Tan, Chee Soon

This study aimed to develop and examine the effects of a socially oriented gratitude intervention (SOGI) on secondary students’ gratitude level and interpersonal relationships. To these ends, we used a quasi-experimental research design: The experimental group (n=46) participated in the two-week intervention during a class subject focusing on character and citizenship education (CCE) while the wait-list control group (n=57) went on with regular CCE activities. All participants completed a questionnaire a week before and a month after the implementation of the SOGI and control activities. The changes in relatedness scores were statistically significant in relation to parents and peers, but not in relation to teachers. In particular, the experimental group generally maintained the quality of their relationship with their parents and peers while the control group reported a decline in these relationship domains. The change in gratitude levels did not differ significantly between the experimental group and control group, but the effect size associated with the mean gratitude change of the experimental group was found to be larger than that of the control group and comparable to what is commonly reported in other published gratitude intervention studies. The students’ feedback reveals the social, cognitive and affective benefits of the SOGI.

This proposal seeks to investigate the beliefs and perceptions held by student teachers regarding student-centred learning (SCL). Specifically, we will seek the views of 15 student teachers enrolled in the PDGE (Primary) programme in 2016. They would have received an education that placed an emphasised on SCL as they were in secondary schools or junior colleges when the Teach Less Learn More initiative was introduced in 2005. These student teachers will in future be teachers who will hopefully make use of student-centred pedagogy and instruction in their classrooms. It is therefore important and useful to find out more about their beliefs and perceptions about student centred approaches. In addition, we are also interested to find out the impact of the Teaching Practicum experience on these beliefs and perceptions. Hence, we will gather information on student teacher perception and beliefs prior to and after their Teaching Practicum stint. In Phase 1 of the 2-phase research, participants will be identified and their consent to participate in the study will be obtained prior to the Teaching Practicum. The interview questions pertaining to their beliefs about SCL will be sent to be completed by participants and returned to the researchers. Individual participants will then meet a researcher for a more in-depth interview. Phase 2 will take place after the Teaching Practicum. As in Phase 1, participants will provide written responses to the interview questions based on their observations of SCL practices in the classrooms. Researchers will subsequently meet individual participants to further probe their responses. To analyse the data, an inductive approach will be used to identify general codes and themes. Results from this study will provide insight into how student teachers' prior experiences in the classroom has influenced their beliefs and perceptions. It will also look at how the training they have received in NIE as well as during their Teaching Practicum have further shaped their beliefs and perceptions.

Within the field of learning disabilities many intervention studies find that treatment resisters remain despite gains in our understanding of best practices and effective treatment for reading development and disability. In this study we examine good vs. poor responders in an intervention study with 147 early primary grade students in a learning support programme. Students were assessed for reading accuracy and fluency after completion of a tablet-based reading intervention, and classified as responders vs. non-responders based on criterion referenced scores for word reading accuracy and fluency. Differences between the two groups were evaluated for the rate of growth on literacy measures over the intervention phase, their cognitive attributes at pre-intervention, and their in-lesson performance on the tablet-based intervention activities. Findings show the responder group had initial superior performance on decoding and spelling measures, as well as broad abilities related to nonverbal reasoning, working memory, phonological awareness and rapid symbol naming. Further, the gap in performance on decoding and spelling measures increased over time, with the non-responder group showing some improvement in these skills, but to a significantly smaller degree than the responder group. Different approaches to phonics intervention in the study resulted in the same proportion of non-responders. Further, children’s confusions with specific sound-symbol associations over the course of the interventions suggest potential challenges that teachers may highlight.

