situate the activity system of an ICT-mediated lesson
within a broader context (the school, education system and society-at-large), Cole’s (1995)
garden-as-culture metaphor was adopted.
Situating the Activity System in a Broader Context

Cole (1995, p. 196) drew a parallel between the role of the sociocultural researcher
and the gardener that both “must attend simultaneously to two classes of concerns: what
transpires inside the system (‘garden’) they study (or design and study) and what transpires
around it”. He applied the garden metaphor to the Fifth Dimension, a specially designed
learning environment for promoting the all-around intellectual and social development of
children in the United States. His study suggested that a change of culture in the broader
context, a switch of institutional setting, or a change in focus on a different activity in the

activity system was likely to change the higher mental functioning displayed by the
individual child. Therefore, applying the garden metaphor to the study of ICT in schopols
provided a more adequate and detailed account of the activity systems. Figure 2 shows the
schematic overview of a sociocultural approach towards the study of ICT in schools.
- Insert Figure 2 here -
In this ‘concentric’ model, successive circles represent the activity systems in the
broader contexts of the ICT-mediated lesson. The activity system of the ICT-mediated
lesson, with its interacting components, is in the innermost circle. The next circle represents
the activity system of the course with elements such as mode of assessment (tools),
curriculum (object and tools), layout of the classrooms and ICT rooms (rules), entry
requirement to the course (rules and community), and roles of course participants (division of
labor and community). The next higher level of context is the school where the elements to
consider include the type, location, layout and ethos of the school (rules and community),
ICT facilities (tools), type of students, parents, peers (community), home computers (tools),
time-tabling of ICT and non-ICT lessons (rules), and roles of different members of the school
(division of labor and community).
The country’s education system is in the next circle with elements such as education
policies on use of ICT (rules), examination boards (tools and community), league table
(object and rules), the training and retention of teachers (community and roles), and the
division of labor among major stakeholders of the education system. The outermost circle is
the society at large in the country and consists of elements such as education software
developers, publishers (community and division of labor), and public perceptions of schools
and teachers, and expectations of employers (rules, object and community). The activity
systems at different levels may change over time, but they are always interdependent of one
another. Changes that are initiated by any of the components of an activity system have an
impact on the components of the other activity systems.

This theoretical framework is especially applicable to the study of ICT integration in
Singapore schools where the education system and policy support in the areas of budget,
curriculum, professional development and research contribute to or hinder the

implementation of MP1. When ICT is employed in schools, there is a need to review and
modify existing teaching, learning and assessment practices; and hence, the education system
must be responsive to adapt to these changes. In Singapore, teaching and assessment

methods have been reviewed and modified continuously to nurture thinking skills and
creativity, and to encourage knowledge generation and application. Various initiatives have
been implemented over the years: Thinking Program, Project Work, Integrated Program and
Fostering a Spirit of Innovation and Enterprise in Schools. For example, Project Work has
been implemented in schools since 2000 to provide students with an integrated learning
experience to explore the inter-relationships and inter-connectedness of different disciplines.

In all these initiatives, ICT is perceived as a mediating tool. More importantly, MP1 was
implemented in the same year as the launching of the vision of “Thinking Schools, Learning
Nation”. Under the vision, the MOE shifted away from an efficiency-driven education
towards an ability-driven one that aimed to develop and harness the abilities and potential of
every child. Such a vision was consistent with the objectives of MP1 that focused on the
creation of a student-centered learning environment, and the inculcation of values and

nurturing of thinking skills and creativity through the formal and informal curricula.
The national ICT infrastructure (connectivity and accessibility) also affected the
effectiveness of the implementation of MP1. The current phase of ICT initiatives began in
1991 with the launch of the IT2000 Masterplan. Singapore was to be transformed into an
intelligent island, where ICT permeates every aspect of the society – at home, work and play.
These initiatives in infrastructure development laid the basic foundation for the introduction
of ICT in education. Moreover, MP1 was not formulated in isolation. It was planned and
implemented to complement and support other strategies to nurture a broad-based

knowledge-based economy in sustaining the economic development of Singapore. These
strategies included developing universities to provide a broader tertiary education base as
well as cater to specialized niches; building a core of quality commercial schools to foster on-
the-job upgrading; and encouraging multi-national corporations to set up regional training
facilities in Singapore. It is clear from the discussion in this section that the integration of
ICT in schools is situated within the broader environmental context of the education system,
the economic and social infrastructure and policies, and the global market conditions.
Research Design and Methods

Therefore, by adopting the activity theoretical framework, we were able to study and
document both the effective and ineffective integration of ICT in schools with particular
learning environments. The theoretical framework and research purpose discussed above
provided the parameters, tools and general guide for the study to address the main research
question.
The Cases
The ‘cases’ for the study were five primary schools, three secondary schools and two
junior colleges in Singapore. At the primary level, students go through a four-year

foundation stage, from Primary One to Four, and a two-year orientation stage from Primary
Five to Six. The foundation stage includes a common curriculum that provides them with a
firm foundation in English Language, their Mother Tongue, Mathematics and Science.
Music, Art & Crafts, Civics and Moral Education, Health Education, Social Studies and
Physical Education are also included in the curriculum. They then sit for the national
examinations, the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) that assesses their abilities
for placement in a secondary school course that is most suited for their learning pace and
aptitude – Special, Express or Normal stream. The courses in secondary schools are four
years and five years for special/express and normal stream respectively. The curriculum
includes English Language, Mother Tongue, Mathematics, Science, History, Geography,
Literature in English, Visual Arts, Design and Technology, Home Economics, Civics and
Moral Education, Physical Education and Music. Students can also do a third language, such
as French, German, Japanese or Malay (Special Program). At the end of four or five years,
depending on the stream they are from, the students sit for the GCE ‘O’ level that will enable
them to gain entry into the junior colleges, polytechnics or technical institutes. For students
who opt and qualify for junior colleges after their GCE ‘O’ level examination, they will sit
for the GCE ‘A’ level examination after two years. Their admission is based on a point
system computed from the aggregate of their GCE ‘O’ level result. For those who do not
qualify but want to sit for the ‘A’ level examination, they have to enroll in a three-year pre-
university course in a centralized institute. The students’ eligibility for tertiary education is
determined by their ‘A’ level results. The schools in phase two were selected based on their
high degree of ICT integration reported in the phase one’s questionnaire survey of all
Singapore schools.
The Primary Schools

The study in School A, a government-aided school, was carried out from 17
September, 2001 to 2 October 2001. At the time of the study, there were 2118 students in
School A, consisting of boys and girls with ages ranging from 7 to 12. The average class size
was 40. The school had a staff strength of 80 teachers and 10 support personnel. The school
was in Phase II of MP1. There were two computer rooms each of which had been equipped
with about forty computers, data projector, pull-down projector screen and whiteboard. A
technology assistant (TA) was available to address technical problems that might arise in the
computer rooms, such as program failure and CD-ROM access problems. The ICT learning
packages that were used included Midisaurus for Music, I-Micro and RoboLab for Science,
and a wide range of CD-ROMs for other subjects. The school had also converted certain
areas in the school into free access corners with a total of 12 computers for students to engage
in independent learning during tea or lunch breaks.

The fieldwork in School B, also a government-aided school, was carried out from 21
August 2001 to 8 January 2002. All 720 students were girls aged 7 to 12 years. The average
class size was 40. There were 31 teaching staff and 4 support staff, including the TA. The
school was in Phase III of MP1. There was one fully air-conditioned computer room with
about forty computers, data projector, pull-down projector screen, whiteboard and two
printers. Some of the ICT learning packages that were used in North Primary School
included Midisaurus for Music, Crayola for Art, and CD-ROMs such as MathBlaster and
ZARC for Mathematics. The area outside the school general office was converted to a free
access area with six computers.

