Liem, Gregory Arief D.

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.

Express stream students rank amongst the top in international benchmarking comparisons in TIMMS and PISA, but those from the Normal Academic and Normal Technical streams obtain lower-than-average scores comparable to students from developing countries. Although a differentiated program has been specially tailored to cater to their pace of learning, many still fail to perform because educators may not have adequately considered the circumstances under which they are willing to participate and learn. Substantial research indicates that besides academics, a range of social, psychological, interpersonal and emotional factors also contribute to educational performance and achievement. To gain perspective on the respective contribution of multiple factors and encapsulate the systemic influences at individual and contextual factors on the long-term academic and non-academic trajectories of these students, this study uses a student engagement framework to unravel the educational challenges facing Normal stream students. Student engagement refers to a student’s active involvement in a task or activity and it captures the gradual process by which they connect with or disconnect from school. This framework describes students’ feelings (affective), behaviours and thoughts (cognitive) about their school experiences, and is predominantly used to understand student problems associated with significant academic or discipline problems and eventual school dropout in research situated in western contexts.

Notwithstanding its crucial role in facilitating desired outcomes of schooling, educational psychology researchers have recognized the conceptual haziness of student engagement as a multidimensional construct. With the main purpose of refining its conceptual definition, this paper aims to attain the following four goals. First, we seek to highlight theoretical, conceptual, and operational concerns about the student engagement construct, and synthesize these concerns into four related areas: overgeneralization, jingle-jangle fallacies, object ambiguity, and under-theorization. Second, we conduct a comprehensive review of prevailing perspectives on student engagement and critically examine their strengths and limitations. Building upon such extant models, third, we offer the Dual Component Framework of Student Engagement, which differentiates learning engagement from school engagement, and articulates the conceptual definition and scope, as well as the objects and dimensions, of the two engagement constructs. Lastly, we underscore the theoretical, research, and applied implications of the proposed framework in advancing the field of student engagement.

"This report describes the work undertaken by CRPP staff of the Core Research Program in 2006 and the key findings generated from the six "Panels" (or key projects) of the Core Research Program." -- p. 3 of executive summary.