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Identifying educational competencies for the 21 st workplace is driven by the need to mitigate disparities between classroom learning and the requirements of workplace environments. Multiple descriptors of desired 21 st century skill sets have been identified through various wide-scale studies (e.g., International Commission on Education for the 21st Century) and consistently within the context of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning, the ability to problem solve, particularly complex problem-solving, remains a crucial competency. In this paper, we look at how current contemporary spaces such as the immensely popular, massively multiplayer online role-playing game(MMORPG), World of Warcraft, (WoW) afford problem-solving skill acquisition in the context of Singaporean youth learners. Given that WoW exists as a contextual space with an overarching narrativized problem to be solved, our investigation focused on two important related constructs that underpin learners' problem-solving trajectory-learning and identity becoming within contemporary domains of technology learning. We present findings of an ethnographic investigation of one youth gamer within the affinity spaces of WoW. Moving away from traditional mentalistic construals of problem-solving, our findings indicate that problem-solving within WoW may be characterized by a triadic-D model of domain, disquisitional, and discursive practices within self, social, and structural dialectics. Theoretical considerations for broadening the understanding of a situated and embodied notion of problem-solving and identity becoming within STEM learning are proposed. Complex problems of the 21 st centuryThe twenty-first century learning evolves from new cultural forms of digital literacy and marks a significant shift from the conventional accessing of information to solving routine problems. Rather, contemporary work environments revolve around the management of complex information streams aligned with complex problem-solving tasks that require expertise across multiple cultures of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning. Complex problems may be characterized as typically ill-structured, with unknown elements or elements not known with any degree of confidence (Reitman 1964; Wood 1983). Many interrelated factors dynamically affect the

Driven by the impetus for the school system as a whole to actualize deep twenty-first century learning, innovation diffusion has become increasingly an important vehicle for isolated pockets of successes to proliferate beyond the locale of the individual schools to form connected clusters of improvement at a greater scale. This paper articulates an ecological leadership model for enabling such system-wide innovation diffusion in the context of Singapore. Through the explication of leadership practices demonstrated by two exemplar schools that have successfully levelled up their school-based innovation, we argue that ecological leaders have to go beyond system leadership to think and act in a more encompassing way. Specifically, ecological leaders have to embody systems thinking and East-Asian collectivist beliefs to benefit other schools, converge and contextualize the kernel of innovation, align efforts by mitigating tensions and paradoxes within and across the subsystems in the ecology, leverage on resources in the ecology and manage the emergent dynamics engendered through interactions with multi-level actors. These five thrusts cut across the five dimensions of ecology: microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem and chronosystem. With the favourable sociopolitical climate that encourages collaboration rather than competition, we posit that leaders can endeavour to forge ecological coherence. This can be achieved by establishing synergistic structural and socio-cultural connections within and across the five subsystems of influences underpinning the hub school and networks of innovation-adopting schools, thus bringing forth transformative changes in the system.

Research advancements in the field of educational neuroscience (EN) have been remarkably compelling with proponents extolling its potential impact on educational practices. Through the development of judicious interrelation of insights associated with diverse theoretical perspectivesfrom neuroscientific, pedagogical and classroom praxis-EN draws upon an ethos of evidence-informed scientific understandings about brain-behaviour relationships to inform the development of new teaching and learning strategies. Yet the application of EN remains limited in its direct impact on teacher training or classroom practice. Horvath, Lodge, and Hattie (2017) note that although there may be varied reasons, a primary concern is the lack of a proper translation framework from theoretical and 'neat' laboratory research to effective teaching and learning strategies in 'complex' classrooms. While theoretical advances have led to controlled laboratory experiments that have the potential to improve education, but translation into effective teaching and learning strategies that positively impact learners in classrooms remain absent from the field. Educational neuroscience is frequently associated with the 'science' of learning. While it encompasses a broad range of scientific disciplines, from basic neuroscience to cognitive psychology to computer science to social theory, at its core is a resonant objective to determine and develop methods that teachers and students can use to improve the learning experience. Bowers (2016) identified a rapidly growing number of researchers engaged in work across disciplines that include neuroscience and education, under more contemporary interdisciplinary labels such as 'Mind, Brain, and Education' and 'Neuroeducation'. However, there exists a contention that "research and findings from EN are trivial and are unlikely to add value to the improvement of classroom teaching and learning beyond insights from psychological and behavioural research" (p. 601). Within this vein, Howard-Jones et al. (2016) highlighted that there has been confusion about the scope of EN that has been framed as focusing only on neural levels of explanation for educational efficacy, in isolation from psychology or other disciplines (e.g., see Bowers (2016)). Theoretically, such claims have proven to be underestimations. On the contrary, EN is an expanding field characterised by interdisciplinary research spanning from "neuroimaging centres to psychological labs to classrooms" (Howard-Jones et al., 2016, p. 620), concerned with making links between the neural substrates of mental processes and behaviours, particularly that related to learning, but not solely favouring neural levels of explanation and "certainly does not suggest that educational efficacy should be evaluated solely on the basis of neural function" (p. 621). Within this vein, exploitation of data from neuroscience research is situated within part of a larger sphere of ecological influences (Jamaludin & Hung, 2019) operating on educational outcomes, which, for example,...

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