The case study in School C, a government school, was carried out from 3 July to 22
August 2002. There were about 1,800 students in the school, consisting of Chinese and
Malay students from ages ranging from 7 to 12. The average class size was 36. The school
had a staff strength of 70 teachers and eight support staff. The school was in Phase I of MP1.
There were three computer laboratories; 21 computers each in two of the laboratories and 15
computers in the third one. There was also a music laboratory with 15 computers. A TA was
available in the school to provide technical support and resolve technical problems that might
arise during the ICT-mediated lessons. The school had about 62 different CD-ROM titles.
All these were housed in the school server and could be retrieved within the school’s local
area network via the Virtual Drive Network.
School D started out as a government-aided mixed primary school but later, became a
full government school offering English as a first language and Chinese and Malay as second
languages. The case study in School D was carried out between 2 August 2002 to 10 Feb
2003. It had an intake of about 1000 students. Most of the students were from low to middle
income families. Altogether, there were 39 trained teaching staff and eight non-teaching
staff, including a TA. The school was in Phase II of MP1. The school’s ICT facilities
include two computer laboratories, a multimedia resource library, and an educational web
portal that enables students, parents and teachers to communicate via email and e-forum.
School E shared many similar characteristics with School C. The fieldwork in the
school was carried out between 3 September to 6 October 2003. The school was in Phase II
of MP1. All classrooms in the five primary schools were equipped with a data projector and
a desktop computer. And the computer rooms were equipped with more than 40 desktop
computers per room, enough for a class of 40 students to engage in individual work, and
flexible enough to support pair and group work.
The Secondary Schools

School X was a government mixed secondary school catering to students who have
successfully completed their Primary School Leaving Examination. The case study was
carried out between 9 to 25 September 2002. Altogether, in 2002 there were 54 teachers and
1012 students in the school. The school was in Phase III of MP1. The students in School X
would undergo four to five years of education with different curricular emphases. Depending
on their Primary School Leaving Examination results, some students would undergo the
Express course while the rest would enter the Normal course. There were various ICT
facilities for both staff and students to use. They included ICT resource rooms, ICT-mediated
Science laboratories, ICT laboratories, ICT work stations in the library, school-wide network
to the Internet and a design studio. All classrooms were equipped with a teacher’s computer,
data projector, and a visualizer.

School Y was an all boys schools and has consistently been ranked among the top
secondary schools in Singapore, based on its students’ academic performance in the GCE ‘O’
level examination. The case study was carried out between 31 January 2002 to 10 April
2002. There were 105 teachers and 28 non-teaching staff working in the school, including
two TAs. There were about 1200 students that were drawn from among the top 3% of
primary school students. The students underwent a four year course before they sit for their
GCE ‘O’ level examinations. School Y was in Phase II of MP1. The ICT facilities in the
school included ICT-mediated science laboratories, four computer laboratories (three full
laboratories with 40 computers, and one half laboratory with 20 computers), three
auditoriums with audio-visual rooms, reading rooms with network access points and power
points, and a campus-wide wireless system. There was also a library and media resource
centre, which housed a collection of about 30,000 books and info-educational digital video
discs, laser discs, compact discs, CD-ROMs, and video tapes. A typical classroom in School
Y had a teacher’s personal computer linked to a data-projector projector.
School Z shared many similar characteristics with School X. The case study in the
school was conducted in March 2004. The school was in Phase II of MP1, and was an
autonomous government school.
The Junior Colleges

Junior College P had been consistently ranked among the top six out of fourteen
junior colleges in Singapore, based on the students’ academic performance in the Singapore-
Cambridge ‘A’ level examination. The field study in Junior College P was carried out from
18 January 2002 to 21 May 2002. At the time of the study, there were 120 teachers and 1600
students. The students were drawn from among the top 10 - 15% of secondary school
students. They consisted of boys and girls with ages ranging from 17 to 19. The students
could opt for either the Arts or Science stream and they were required to offer three or four
A-level subjects, the General Paper and a mother tongue (Chinese, Malay or Tamil). The
students could opt for either the Arts or Science stream and they were required to take three
or four A-level subjects, the General Paper and a mother tongue (Chinese, Malay or Tamil).
The college had many facilities for its staff and students to use. For example, the teaching
and learning facilities consisted of computer-enabled classrooms, science laboratories with
life science equipment, computer laboratories, five lecture theatres, a 800-seater auditorium
with audio-video facility, and reading rooms. Junior College P also had a library and media
resource centre. The library and media resource centre had a collection of more than 1000
CD-ROM titles. Altogether there were 16 computers with Internet facilities, of which two
were linked to a scanner and printer.
The study in Junior College Q was carried out from 15 July 2002 to 15 January 2003.
The school had also been consistently ranked among the top six junior colleges in Singapore.
At the time of the study, there were 130 teachers and 1750 students in the school. The
facilities in Junior College Q were very similar to the ones in Junior College P.
The Collective Case Study
Observation of ICT-Mediated Lessons

A semi-structured observation was adopted to allow for a more open exploration of
the learning environment. During observations, a record of events was kept based on the
observation checklist that included layout of the room, lesson objectives, lesson sequence,
types of ICT and non-ICT tools used, rules and procedures, and roles of the participants in the
community to engage students in higher order thinking. The checklist for the observations
was inextricably tied to the activity theoretical framework and the literature review on ICT
integration issues.
Taking the ICT-mediated lessons as the activity system, 15 ICT-mediated lessons
were observed in each school. The ICT-mediated lessons were in different subject areas:
Mathematics, Science (Physics, Chemistry, and Biology), English, Mother-tongue (Chinese,
Malay and Tamil), Art, Music, Humanities (Geography and History), and Social Studies.
Most of the lessons observed were conducted in the computer rooms, mediated by ICT tools
that included CD-ROMs, Internet, data-logger, and open tools (word processor, spreadsheet,
Geometric Sketchpad, and presentation application). Only about 15% of the lessons observed
were conducted in the classroom with a data projector and a teacher’s computer.
The analysis of data collected proceeded alongside the collection of data in the
observations. For example, preliminary analytic notes made in the right-hand column of the
field notes acted as a reminder of lines of enquiry that might prove to be fruitful. These notes
were used to develop the analysis and provided a structure for future observations. The
approach of analysis adopted was similar to the ones used for the data from other qualitative
methods adopted in phase two. Moreover, the analyses of data from these methods usually
took place alongside one another.
Face-to-Face Interviews with Teachers, ICT-Coordinators and Principals

Although observations allowed collection of data through the researchers’ direct
contact with the learning environment, it was not always possible to have intimate, repeated
and prolonged involvement in the life and community of the participants. Moreover, it was
necessary to take into account of the way the teachers interpreted and understood their
worlds. Three teachers were interviewed in each school. The teachers were interviewed after
the observation of their ICT-mediated lessons. The 45 minutes interviews were audio-
recorded. An unstructured interview format was adopted to encourage meaning making by
narrative recounting. A list of topics that the researchers wanted the teachers to talk about
was generated for the interview: objectives of ICT-mediated lessons, reasons for planning and
implementing certain activities, reasons for using ICT and non-ICT tools, roles of the
participants, and rules and procedures to engage students in higher order thinking during the
ICT-mediated lessons. They were also asked to talk about the problems that they faced in the
ICT-mediated lessons with respect to engagement and higher order thinking, and how they
addressed these problems by designing activities to support the engagement.

