Keynote 1 (Plenary) :
What is an Educated Person in the World of Rapid Change?
Dr Gog Soon Joo
Industrial revolution 4.0 has become a common term used by many to describe the current phenomenon of social economic change led by advancement in technology development and deployment. While others claim that a more appropriate term is Renaissance 2.0, the common theme underpinning the fervour discussion globally is the unprecedented speed of change sweeping through all industries, which impact directly the way we work-learn-live. In this session, we will discuss the drivers of change, and how these changes are shaping business strategies on the one hand, and the lives of people on the other hand (be it parents/ teachers/ students alike). We will pay closer attention to what education means in the world of change, and the future of work and learning. The fundamental question to ask ourselves is – what is an educated person in the world of rapid change?
Keynote 2 (Primary):
Making Connections to Make Sense: Symbols, Words, Contexts, Drawings
Dr Deborah Schifter
Mathematical understanding lies in the realm of making connections: across symbols, words, contexts, drawings, and other representations. In this talk, I will present scenes from elementary classrooms in which students demonstrate new insights through the connections they make across different levels of abstraction and across different representations. After exploring the mathematical structures at the heart of students’ connections, I will consider teachers’ moves, particularly identifying where a teacher’s attention must lie in order to support students in making connections.
Keynote 3 (Primary):
Connecting the Dots in Task Design
Dr Cheng Lu Pien
Mathematics understanding is defined by some researchers in terms of the number or kind of connections that the learner constructs. Connections are also important components of successful problem solving. At the heart of effective teaching and learning of mathematics is task design. In this presentation, I will unpack the different types of mathematical connections to address aspects of task design that draw attention to connections. I will also discuss relationships between task design, anticipated pedagogies and student learning to illustrate how teachers can make links and connections explicit in the primary mathematics classrooms.
Keynote 4 (Secondary):
A Cognitive Core Connecting Multiple Domains of Mathematics in Lower Secondary School
Prof Soo Jin LEE
For centuries, scholars in the field of mathematics education have put effort to account for psychological and mathematical foundations for students' development of mathematics across multiple domains. Students' ability to reason with quantitative units, especially, their ability to produce and coordinate multiple levels of units has been considered as a cognitive core which is connected to their development of several mathematical concepts including counting, whole number multiplication and division, integer addition, fraction, ratio and proportion, algebra, and function. In this presentation, I am going to discuss how such ability serves as a cognitive foundation for constructing knowledge in several mathematical domains, and share implications towards designing curriculum which could promote growth in students’ abilities to coordinate multiple levels of units.
Keynote5 (Secondary):
Unpacking the Big Idea of Proportionality: Connecting Ratio, Rate, Proportion and Variation
Dr Joseph B.W. Yeo
Proportionality is a foundation of mathematical knowledge and is one of the most commonly applied mathematics in the real world. Yet many students are unable to reason proportionally and to see the connections among the concepts of proportion, ratio, rate and variation. In fact, proportionality is one of the clusters of big ideas proposed for the 2020 secondary school mathematics syllabus in Singapore. Therefore, the purpose of this lecture is to unpack the meanings of these four terminologies so that teachers are better equipped not only to explain to their students the similarities and differences among these concepts but also to connect these ideas into a coherent whole and to appreciate how proportionality is used in real life. The lecture will also end with some other implications for teaching.
Keynote 6 (Junior College):
What mathematics could we aim to teach in school and how might we approach it?
Prof Mike Thomas
Time pressure and other constraints mean that in school we may end up focussing on procedural mathematics, such as how to solve examination questions. In this talk we will discuss what else we might aim to achieve with our senior students and how we could accomplish this. We will consider, for example, the role of representations, definitions, reasoning and proof in forming conceptual understanding. We will examine some features of versatile thinking and the use of digital technology and their potential to build different perspectives on mathematics through visual reasoning.
Keynote 7 (Junior College):
Making Statistical Connection
Prof Zhu Ying
Making connections among key ideas and concepts in statistics is essential to help students to develop a deeper understanding of statistical content. It also helps teachers to create connections between central ideas and concepts when they teach statistics so that statistics becomes a coherent and connected set of ideas across topics and levels. In this talk, I will give a few examples to illustrate the connections among important statistical ideas such as variability, distributions and statistical inference. Making real-world connection in statistical learning and teaching is also emphasized so as to enhance students’ appreciation for the foundational ideas of statistics learnt in classroom and its great relevance to current and future life.