Welcome, and thank you for browsing by!

This site describes Disciplinary Intuitions as a theory of learning, the Six Learnings framework for curriculum design, and Learner-Generated Augmentation and Maker Motes as examples of data infrastructure for inquiry-based learning in STEM curricula.

To learn more about our work in a more self-directed manner, do try GPinTuitions - our bespoke bot in to our portfolio. If you prefer podcast-style audio, we offer: a general introduction and a specific focus on neuroergonomics and learning.

Since 2009, several schools have enacted curricular units in Geography, Social Studies, Literature, Art, Language Arts, Elements of Business Skills and Design & Technology, in support of the Applied Learning Programme, in primary and secondary schools, across three academic streams, in the formal curriculum as well as through Co-Curricular Activities; these units have been designed by the teachers themselves based upon a curriculum framework known as the Six Learnings.

We are collaborating with teachers to help respond to the challenges for learning presented by COVID-19. Our first response is the SORBET Project, in the domain of Mathematics education, with a view to helping students understand the importance of practising safe- / social-distancing. The SORBET Project was featured in the December 2020 issue of SingTeach, which is a publication of the Office of Education Research (OER) at the National Institute of Education (NIE), Singapore.

The OER has described the Six Learnings framework as "one of the most promising education research projects that the NIE has undertaken. We wish to spread the word about what [has been] accomplished through this project".

To this end, the programme is featured in the Knowledge Resource Bank of the OER, and was also featured in the inaugural NIE News e-newsletter issued by the Public, International and Alumni Relations office.

If you attended our workshop on STEM, coding micro:bits and computational thinking that we conducted at the Education University of Hong Kong in 2017, please feel free to download the bilingual workshop materials.

In 2015, the Six Learnings framework was translated to the First Year undergraduate course IM1002 Analog Electronics, conducted by the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, NTU, through a 'Excellence in Education' (EdeX) grant.

The framework describes the affordances for learning of immersive environments and game-based worlds. As of December 2015, more than 4600 students had gone through the programme, which has demonstrated positive impact upon academic grades and 21st century dispositions and literacies – including the Confident Learner, Collaborative Learning, Self-Directed Learning and Motivation – even beyond the immediate duration of the interventions.

In 2012, gains in academic scores by students on the programme were directly attributable to the intervention; details can be in the section entitled 'how will my students benefit?'.

Likewise, while no longitudinal study was carried out between 2010 to 2013, the cohort of students from a state-funded neighbourhood school who had been on the programme since their Secondary One year went on to outperform their preceding cohort by scoring 92 percent distinctions in Geography in the 2013 GCE 'O' Level examinations (no direct causal attribution is claimed).

The programme leverages primarily open-source tools and platforms - such as Maker Motes - to help teachers design canvases within which their students can express their emerging conceptual understandings. In this way, students’ thinking and intuitions – which would otherwise be largely tacit – are made visible and can be dialogued around with peers. Learning is thus more enduring as first-principle understanding is built.

In 2017, Maker Motes formed the foundational infrastructure for the pre-service teacher education course QCS50H Informal science learning environments for primary science, conducted by the Natural Sciences and Science Education Academic Group, NIE.

From 2018, we offer an Unrestricted Elective to all undergraduates of the Nanyang Technological University (including those from the NIE), namely: AGE08D Designing learning environments: a focus on the Internet of Things. This course was featured in the annual publication Learning@NIE.

From 2020, we also offer a professional development course targeted at in-service teachers, namely: IER0018 Designing authentic game-based learning environments.

The framing of the programme with maker culture was featured as a case study in the June 2016 issue of the UNESCO newsletter on ICT in education. 

I am the Lead Guest Editor for a 2020 Special Issue of the British Journal of Educational Technology, themed on Beyond observation and interaction: Augmented Reality through the lens of constructivism and constructionism.

I was also a Guest Editor for a 2019 Special Issue of the International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education, themed on Maker-centered Science and Mathematics Education: Learning, Teaching and Environment Design.

The Six Learnings curriculum framework is undergirded by a theory of learning known as Disciplinary Intuitions, which is articulated in a book published by Springer in 2015.