The principal and ICT-coordinator from each school were also interviewed. Similar
to the teacher’s interview, the 45-minute unstructured interview was audio-recorded. The list
of topics generated for the purpose of these interviews included: Objectives of the school with
respect to ICT integration and higher order thinking, school ICT Masterplan (if any), roles of
Ministry of Education, partner schools, school administration, head of departments, support
staff, teachers, and students, rules and procedures for accessing ICT resources and computer
labs, and developing time-table, and structure in place to support teachers’ integration of ICT.
Analysis of data was carried out alongside transcription. The process was very similar
to the one used in the observation, where preliminary analyses were written on the right-hand
margin of the transcriptions. However, the data collected by means of interviewing were the
active construction of some version of the world by the interviewer and interviewee,
appropriate to what each has taken to be self-evident about the other person to whom he/she
was speaking and the context of the question. Therefore, the interview data was interpreted
against the background of the context in which the interviews were conducted.
Focus Group Discussions with Students

Three groups of six students were chosen from each school for the focus group
discussions. The groupings were done according to the levels that the students were from:
Primary 3, 4 and 5 for the primary schools Secondary 2, 3 and 4 from the secondary schools,
and Junior College 1 and 2 from the junior colleges. Each group had a 30 to 45-minute
discussion conducted in the classroom or the computer lab. A list of topics and questions was
used to guide the group discussions: objectives of ICT-mediated lessons, ICT and non-ICT
tools, rules and procedures, division of labor among participants, and teaching and learning
activities that engage them in higher order thinking during the ICT-mediated lessons. These
topics were generated from the activity theoretical framework and the literature review.
Data Analysis
In the case studies, data analysis within each method, between methods, within each
case, and between cases took place alongside the data collection and data processing. The
ongoing analyses helped to undo biases and errors that might have crept into the fieldwork
and fine-tuned the research methods to reflect a better understanding of the setting. The data
collected was continually subjected to a filtering system. From the various sources of data,
units of information were identified. In this study, these units became the basis for defining
categories of pedagogical practices and sociocultural elements that engaged students in higher
order thinking.
An example of how the analysis has been carried out for classroom management
issues is presented as follows. It is essential that the activity theoretical framework informed
these units with respect to the availability of ICT tools, establishment of disciplinary and
educational rules and procedures, and division of labor among participants (teachers, students
and TAs). Table 1 shows the units of information that have been categorized with respect to
the components and mediations of the activity system. These units are situated in the activity
systems (ICT-mediated lessons in the schools).
- Insert Table 1 here -
As the analysis was ongoing, the categories were flexible and non-exhaustive; that is,
new categories were identified, developed, redefined, or redeveloped from the analysis of
each interview, each observation, or each assessment. The categories were constantly
reviewed for overlap and completeness. Those categories with similar properties were
collapsed into a broader category. The categories generated were then examined to establish
the extent to which they fitted into the theoretical framework. Such a technique provided the
collective case study research with greater flexibility and validity.
In summary, the design and methods discussed above allowed for a holistic approach
towards the study of ICT in its learning environment and broader sociocultural settings.
These methods were informed by the theoretical framework that continually reminded the
author that an account from a particular observation, interview or assessment should be
understood and interpreted by reference to a larger sociocultural setting.
Findings and Discussion

This section discusses the findings from the collective case study, and focuses on
examining and analyzing the necessary (Lim, Teo, Wong, Khine, Chai, & Divaharan, 2003;
Lim & Chai, 2004) and sufficient conditions (Lim & Khine, 2004; Lim & Khine, 2006) for
the effective integration of ICT in the classroom and the supporting context of the school.
Classroom Management Issues

Managing ICT-mediated lessons is not very different from managing non ICT-
mediated ones. Kounin (1970, p.63) defines effective classroom management as “producing
a high rate of work involvement and a low rate of deviancy in academic setting”. It includes
“the provisions and procedures necessary to establish and maintain an environment in which
instruction and learning can occur and the preparation of the classroom as an effective
learning environment” (Fraser, 1983, p.68). A well-managed classroom is then one in which
students were consistently engaged in the learning tasks with few student off-task behaviors.
Taking the ICT-mediated lesson as an activity system, the main findings in the case
studies highlighted three elements of a well-managed ICT-mediated lesson: availability of

ICT tools, establishment of disciplinary and educational rules and procedures, and division of
labor among teachers, TAs and students.
Availability of ICT Tools

One of the goals of MP1 was to ensure that by the end of 2002, all 368 schools in
Singapore would be equipped with the necessary hardware, software and infrastructure that
would support an ICT-mediated learning environment. By December 1999, the teacher-
computer ratio was 2:1 for all schools and pupil-computer ratio was 6.6:1 for primary
schools. The schools were also given funds to purchase educational software and other
peripherals annually. The schools have the autonomy to identify and purchase ICT resources
that best meet the needs of their students and teachers. A music teacher in School A, during
the interview, recalled how she persuaded her school to purchase Midisaurus, a music
software:
The school has always been supportive of the use of information technologies
(IT). I came across Midisaurus in a music workshop and asked for a demo
copy to explore. After evaluation, I put up a proposal to purchase 50 copies of
the CD-ROMs. The school has funds for the purchase of hardware and
software, so it is up to the individual teacher to propose the purchase of IT
resources that are useful for their students.
All classrooms in the 10 schools were equipped with a data projector and a desktop
computer. And the computer rooms were equipped with more than 40 desktop computers per
room, enough for a class of 40 pupils to engage in individual work, and flexible enough to
support pair and group work. In all the ICT-mediated lessons observed, there was no
problem that was associated to a lack of computers, educational software or ICT peripherals.
All the teachers who were interviewed stated that they have more flexibility in planning and
conducting ICT-mediated lessons, as they were not constrained by the availability of ICT
tools. Therefore, the availability of ICT tools in the school mediated between the teacher and
his/her management of the ICT-mediated lessons that created a conducive learning

environment for the effective integration of ICT in these schools.
Establishment of Disciplinary and Educational Rules and Procedures

Most teachers observed in the study set clear disciplinary and educational rules and
procedures to mediate between the community of participants and his/her object of effective
management of ICT-mediated lessons. Disciplinary rules included no unauthorized
installation of program, no unauthorized change to the features of the control panel, and no
playing of games during lesson. Besides these rules, procedures were established to
minimize the occurrences of deviant behavior among students and keep them on task. For
example, in the primary schools, students entered and exited the computer room in an orderly
fashion according to their class index number. The computers were indexed with the index
number of the student. Indexing facilitated the procedure of seat assignment and the
monitoring of the ICT tools. One teacher from the School C elaborated during the interview:
Every computer is labeled with index, and the pupil of that index number will
use that particular computer …even the CD-ROMs are also tagged with
numbers, so that we can check any breakdown, or any mischief done to the
computer. And before they [the pupils] leave, they have to turn the mouse
over, so that the track ball…you can see that the track ball is still inside.
Educational rules and procedures were also established at both the pre-instructional
and instructional stages. In the pre-instructional stage, most teachers highlighted and
demonstrated the key features and the navigation buttons of the ICT learning package before
allowing students to start using the computers. In School D, when the QX3 microscope and
its accompanying program were first introduced in a Science lesson with a group of Primary
three students, the teacher explained the features and functions of the different parts of the
microscope with the use of PowerPoint slides. She then asked the students to imitate her
actions as she used the microscope and software to capture some images. This ensured that
the students “did not encounter any problems when using the microscope” and they were able
to “concentrate on the science experiment ((students in the focus group discussions).

In the instructional stage, worksheets and checklists were distributed to the students
to guide them to complete their tasks in most lessons observed. During a Science lesson in
School B, the teacher designed a worksheet to mediate knowledge construction (searching for
and analyzing information based on the guided questions to construct their own meaning of
scientific concepts) as her students worked through a section of CD-ROM on Natural Habitat.
Some of her students commented during the focus group discussion that “the worksheet
helped us to think about things in the computer” and “without the worksheet, we won’t know
what to learn and what is important”. With these rules and procedures in place, students were
then more likely to be task-oriented and engaged in their learning processes
Division of Labor among Teachers, TAs and Students

The responsibility of ensuring a conducive learning environment should not fall
entirely on the teacher. There is a need for the division of labor among the participants in the
computer room that include students and TAs. In the ICT-mediated lessons, most teachers
were observed to be facilitators, helping and guiding the students in their work. As the
students worked at their own pace, the teachers were able to spend more time working with
the weaker students, and provided them with more scaffolding to complete the tasks. When
students were able to successfully carry out and complete the tasks, they were less likely to
engage in deviant behaviors that might disrupt the lesson. This role of the teacher was only
possible due to the supporting role of the TA. Most of the teachers who were interviewed
acknowledged the crucial role of the TA in freeing them from attending to technical problems
and enabling them to focus their attention on the conduct and management of the ICT-
mediated lessons. The division of labor between the TA and the teacher in the ICT-based
lesson has mediated between the subject (teacher) and the object of managing the lesson to
create a conducive learning environment.

