STEM education reform plays a critical role in modern education for the country to keep abreast of being competitive in global economy. For a long time, STEM disciplines have been in silos, rendering the students unable to connect learned knowledge with real life problems. The emergence of integrated STEM education in some institutions suggests that, this approach makes students better problem solvers and logical thinkers. This paper provided an overview of what teaching strategies dominate in the implementation of integrated STEM education. The research methodology was based on a review of relevant literature search strategy through ERIC, online databases and journals such as Science Direct, Wiley Online Library, Taylor & Francis Online, SpringerLink, IEEE Xplore Digital Library, JSTOR and Journal of STEM Education. The keywords used in the search included integration strategies, science and technology, teaching and learning STEM, STEM in primary school, STEM in secondary school and STEM in higher education. The results of this meta-analysis revealed that, a project-based learning approach is the dominant strategy in STEM education implementation as this method improves the students' skills and their capability to compete with others in the highly knowledge-based society. Findings from this review will lead educators who are new to STEM education to investigate further on how project-based learning could be effectively implemented in their teaching.

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Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the issues and challenges faced by headteachers in practicing the suggested distributed leadership (DL) approach in three primary schools to their middle layer leaders. Design/methodology/approach – The study employed a case study design and data were collected through semi-structured interviews. A total of three headteachers were interviewed in examining and exploring challenges within the DL practices. The transcripts from the semi-structured interviews formed the basis of the findings. Findings – The findings suggest that senior teachers lack confidence in making decisions and rely on the consent from headteachers even though they are empowered to make their own decisions. Another significant issue faced by headteachers when distributing their leadership is the ability, expertise, experience, and willingness of teachers to hold leadership roles and responsibilities. Originality/value – The results are important since there have been few empirical studies on the issues and challenges faced by headteachers in practising DL approach in primary schools in the context of Malaysia. This initiative sidelines the traditional school leadership approach which emphasises on the accountability of headteachers as the sole school leader.

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<p class="0abstract">The complexity of Chinese character caused students facing learning difficulty in mastering the Chinese character writing skills. This study aimed to investigate the effect and students' perception on the implementation of animation in teaching and learning of Chinese character writing based on Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning (AniCC Online Learning) via Frog VLE platform. Meanwhile, the relationship of implementation of AniCC Online Learning and pupil's writing performance was also studied to have further insights into the Chinese character teaching and learning situation. Pre-experimental one group pre-test and post-test design were adopted and thirty three Year 1 students were selected as the respondents in this research which involved four types of instruments. There was a significant different (p = 0.013) between the scores of pre-test and post-test for students' writing performance after performing paired samples t-test. The study also showed an increase in the means scores of students' writing skills and an increase in the percentage of students' writing skills ranking at rank 4 or above although no significant different (p = 0.180) was observed between the pre writing assessment and post writing assessment after Wilcoxon Test was performed. The students overall showed high acceptance towards integration of AniCC Online Learning with overall mean score 0.90 (maximum = 1). In sum, the design of AniCC Online Learning via Frog VLE platform is able to improve writing performance as well as to help students in their writing skills.</p>

Mathematics is a subject that relates to the real world and is applied in various fields. However, the teaching and learning of mathematics is more procedural and requires drill and practice. For this reason, students of mathematics become passive receivers who are unable to think mathematically. The literature indicates that Problem-based learning(PBL) is a studentcentered approach that is able to stimulate students' thinking. Accordingly, the present study investigates the implementation of PBL at school level and the impact of learning mathematics through PBL in secondary schools. The analysis showed that PBL gave positive impact on the secondary school students in mathematics and the approach was found to be applicable in various knowledge domains in mathematics. However, teacher's role should be explored concurrently with the usage of ICT and the duration of PBL implementation should be considered based on the curriculum objectives, especially in algebra. The study concludes that PBL is able to enhance students' thinking and soft skill, which are necessary to fullfill the requirement of education in the twenty-first century.