This chapter reports the views from parents of 38 students, averaging 13 years of age, in a secondary school in Singapore towards the use of appealing design-and-make toy projects to foster joy of learning and creativity in science amongst their children who are in an academically low achieving group. An instrument to capture the parents' views was developed and administered in a parent-teacher conference (PTC) at the end of the school term. In the PTC, parents and siblings of these students had a chance to look through their design journals and fiddled with their toy inventions. Information gathered from the parents highlight that they value the teacher's approach in motivating and engaging their children to learn science and were impressed with the creativity showcased by their children through the toy projects. Such positive views from the parents affirm the use of appealing design-and-make toy projects to promote interest and understanding in science, as well as foster their creativity and inventiveness in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) areas.
Top1. Introduction
In Singapore, most twelve year old students sit for the national Primary School Leaving Examinations (PSLE) at the end of their primary school years. Based on their academic performance in English, Mathematics, Science and Mother Tongue in the PSLE, students are placed either in the Express, Normal Academic (NA) and Normal Technical (NT) streams in secondary schools. In general, students who are placed in the NA stream have not performed as well as compared to students in the Express streams, while students who are placed in the NT stream have not performed as well as students in both the Express and NA streams.
Many NT students continue to be ‘at-risk’ of not performing well in their academic studies in secondary schools if they are not guided well. Reports highlight that a considerable number of NT students have social, family and financial issues, and that they may come from home environments that are not very conducive for learning (Albright, Heng, & Harris, 2008; Amir, 2014; Anderson, 2015; Heng, & Atencio, 2016; Ho, Lim & Ho, 2005; Ong & Dimmock, 2013; Ser, 2004a; Ser 2004b; Talib & de Roock, 2018, Wang, Teng & Tan, 2014). In addition, the general public seem to have a less-than-positive perception of these students. Ser (2004a) mentioned, from her interviews with members of the general public in Singapore, that NT students are perceived to be unmotivated, lazy, ill-disciplined and disruptive. Ser (2004b) also stated that according to the Singapore Children’s Society, one-third of the children who end up in (the juvenile) court are from this stream. The works of Anwar, Shamim-ur-Rasool and Haq (2012), Kim (2005) and Palaniappan (2007) highlight that students’ creativity can viewed as a social leveller, and encouraged educators to foster creativity among students who are in academically low achieving groups, as this could enhance their academic achievement and put them on par with students who are from the more academically demanding groups. Amir (2014) further highlighted that showcasing the creativity and inventiveness of NT students through appealing design-and-make projects to the community can instill in these students a sense of pride and self-worth for their contributions in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, & Mathematics) areas.
In science teaching and learning, several NT students still seem less motivated to want to study the content, despite the availability of hands-on experiments. Earlier research suggests that several science experiments in the secondary school science activity books, while offering ways for NT students to learn through hands-on approaches, seem to lack appealing factors to excite them to enjoy learning science, which in turn affects their motivation to study, resulting in them being disengaged (Abrahams & Millar, 2008; 2009; Amir & Subramaniam, 2014). Teachers teaching science to these students are on the constant lookout for instructional strategies to motivate and engage them in learning.