Besides the TAs, selected students also played supporting role for the teachers. For
example, in School B, two students were chosen from each class as ICT representatives to
handle basic technical procedures and problems. These representatives facilitated the smooth
running of the lesson by relieving some of the burden of the teacher, so that he/she could
channel more energy into conducting and managing the ICT-based lesson. A teacher in the
school explained the role of the ICT representative during the interview:
The pupils will actually set up some of the things like visualizer or even
laptops…we actually have at least two girls trained in IT so that…when it
comes to lesson…the teacher is very busy doing other things so the teacher
may need them to set up the things. They [girls trained in IT] will know how
to set up the things.
Another teacher in Junior College P added that:
… if my computer hangs in the midst of a lesson and I cannot resolve this, I’ll
ask them [the ICT representatives] because they are more familiar with the
school’s system, the computer system, and even the LCD projector. They are
more familiar with these gadgets than me.”
When the technical problems were beyond the ICT representatives’ abilities, the teachers
would then send for the technical assistant.
The division of labor among the teachers, students and TAs had indeed facilitated the
creation of a conducive environment that was the necessary condition for the effective
integration of ICT in the classroom. By defining the roles of each participant in the ICT-
based lesson, the teacher was then able to achieve the object of managing the lesson.
The findings of the case studies have shown that the three elements discussed above
mediated between the teacher and his/her object of managing ICT-mediated lessons. The
outcome of the activity system was a conducive learning environment that was the necessary
condition for the effective integration of ICT. In such an activity system, students were more
likely to be task-oriented and reflective, and hence more likely to engage in higher order
thinking.
Orienting Activities and Learner Autonomy

In the ICT-mediated learning environment, students have more autonomy over their
learning processes as they have a substantial amount of control over their rate of learning and
learning sequences. They are then in a better position to make judgments about their
progress, monitor their own learning needs, and construct their own knowledge based on the
information available; and ultimately, they may adopt a more favorable approach towards
learning, and operate more efficiently in the learning environment (Taylor, 1996). However,
these opportunities may not always be taken up when students lose control of the learning
process and lack critical reflection, either due to their lack of learning strategies to learn with
the ICT tools or their lack of motivation to learn.
Taking the ICT-mediated lesson as an activity system, we can study how the tools,
rules, community and division of labor mediate the orienting activities that support learner
autonomy to achieve the object of engaging students in higher order thinking. The findings in
the ten case studies have identified these orienting activities as: (1) introductory sessions to
the ICT tools, (2) advance organizers and instructional objectives, (3) worksheets and
checklists, (4) dialogues among participants, and (5) ICT and non-ICT tools (other than
worksheets and checklists) for post-instructional reflection. In the ICT-mediated

environment, orienting activities help students to manage learning with ICT, and focus on and
reflect upon the task and learning objectives of the lesson (Oliver & Hannafin, 2000); and
hence, achieving learner autonomy. Orienting activities provide students with a structure that
guides them through a given learning task as they work with the ICT tool.
For example, in a Primary 5 Mathematics lesson at Primary School D on the concept
average, the teacher first asked the class to predict how many marshmallows each student
could eat in one minute before getting three student volunteers to eat as many marshmallows
as possible in one minute. The teacher then asked her students to calculate the average
number of marshmallows eaten and worked through two more examples before moving the
students onto the ICT-mediated activities. During the interview with the teacher, she
explained the sequences of the activities: “I’ll first need to focus my students’ attention to the
concept that I’ll be covering before getting them to do the actual activity”. For the ICT-
mediated activities, the students worked through a section of a Mathematics CD ROM where
they were expected to take on the role of a zookeeper and calculate the average of the animal
feed of each animal. Most of the students were engaged in completing the tasks. The
advance organizers and instructional objectives provided by the teacher might have supported
such learner autonomy. In the focus group interviews, three of the students thought that the
instructional objectives gave them “an idea of what we are supposed to learn so that we can
concentrate on that” and claimed that the advance organizers helped them to “link up the
different concepts that they have to learn”. That is, the advance organizers and instructional
objectives in the learning environment reminded students of something they already knew
and focused their attention on the concepts to be employed for the learning task, and that
assisted them in gathering, organizing and analyzing information for completing the task.
Another example of orienting activities is student-student dialogues. These dialogues
encouraged the students to critically reflect on what have been learnt or discussed in the
lesson. In the lesson on Natural Habitat, two students were observed to be engaged in such a
dialogue. Although a worksheet of guiding questions was distributed to them to “think about
things (learning materials) in the computer (CR-ROM)”, the dialogue between the two
students complemented and enhanced the critical reflection process. As the students reflected
on the related concepts of natural habitat, they began to engage in remembering facts and
explanations, and generating ideas and examples of the concepts. The following is an extract
of one such dialogue between two students:
Student A: “Xiao Ling, take a look at question 4: Why is it important to

protect the natural habitat of animals? … Isn’t it obvious that the
answer is animals won’t die?”
Student B: (Paused and looked at question) “Hmmm … I think it has
something to do with food chain. I was reading it but don’t
understand.”
Student A: “Let me see” (Looked at student B’s screen) “Oh yes, the food
chain … when one kind of animal dies, another kind will die as
well.”
Student B: (Looked puzzled) “What does that mean? I don’t understand.”
Student A: (Paused and thought for a while) “You remember the food
chain?” (Student B nodded) “See, when say the rabbits all die,
the foxes may start to die as well.”
Student B: (Nodded excitedly) “Oh yes … yes … there is a shortage of food
for the foxes and they will start to die. And maybe that will also
affect other animals.”
Such dialogues among participants in the ICT-mediated learning environment have

been observed to support learner autonomy by helping the students to engage on the learning
tasks and supporting them to critically reflect upon the tasks that they have to complete.
Therefore, from an activity theoretical perspective, the dialogues among the participants of
the community mediated between the students and the rules of the task in the ICT-mediated
learning environment to support learner autonomy so that the students could engage in higher
order thinking. In turn, the division of labor mediated the community and the students, where
certain students and the teachers orientated the students towards their tasks.
Although these orienting activities supported learner autonomy, there were time,
curriculum, and assessment constraints to the planning and organization of these activities.
All ten schools have a framework in place that supported the teachers in addressing these
constraints through collaboration among teachers in lesson planning and professional
development through monthly sharing sessions. By working in teams, the teachers were able
to shorten the time needed to prepare the whole series of ICT-mediated lessons. In Primary
School E, a Mathematics teacher explained how her department worked as a team to plan
ICT-mediated lessons for different topics in the curriculum:
… depending on what level they are teaching, they look at the computer file
we have and based on that, they look at the topics whereby there’s no lesson
plan available, so they go and come out with one …. It’s just a lesson plan for
teachers telling them how to incorporate CD-ROMs available in our selection
… how to incorporate that in a lesson based on the topic.
She went on to share how such a team approach to lesson plan design encouraged the teachers
in her department to use the ICT tools available in the school:
… if let’s say the teacher is conducting a lesson on whole numbers, they will
look through the department lesson plans and may select a lesson that uses a
CD-ROM. If such plans are not there, that CD-ROM may just sit there and
collect dust.
Such collaboration among teachers was also highlighted by an Economics teacher in Junior
College Q:
the department would first meet and decide which Economics lessons would
be best conducted using computers, before the actual academic term started.
Once these lessons were identified, each teacher would be assigned to prepare
a series of lessons. They would then start looking for computer resources (e.g.
software, spreadsheet, Java applets) and consolidating them to be incorporated
in the ICT-mediated lesson plans.
In all ten schools, there were weekly, monthly or quarterly sharing sessions of
successful or unsuccessful ICT-mediated lessons at school or college level among the
teachers. Each department would usually send a representative to share about the ICT-
mediated lessons or series of lessons that they have conducted with respect to “the rationale
for using the computer package, the planning and implementation process, the experiences of
the students and the teachers’ reflection of the experience” (interview with a Science teacher
in Primary School D). These sessions would “give me ideas of how I can conduct my own
computer-based lessons and also give me the reassurance that if these people can do it, I can
also do it” (interview with the same teacher in Primary School D). Such sessions may
address the problem of the lack of linkage between professional development courses and
classroom practices. And hence, teachers spend less time thinking about what they can do in
class with a particular ICT tool. That is, the time is spent on customizing the idea (from the
sharing sessions) for their lessons rather than reinventing the wheel.
With such a framework in place in these schools, the teachers were then more likely to
organize orienting activities to support learner autonomy. As a result, students would be