This research had a two-fold objective. The first objective was to develop an intervention programme that was grounded on positive psychology and tailored for academically at-risk students, that is, students who, by and large, achieved lower aggregate scores than the cohort mean in the national test given at the end of primary education. The second objective was to evaluate the effectiveness of each of the components of the intervention programme in terms of improving positive emotions, well-being, and academic outcomes of academically at-risk students.
Three positive psychology interventions (PPIs) were developed to form the intervention programme. Each PPI comprised five core activities, with a wrap-up session that was conducted after the core activities. The Gratitude PPI comprised the following activities: Gratitude Collage, Counting Blessings, Mental Subtraction, Facing Challenges with Gratitude, and Gratitude Card. The Hope PPI featured activities such as Goal Setting and Goal Mapping, Journaling, Best Possible Self, Savouring Success, and Sharing Formula for Success. The Strengths PPI involved activities such as Identification of Top Strengths, Journaling about Top Strengths, Identification of Signature Strengths, Journaling about Signature Strengths and then Create a Superhero.
The evaluation of the effectiveness of the PPIs involved six sub-studies, with two sub-studies tied to each PPI. For each PPI, the first sub-study, which utilised a quasi-experimental design, served as the first trial to test the impact of the PPI and identify areas for improvement; the second sub-study utilized a split-plot experimental design (i.e., each participating class was randomly split into group A and B and all students in group A formed the intervention group while all students in Group B formed the control group). The six sub-studies involved 305 academically at-risk students.
The results of four sub-studies support the potential of two (i.e., Hope and Gratitude PPIs) out three PPIs in cultivating positive emotions and well-being, and enhancing adaptive motivation and learning strategies. In terms of promoting students’ well-being, the effect of the Gratitude PPI was found to be more consistent and stronger than that of the Hope PPI. Specifically, the Gratitude PPI has generated greater increase in students’ life satisfaction and reduction in depressive symptoms than the control activities did. The Hope PPI seems to be more effective in terms of preventing the worsening of the students’ self-reported depressive symptoms, rather than directly reducing them. Concerning academic achievement, the effects of the PPIs were generally weak.
All the PPIs did not generate a significant effect on academic engagement; however, when it comes to academic motivation, results associated with one PPI was promising. In particular, the Hope PPI was found to have beneficial effects in terms of preventing the decline in students’ intrinsic motivation.
The general results of the present investigation also point to the effectiveness of the Hope PPI, but not the other two PPIs, in increasing students’ use of deep learning and elaboration strategies. The Hope PPI was found to be more effective than the usual CCE activities in enhancing the students’ use of these adaptive learning strategies. The effects of the Hope PPI on these outcomes were not significantly mediated by the students’ academic hope (i.e., positive expectations to achieve school goals). These results suggest that the Hope PPI may operate directly, rather than indirectly through enhancing academic hope levels, in improving adaptive school outcomes.
The benefits that can be derived from the PPIs appear to be stronger and more amenable to measurement when a considerable period has passed after the students’ exposure to PPIs or after booster sessions were conducted. These results suggest that some effects of the PPIs may take a while to manifest and that state-like measures may be more appropriate in capturing the effects of such PPIs accurately.
Overall, the results of the six sub-studies have shown the potential benefits of PPIs, particularly the Hope and Gratitude PPIs, in enhancing adaptive school and well-being outcomes for academically at-risk students in Singapore. The Gratitude PPI appears to have relatively stronger effects on well-being while the Hope PPI seems to be more effective in promoting the use of productive learning strategies and in preventing the decline in intrinsic motivation to study. Educators and interventionists may select the PPIs that suit the needs and profiles of their subjects, or implement the PPIs in combination and in longer duration to generate optimal impact.

This article critically discusses the Singapore state’s endeavor to balance social cohesion and cultural sustainability through the Character and Citizenship Education (CCE) curriculum. This article points out that underpinning the CCE syllabus are the state ideologies of communitarianism and multiracialism. It is argued that the ideology of communitarianism is compatible with and finds support from Confucius’s emphasis on the concept of harmony (he) and his advocacy of values inculcation that progresses from the family to the community and the rest of the world. The article further argues that a key challenge in balancing social cohesion with cultural sustainability in Singapore is to guard against essentializing and stereotyping the various cultural groups through the surface culture approach.