Chye Yen Leng Stefanie

The prevalence rate of Problematic Internet Use (PIU) has increased globally over the years and is estimated at 7%. Studies report a significant association between PIU and Social and Emotional Learning skills, as well as negative effects such as loneliness. Taken together, the current study proposes a model of loneliness mediating SEL and PIU. The data used in this study was earlier collected from another study involving 1623 youths from 5 different schools that aims to study the trends and factors of PIU among Singapore adolescents. Secondary analysis of the data revealed that SEL, Loneliness and PIU are significantly correlated with each other. In addition, according to Baron and Kenny’s (1981) mediation model, loneliness was also found to be a full mediator of SEL and PIU, although the Sobel Test (1982) showed the indirect effect of SEL on PIU through loneliness is insignificant. The implications on policy and practice, as well as the directions for future research in view of the limitations of the study, are also discussed.

Digital portfolios have gained an increasing prominence in teacher education programmes around the world as a consequence of research which purports their multiple benefits to users and of their potential to represent beginning teachers’ practices. Despite the current popularity of digital portfolios, the nature of their use is still not well understood. This article explores how student teachers use digital portfolios in a teacher education programme in Singapore from an economics perspective. It posits that the adoption of an economic lens would shed new light on existing understandings and raise awareness of how and why student teachers use digital portfolios the ways they do. Reference to a range of economic concepts would will help to better understand educational outcomes. The article considers the implications of the findings for informing how digital portfolios are implemented and raises issues for consideration in further implementation efforts and in future research.

In this study, we shared findings from selected student teachers in National Institute of Education (a teacher education institution in Singapore) who have created eportfolios that presented their learning and teaching practicum experiences. The eportfolios were constructed with the aim to document their learning journey and teaching practices, and to reflect and showcase what they have achieved. Data were extracted from their eportfolio artifacts in order to seek evidence of their teacher identity formed during this process. The main research questions addressed in this paper were: ―What type of teacher identity was reflected through pre-service teachers’ use of eportfolios?‖; and ―How their teacher identity developed in different contexts over time?‖ The paper concluded that student teachers‘ identities evolved as they went through the teacher education program. Such identity constructions are never fixed, and develop under the influence of student teachers‘ surrounding contexts and experiences.

Eportfolios were introduced into teacher education in the 1980s. Since then, educational researchers and practitioners have increasingly cited the use of portfolios as an important assessment and learning tool in teacher education programs. In the domain of teacher education, the need to improve quality, attain established standards and to resolve accreditation issues have led to the increased use of ePortfolios in many European states and others around the world (Granberg, 2010). An electronic portfolio (ePortfolio) is often defined as “a digitized collection of artifacts, including demonstrations, resources and accomplishments that represent an individual, group, community, organization, or institution. This collection can comprise of text-based, graphic or multimedia elements archived on a Web site or on other electronic media (Lorenzo & Ittelson, 2005, p. 3).” In pre-service teachers’ ePortfolios, artifacts can be samples of work that include lesson plans, stimulus materials, videos, pictures and picture files, classroom assignments, classroom tests, newsletters, and inservice materials produced by the pre-service teacher (Bruneau & Bie, 2010). With the creation of ePortfolios, student teachers can document their journey in becoming a teacher by selecting, sharing, and reflecting on artifacts such as educational philosophies, classroom management plans, unit and lesson plans, plans to meet the needs of diverse and special needs pupils, and video clips of practice teaching (e.g., Strudler & Wetzel, 2005). They can not only showcase their best work as a professional, but also exhibit the knowledge and skills in using technology.

There has been increasing use of interactive technologies in the classroom today and a rising popularity of employing virtual environments as a means to engage students in sensorially rich contexts for more embodied forms of experiential learning. In particular, virtual reality (VR) or immersive virtual environments (IVEs) facilitated by head-mounted displays (HMDs) have been used in the teaching of subject content such as history, geography and science. This article presents the findings of an exploratory study of immersive technology, specifically immersive virtual environments (IVES), for the purpose of social and emotional learning (SEL), in the context of Character and Citizenship lessons in the Singapore classroom. The social and emotional competencies (SECs) examined in this project were specifically empathy and perspective-taking, and responsible decision-making. The study involved a sample of n = 75 students from a cohort of students in a Singapore school, averaged at 15 years of age. Students were randomly divided into three treatment conditions: IVEs, pen-and-paper mental simulation and video-viewing. Each treatment contained a problem scenario, told from a first-person perspective, involving a social and ethical dilemma young people today face. A quasi-experimental, pre-test post-test, non-equivalent group design was employed, and the study adopted a mixed-method approach to data collection. The findings reveal that IVEs are not necessarily more effective than the “pen-and-paper” and video viewing approaches to teaching SECs but they can better facilitate perspective-taking and empathy for a higher percentage of students.

A problem with applications of innovations and technological tools such as the digital portfolio is that, while detailed conceptions and examples of digital portfolios exist, there is a chasm of practical advice that is sufficiently generic for guiding considerations on how to integrate digital portfolios into different learning environments. In this paper, it is argued that a powerful framework for guiding thinking about the integration of digital portfolios into teacher education is provided by cultural-historical activity theory or CHAT. CHAT is useful because it has been shown to provide a clear operational framework for the design of learning environments that support the integration of various technological tools.

Teacher education needs to be transformative in order to develop future-ready teachers equipped with the values, knowledge and skills to raise a new generation of 21st century learners. The National Institute of Education (NIE), Singapore has adopted a value-based Teacher Education Program which aims to prepare autonomous thinking teachers for the 21st century by building teachers with a strong sense of teacher identity, who assume ownership of learning, are reflective of their beliefs and practices and are able to inquire into their classroom practices. One of the defining elements in NIE’s initial teacher preparation program is the use of the digital portfolio as a tool to help student teachers to crystallise their teaching identity, provide the cognitive framework to help build their conceptual map of teaching and learning, create theory-practice links which make visible their inquiry processes, develop their competencies as a teacher and help them become lifelong learners.