more likely to engage in higher order thinking in the ICT-mediated learning environment.
Scaffolding Strategies for Engaged Learning

The basic concept of scaffolding has been defined as a support structure for learners
engaged in activities just beyond their independent abilities (Hannafin, Land, & Oliver,
1999). In such an environment, teacher provides all necessary information to students needed
to complete a given task and follow-up by the detailed advice, directing students’ attention
and alerting the sequence of activities that will lead to completion of the task. With
scaffolding, students are able to direct their own learning goals and accomplish the tasks. In
the context of this study, several scaffolding strategies have been observed that engaged
students in the computer-mediated lessons:
• Orienting strategies to direct student attention to key variables, concepts and
visual cues;
• Peer interactions to facilitate cognitive thinking and metacognitive skills;
• Modeling to guide students to generate questions and elaborate thinking; and
• Prompts (including question-generation, elaboration and reflection prompts) to

promote knowledge integration.
An episode of a modeling strategy was observed in a Mathematics lesson mediated by
a complex 3-D modeling software, Strata Studio Pro. Earlier on in the lesson, the teacher had
shown her students some basic features of the software and also demonstrated to her students
how to create some simple 3-D shapes such as spheres, cubes and cones. The teacher then
asked her students to explore Strata Studio Pro in pairs and assigned them the task of creating
a sphere and placing it exactly on the tip of a cone. Most of the students were able to
accomplish this task without much difficulty. Next the students were asked to create an
empty box and the following interactions were observed:
Student: There, we’ve managed to create the box. It’s quite simple… (This
was echoed by some other students).
Teacher: Well, you’ve a box all right…but it’s not empty.
Student: Oh!!! (Students were suddenly aware of the problem and proceed to
rectify it)
The solution to the problem, however, was not as simple as the students initially
thought. Students were seen experimenting with various features of the software to create an
empty box. A few managed to do it but it was through a tedious and roundabout way. After
a while, the teacher demonstrated to her students a very simple and straight forward way, via
the use of the “subtract” feature to create an empty box. The teacher did not show the
students how to use this tool initially, as she wanted them to explore the software on their
own and in the process found out the difficulty or hassle of completing the task without the
use of the specific tool. Only when the teacher scaffold the students by modeling the desired
behavior of the specific tool, did the students realized the simple and elegant way of solving
the problem. Indeed, after the demonstration of the tool, many students were able to
independently create empty boxes with ease.

Another episode of a prompt strategy was observed in a lesson on urban geography
mediated by the Microsoft Flight Simulator 2000 software. The teacher had run the software
program showing a passenger’s view from an airplane in a flight from the new Hong Kong
International Airport to the old Kai Tak airport. The teacher then instructed his students to
map out the places they saw as the flight progressed. The scenes in the program were
realistic and detailed. A few minutes later, the teacher stopped the ‘plane’ near the old Kai
Tak airport and asked the students to discuss with their partners what they had mapped out.
The following interactions showed how the teacher gave prompts to one group of his
students:
Teacher: What do you think would be the impact of such a route on land use?
[pointing to the former route taken by pilots when they had to land
in Kai Tak airport].
Student 1: The buildings along the route could not be too tall.
Teacher: Yes, that’s right…otherwise the airplanes would have hit the
buildings. Is there anything else?
Student 2: I think some forms of industries would be built along the route.
Teacher: OK. But what kind of industries do you think?
The teacher continued to probe his students’ understanding of the types of industries
suitable along the particular route. Later on the teacher asked, “Now that the airport has
moved away, what do you think will be the impact on the land use? Would it be like Notting
Hill (London's most fashionable area, Notting Hill, was described as "a massive slum, full of
multi-occupied houses, crawling with rats and rubbish" only 40 years ago - definitely a no-go
area), something quaint?” This led to an extended conversation between the teacher and
students about the probable uses of the old airport in Kai Tak. The aforementioned episode
showed how the geography teacher wanted his students to make decisions about how a
particular plot of land was to be used. Here the teacher, as the more knowledgeable person in
the learning environment, employed prompts to engage students in identifying important
issues and their consequences on urban planning.
The above scaffolding strategies were illustrative examples of the types of strategies
that had been observed in the study. When these strategies were used by the teachers in the
ICT-mediated learning environments, the students were observed to be engaged in the
learning processes of organizing information, explaining and elaborating the concepts,

planning the learning tasks, reflecting and revising their plans and evaluating the learning
outcomes. These strategies included orienting activities, peer interactions, prompts and
modeling. First, the orienting strategies provided clear instructions, expectations and
objectives of the lessons to direct students’ attention to the key variables, concepts and visual
cues, and provide them with a structure to work through the learning tasks. Second, the peer
interactions facilitated cognitive thinking and metacognitive skills by creating opportunities

for the students to provide explanations, feedback and suggestions to one another, assuming
different roles (as students or as teacher) during the interactions. Third, the modeling
provided by the teachers when working through the learning tasks, such as “think aloud”,
“talk-aloud” and process modeling, guided the students to generate questions and thinking.
As a result, the students were encouraged to integrate and accommodate new information,
and relate them to a larger structure. Last but not least, the teachers’ prompts guided the
students in the completion of the learning tasks by eliciting thoughtful responses, such as
explanations and inferences, from students and encouraging them to reflect on the tasks.
Supporting School Policies

Teachers’ efforts to integrate ICT into the school curricula are often limited by
barriers that are either extrinsic to teachers (for example, lack of access to hardware and
software and insufficient time to plan ICT-mediated instructions) or fundamentally rooted in
teachers’ beliefs about teaching and learning or both (Ertmer, 1999; Pelgrum, 2001).
Policymakers and school administrators have been searching for appropriate strategies to
manage the barriers to effective ICT integration. Some of the strategies that the leaders in the
case studies have adopted strategies included:

• Planning contact time for teachers to share their experiences of using ICT in their
lessons. This included demonstrations of exemplary ICT-mediated lessons by
other teachers, mentors or seasoned practitioners helped illustrate to teachers, who

were new to ICT integration, effective ways to use ICT to teach existing and
expanded content. For example, the principal of Secondary School Y dedicated
half a day at the end of each school year for a “Best Practice” seminar. In this
seminar, teachers whose ICT-mediated lessons were deemed to be exemplary,
shared their lesson plans and demonstrated the use of the ICT tools used to their
peers. A teacher in the school described one of his ICT-mediated Physics lessons
that was chosen for the demonstration:
I had to do a topic on Fluids, and I decided to design a three-

minute movie clip that can be incorporated into my lesson. So
what I did was to first surf around for movie clips regarding
submarines. There is one on… I think it’s about the recent
launch of the Singapore submarine. They have the movie clip
on Navy website, so I cut that out, I also cut out those that are
available on the web and also took some from those CD-
ROMs, which I acknowledged later. I then added some
suitable music. The final product is like a movie for the
students. It has English subtitles and the end-of-movie credits.
Then the figures start coming in (e.g. the speed of the
submarine, etc). Based on the available figures, the students
were asked to solve some questions, e.g. What’s the volume of
the buoyancy tank? What’s the power of the submarine
turbine?
The aforementioned exemplary ICT-mediated lesson illustrated how teachers

could use ICT to provide authentic problem-rich learning environments that
allowed sustained exploration by students. The use of the movie clip on
submarine served as an anchor to actively engage students in learning by situating

instruction within interesting and realistic problem-solving environments.
Demonstrations of such lessons could help teachers who were new to ICT
integration to appreciate and reflect upon the potential of ICT to facilitate

students’ learning.
• Initiating industry-teacher partnerships to deliver just-in-time ICT training for
students and develop instructional ICT-mediated materials for teaching and

learning. Industry partners were mobilized by all the primary schools in the study
to equip their students with the necessary ICT skills (i-Movies, Internet search
skills, webpage design and development) before they embarked on ICT-mediated

project work. For the secondary schools and junior colleges, industry partners
were brought in to work with the teachers on developing learning objects and
simple games;
• Equipping each teacher with a personal laptop so that they would explore the
opportunities of ICT and make that part of their lives; and
• Upgrading of ICT hardware so that teachers would not be constrained by outdated

computers that could not run new software. The principal in Secondary School Z,
for example, upgraded every single computer when they heard about the
frustrations felt by teachers who had to work on low-end, slow-paced machines.
With the increased autonomy given by MOE to schools in the use of ICT funds,
school leaders could better cater to the needs and teachers in their schools. This
included the upgrading or building of ICT facilities or the employment of more
TAs.
• Creating a shared ICT vision and integration plan to provide school leaders and
teachers a vehicle for coherent communication about how ICT could be
effectively used. The vision and plan offered teachers a place to start, a goal to
attain, and a guide along the way. In order to facilitate the implementation of the
ICT integration plans, each school had an ICT committee that was made up of
teachers who were ICT-savvy and keen to help others in ICT integration. The ICT
committee members would work alongside the other teachers and encouraged
them in their use of ICT. The committee members would also initiate interesting
ICT-mediated projects and try to sell such ideas to the teachers.
• Implementing a buddy-system that paired off a seasoned ICT practitioner with a

novice, helped new teachers to integrate ICT into their lessons meaningfully.
All the aforementioned strategies helped to manage the barriers to ICT integration in
the schools. With such barriers out of the way, the teachers were then more likely to employ
ICT meaningfully into their lessons. However, there were concerns about many teachers’
reluctance to share failures of ICT-mediated lessons. A teacher in Primary School A
commented about the sharing sessions:
Sharing successes is easier than sharing failures ‘cos I will like other teachers
to perceive that I am coping well. Of course sharing failures is ideal as people
can learn from your mistakes. But how many people are so ‘thick-skinned’ to
appear like a fool in front of their colleagues or bosses?
Her comment was echoed by three other teachers, two from Junior College Q and one from
Primary School B, that “very few teachers will be brave enough to admit in front of a crowd
that they have failed in a series of lessons” and “failure is not very well-looked upon, so it is
better to leave such stories out of the sharing”.
Such reluctance to share failures may hinder the effective use of ICT. Dawes (2001)
notes that a sense of community is crucial in encouraging teachers to share both their best
practices and hiccups in their ICT-mediated lessons. That is, forming a sense of community
where people feel others treat them sympathetically is a necessary step for collaborative
learning (Wegerif, 1998). With the use of ICT, teachers can form a community of practice
and share openly without the threat of face-to-face interactions. Moreover, ICT allows more
teachers to be engaged in that sharing process without leaving their offices and classrooms.
With the use of online discussion they can form a network to share their professional
experiences and break the isolation.
Attempts of such discussion and sharing had been made by the MOE in setting up
edu.Mall that provided a one-stop web-based access to educational resources and online
information services for teaching and learning. It aimed to be a supporting mechanism for
teachers to have access to information and share their ideas, experiences and setbacks. ICT-
mediated tools were available in edu.Mall to allow teachers to collaborate in building lesson
plans and explore the best ways to integrate ICT into their lessons. This was supported by a
Communication and Collaboration Area (or Teachers’ Network) for teachers to collaborate
with other teachers with similar interests and concerns through action research, professional
dialogues and reflective learning.
Besides for the reluctance to of teachers to share failures, there was another potential
barrier to ICT integration in Singapore schools – the object of the activity systems. To
achieve the object of the activity systems, tools are employed to mediate between the subject
and the object. The tool through which the subject interacts with the world depends on
his/her object, and this shapes the interpretation, relevance and meaning of the mediational
tools. That is, the subject perceives and takes up the opportunities of the tools, according to
their relevance to the object; establishing a possible relationship between the object of the
activity system and how the tools are used. Although, the introduction of ICT into schools
was supposed to mediate between students and higher order thinking, many schools in
Singapore are results-oriented organizations. Schools put pressure on teachers and students
to improve the results in national examinations, so that their overall ranking among the rest of
the schools would be maintained or improved. And hence, the object of ‘improving
examination results’ might negate the opportunities of ICT to engage students in higher order
thinking activities.
The teachers of the schools in the study admitted that they were under pressure to
ensure that their students “make the grade” and teaching and learning activities were often
organized to equip students with examination skills and knowledge to perform well in the
national examinations. They adopted didactic approaches to teaching and learning, and
discussed previous years’ examination questions. Some students in the focus group
discussions also commented on the importance of “getting an A” in the national examinations
so that they would be “somebody next time”. Given the expectations of the students and the
priorities of the teachers, the object of engaging students in higher order thinking activities
might be compromised for the object of ‘improving examination results’.
Recommendations
The activity theoretical framework has allowed us to study and document both the
‘effective’ and ‘ineffective’ integration of ICT in Singapore schools with particular learning
environments and their broader sociocultural contexts. Such a study will inform
policymakers, school administrators and teachers about how to take up the opportunities and
address the limitations of ICT, and how to effectively integrate ICT in schools and their
broader sociocultural contexts. With its rich contextual descriptions and interpretations, the
study will also contribute to international research on ICT integration. By drawing upon the
similarities and differences of the sociocultural elements that facilitate or hinder the
integration process among countries, the study will add to the body of research knowledge
and theory about the contexts and factors that contribute to the effective integration of ICT in
schools. The following are the pedagogical and policy recommendations based on the
findings of the project:
Pedagogical Recommendations
• Address classroom management issues to create a conducive environment for the effective
integration of ICT in schools:

o Availability of ICT tools: When ICT tools are available and adequate in the
learning environment, they mediate between the teacher and his/her object of
managing the ICT-mediated lessons effectively.

o Establishment of disciplinary and educational rules and procedures: Teachers have
to set clear disciplinary and educational rules and procedures to mediate between
the community of participants and his/her object of effective management of ICT-

mediated lessons.
o Division of labor among teachers, TAs and pupils: Every participant in the ICT-
mediated lesson has a role to play in ensuring a conducive learning environment.

The well-defined roles of participants mediate between the community and the
object of a well-managed ICT-mediated lesson.
• Design and implement orienting activities to support learner autonomy so as to achieve

the object of engaging students in higher order thinking. The orienting activities include:
(a) introductory sessions to the ICT tools, (b) advance organizers and instructional
objectives, (c) worksheets and checklists, (d) dialogues among participants, and (e) ICT
and non-ICT tools (other than worksheets and checklists) for post-instructional reflection.
• Recognize the pivotal role of the teacher in the ICT-mediated learning environment to
engage students in higher-order thinking activities. His/her roles include: evaluating ICT
tools (opportunities and limitation for teaching and learning), assessing ICT competencies
of students, setting clear expectations, negotiating objectives with students, preparing

students for lessons with advance organizers, varying degree of support for different
students with customized worksheets or engaging them in dialogues, fading support as
students develop learner autonomy, and employing tools to encourage reflection on

learning activities.
• Re-visit and revise (towards higher-order thinking) the objectives of the activities that the
teachers have formulated. Depending on the objective of the lesson, ICT tools are used to
engage students in higher-order type of thinking. Teachers have to be clear about the
objectives of their ICT-mediated lessons as the objectives of the lesson determine how an
ICT tool is used. Therefore, the classification of a particular type of ICT tool is not based
only on its features or characteristics, but more importantly, on how it is used. From the
collective case study, the same tool was used very differently among and within the
lessons. For example, PowerPoint was used quite differently in the lessons observed.
Most commonly, it was used as a constructive tool for students to construct and present
the knowledge they had collected, analyzed and synthesized. In other lessons, it was used
as an information tool by the teachers to present instructions and information to their

students. In one of the English composition lessons conducted in the classroom, the
teacher used PowerPoint to create a simple scenario to stimulate creative thinking among
her students. In this instance, this tool could also be seen as a situating tool. This
highlights the importance of the teachers in setting higher-order thinking objectives.
• Adopt scaffolding strategies in all ICT-mediated lessons to engage students in higher
order thinking activities. There have been misconceptions that a constructivist approach
towards teaching and learning is one where students are left completely on their own. In
order to engage students in the ICT-mediated activities, it is essential that teachers employ
scaffolding strategies such as orienting activities, peer interactions, prompts and
modeling. While scaffolding strategies may enhance the learning process in ICT-
mediated classrooms, certain factors may constraint teachers’ implementation of these

strategies. Scaffolding depends upon teacher’s own initiative. Teachers need to
constantly observe the class activities and it may be difficult when teaching a large class.
Individual attention may not be possible in such a context due to the large student-teacher
ration and time constraint. Implementation of individualized scaffolds in the teaching-
learning process becomes a challenging and demanding task. Moreover, teachers need
experience and training to scaffold the activities in ICT-mediated lessons.

• Plan just-in-time ICT skills training sessions to provide the necessary knowledge and
skills for students to use the respective ICT tools for the purpose of learning. Very often,
students need specific technical skills with ICT tools to accomplish the tasks assigned by
their teachers.
Policy Recommendations
National Level
Develop strategies for student ICT competency development in selected
government and government-aided schools. New strategies for student ICT

competency have to be explored in selected government and government-aided
schools to improve upon their low student use. Such strategies may include just-
in-time learning where ICT skills are being taught just before the skills are applied
within the context of a discipline, or an inter-disciplinary project work. Teachers
can work collaboratively with ICT instructors to team-teach a class; each of them
focusing on their areas of expertise.

Set ICT competency standards for teachers and students. Given the high ranges of
both the teacher use and student use among the different phases of schools in the
self-reporting questionnaire and the collective case study, there is a need to set
ICT competency standards for teachers and students. The application of such
standards will allow teachers and students to seamlessly integrate learning

materials from a wide range of sources.
Redesign the mode of assessment and de-emphasize examination grades in order
to optimize the potential of ICT for teaching and learning. The introduction of
ICT into schools requires teachers to interact creatively with it by planning and
organizing activities to develop a culture of thinking among students. However,
the over-emphasis on results in schools may put pressure on teachers to conduct

more remedial and drill-and-practice classes, as well as discuss more exam-type
questions. They may follow the transmission model of teaching when using ICT
to meet the objective of achieving good examination grades.
School Level
Set a clear vision of ICT integration strategies for the school and this vision must
be shared by all members of the school community. Although it usually requires a
school leader to champion it, the vision itself should not be created by a single
person. It is crucial to pull together those who have a stake in the outcome,
including teachers, parents, students, and the community, and allowing them to
assist in the creation of the vision by contributing their knowledge, skills, and
positive attitudes helps build a strong acceptance, commitment, and potential for
lasting change. Once the vision has been created, the school needs to design and
develop an ICT masterplan of its own. That is, ICT masterplan of the school
should be customized according to the vision of the school and its sociocultural
settings.
Develop a framework for teachers within the same department to collaboratively

design ICT-mediated lessons, and share ICT resources and lesson plans. By
working together and sharing ICT-mediated materials, teachers not only save time
but also scaffold each other in their own professional development. This
framework may be co-constructed by teachers from the department, together with
the HOD (ICT) to meet the curricula goals. When ICT is perceived by teachers as
tools to meet curricula goals, they are then more likely to integrate it in their
lessons.
Plan regular sessions for demonstrations of exemplary ICT-mediated lessons by
teachers, mentors or seasoned practitioners to illustrate to other teachers, who

are new to technology integration, effective ways to use ICT to teach existing and
expanded content. In addition, schemes like the “buddy-system”, which paired off
a seasoned ICT practitioner with a novice, support “new” teachers to integrate ICT
into their lessons meaningfully. This is especially important as the former
scaffolds the latter’s process of designing ICT-mediated teaching and learning
activities.
Create platforms to showcase the relevance and usefulness of CD-ROMs bought
by schools. Under MP1, all ten case study schools were given the necessary
software that would support an ICT integrated learning environment. Moreover,

schools were also given funds to purchase educational software (e.g. CD-ROM
courseware) annually. The schools were therefore well equipped with educational
software. However, due to pressures of work inside and outside the classroom,
teachers have very little time to browse and preview the abundant educational
software bought by the schools. As a result, there were teachers who were
unaware of the presence of these ICT resources and how they could be used in the
lessons. One of the ways to overcome this problem is to get someone {e.g. a
teacher or the technology coordinator (Strudler & Wetzel, 1999)} to browse

through the software and highlight the usefulness and relevance of the software to
the rest of the teachers. In this case, there is no lack of educational software.
What is needed, however, is a proper management and advertisement of the

software so that teachers will know what are available to them in order to plan and
create meaningful ICT-mediated lessons.
Set up a mechanism that provides teachers and students with incentives and
empowerment in the use of ICT for teaching and learning. Teachers need to
develop positive attitudes towards ICT. There should be a mechanism to provide
incentive to teachers to use ICT. Teachers are more likely to be motivated both
intrinsically and extrinsically if they are allowed flexibility in meeting the
objectives of the curriculum and completing the syllabus. For example, guidelines
for ICT use in the curriculum that have been set by the MOE should not be
imposed as a regulation or rule to be strictly adhered by. Students should also be
empowered as learners to allow them more freedom to explore knowledge with
the use of ICT rather than receiving instruction from teachers most of the time.
These will necessitate changes in the role of teachers and students in the learning
environment and its broader contexts.
Conclusion
As we move further into the twenty-first century, students in Singapore must be
developed as lifelong learners to ensure that the country remains competitive and moves
towards more value-added industries that produce high-tech and knowledge-intensive
products. Students need to learn how to seek out new information, think critically and show
initiative to meet up with the challenges of the fast-changing world. Only the effective use of
ICT in schools will support this development process. The pedagogical and policy
recommendations at the various levels of activity systems discussed in the previous section
provide a set of mechanisms to support the effective integration of ICT in Singapore schools.
Although this set of mechanisms may apply to other countries, it is unique in the context of
Singapore where it is the shared belief among her people that the education system is a prime
engine of growth for the economy, building of the nation and formation of the identity. More
importantly, there is sustained governmental funding from a “strong state” model (Sharpe &
Gopinathan, 2003).
Like most Asian countries, Singapore has channeled substantial resources into the
development of ICT to ensure that their workforce is competitive regionally and globally.
MP1 has done well in promoting and facilitating the integration of ICT in schools. In 2002,
the MOE further elaborated upon the goals of MP1 (called MP2) in order to focus on the
learner, school capacity and leadership, and active research in ICT-based teaching and
learning. Under MP2, ICT is perceived as a key enabler in the teaching and learning process.
Both ICT masterplans are responses to prepare students to meet the future needs of the
knowledge-based economy. However, the emphasis on high-stake examinations (Luke,
Freebody, Lau, & Gopinathan, In Press) may negate the opportunities of ICT by opting for
activities that churn out straight ‘A’s students over activities that develop students who are
creative, versatile, and open in their perspectives. There is indeed an urgent need for a shift
of school culture from one that honors examination grades to one that promotes lifelong
learning.
The development of such a lifelong learning culture is already taking shape since the
launch of the vision of “Thinking Schools, Learning Nation” in 1997. Under the vision, the
MOE has shifted away from an efficiency-driven education towards an ability-driven one that
aims to develop and harness the abilities and potential of every child. An ability-driven
education approach requires a responsive education structure, the creation of a student-

centered learning environment, the inculcation of values and nurturing of thinking skills and
creativity through the formal and informal curricula, and the building of a quality teaching
service. Teaching and assessment methods have been reviewed and modified to nurture
thinking skills and creativity, and to encourage knowledge generation and application. These
modifications include: reductions in curriculum content; a gradual lessening of focus on high-

stakes assessment systems; the encouragement of integrated, multidisciplinary programs;
project work; and the development of alternative pathways through the streaming system.
The account of the findings of the case studies has emphasized what works and what
appears right in a particular setting, the problems encountered and addressed in a particular
situation, and the activity theoretical perspective from which the setting is construed. The
account provides a sample of pedagogical and policies issues and recommendations that are
discussed over the course and at the end of the project. Like a good guidebook, the study
sensitizes the audience to what is likely to happen given a particular objective, constraint or
design. Not only can we understand the various processes within and between activity
systems, we can construct pedagogical models and approaches of ICT integration for schools
based on that understanding.

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Author Note
The author was the principal investigator of the US$150,000 research project when he was an
Associate Professor of Learning Sciences and Technologies in the Center for Research in
Pedagogy and Practice at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological
University (Singapore). The other team members are Associate Professors Myint Swe Khine
and Philip Wong, Ms. Shanti Divaharan and Mr. Timothy Hew from the same academic
group, and Ms. Betsy Lim from the Ministry of Education (Singapore). The author is now an
Associate Professor of Teaching and Learning at the School of Education in Edith Cowan
University (Perth, Australia).
Figures
Figure 1. Engeström’s (1987) Representation of the Idea of Activity System
Tools
Subject Object Outcome
Rules Community Division of Labor
Engeström (1987)
Figure 2. Studying ICT in Schools: Applying the Garden Metaphor to the Activities Systems
Society at
Large
Education System
School
Course of Study
Activity Systems
Tools
Subject Object
Rules Community Division of

Labor
Activity Systems
Assessment, Curriculum,
Entry Requirement, Layout
Of Classrooms
Type, Location, Ethos, ICT Facilities,

Time-Table, Type of Students
Parents, Peers, Home
Computers
Examination Boards, Education Policies,

League Table, Recruitment &
Training of Teachers
Employers, Publishers,
Software Developers
Adapted from Cole 1995, p.198, fig. 8.1
Table
Table 1. Units of Information in Defining Categories
Categories Units of Information

ICT tools Funds allocated to schools for ICT resources (Interviews with
teachers)
Masterplan for ICT in education: teacher-computer ratio of 2:1
and pupil-computer ration of 6.6:1 (Ministry of Education
website)
Adequate ICT resources: Data projector, desktop computers,
educational software (Observations, documentation, and
interviews with teachers)
Disciplinary rules Display of rules in the computer room (Observations)
Briefing of rules and procedures by teachers (Interviews with
teachers)
Rules and procedures in action in the computer room
(Observations of ICT-mediated lessons)
Rationale of rules and procedures (Interviews with teachers and
pupils)
Educational rules Step-by-step demonstration of ICT tools (Observations of ICT-
mediated lessons, and interviews with teachers and pupils)
Worksheets to support use of ICT tools (Observations of ICT-
Checklists to support use of ICT tools (Observations of ICT-
Division of labor Teachers working with weaker pupils (Observations and
among participants interviews with teachers)
Teachers guiding pupils in the learning tasks (Observations and
interviews with teachers and pupils)
Technology assistants (TA) address technical problems faced by
teachers and pupils (Observations and interviews with teachers)
Some teachers attempt to address the technical problems
themselves and will ask the TA for help when they cannot handle
them (Observation s and interviews with teachers)
Pupils are assigned different roles: group and assistant group
leaders to collect and distribute ICT resources (Observation s and
Some pupils are appointed ICT representatives and help teachers
to troubleshoot or set up the ICT equipment (Observation s and

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Lim, C.P. (2007).

Effective integration of ICT in Singapore schools: Pedagogical and policy

ICT in Singapore Schools

Effective Integration of ICT in Singapore Schools:

Associate Professor of Teaching and Learning

Edith Cowan University

Bradford Street, Mt. Lawley

Effective Integration of ICT in Singapore Schools:

Pedagogical and Policy Implications

what is likely to happen given a particular objective, constraint or design.

development, and physical and technological infrastructure.

to scaffold the learning processes.

Education (Singapore), proposed a research study, “Effective integration of ICT in Singapore

mediated tool to accomplish specific teaching or learning activities to meet certain

instructional objectives. For ICT to be effectively integrated in schools, it should be used as a

(Kearsley & Shneiderman, 1998).

By linking the effective or ineffective integration of ICT in certain classrooms with

mediated learning environment that engaged students in higher order thinking;

• provide a holistic view of ICT integration to make pedagogical and policy

Various modes of questionnaire administration were employed to ensure a high

high integration of ICT.

• Independent-autonomous schools have significantly higher teacher and student use

The Activity Theoretical Framework

Human psychology is concerned with the activity of concrete individuals,

human individual’s activity is a system in the system of social relations. It

dynamic nature of the activity.

individual goal-directed activity, making analysis less problematic. A collective object-

developmental phases of the ICT integration process.

Activity System as the Unit of Analysis

upon Vygotsky’s (1978) higher and elementary mental functioning, ‘unmediated’

tools, at the vertex of the triangle (see Figure 1).

Taking an ICT-mediated lesson in a school as an activity system, the subject is the

garden-as-culture metaphor was adopted.

Situating the Activity System in a Broader Context

context, a switch of institutional setting, or a change in focus on a different activity in the

- Insert Figure 2 here -

impact on the components of the other activity systems.

curriculum, professional development and research contribute to or hinder the

must be responsive to adapt to these changes. In Singapore, teaching and assessment

experience to explore the inter-relationships and inter-connectedness of different disciplines.

creation of a student-centered learning environment, and the inculcation of values and

implemented to complement and support other strategies to nurture a broad-based

strategies included developing universities to provide a broader tertiary education base as

Research Design and Methods

junior colleges in Singapore. At the primary level, students go through a four-year

includes English Language, Mother Tongue, Mathematics, Science, History, Geography,

The Primary Schools

in independent learning during tea or lunch breaks.

access area with six computers.

area network via the Virtual Drive Network.

The Secondary Schools

data projector, and a visualizer.

Y had a teacher’s personal computer linked to a data-projector projector.

autonomous government school.

The Junior Colleges

and learning facilities consisted of computer-enabled classrooms, science laboratories with

The Collective Case Study

Observation of ICT-Mediated Lessons

Taking the ICT-mediated lessons as the activity system, 15 ICT-mediated lessons

Face-to-Face Interviews with Teachers, ICT-Coordinators and Principals

addressed these problems by designing activities to support the engagement.

Ministry of Education, partner schools, school administration, head of departments, support

Focus Group Discussions with Students