The adolescent years are important for several reasons as they represent a period of significant changes that shape an individual’s future. Dean of Office of Education Research at NIE and Conference Convenor of Redesigning Pedagogy International Conference (RPIC) 2024, Professor Kenneth Poon, seeks to bring forth certain factors that may impact the growth and development of adolescents in Singapore through a recently launched MOE-commissioned research project – called DREAMS – that follows 7,000 adolescents throughout their 4-year journey in secondary schools. This article is based on his keynote address titled “DREAMS, a Longitudinal Study of Adolescents in Secondary Schools: Insights from Students in Secondary One” at the RPIC 2024.

The Importance of Adolescence

The focus of today’s sharing is to link with our conference theme of “cultivating future-ready learners”, specifically by considering what can be done within secondary schools. It is important for us to provide every young person with an education. This is part of Singapore’s commitment to the UNCRC, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Moreover, in Singapore, there is also a strong imperative to optimize the potential of every individual, especially as we near a state of full employment.

At NIE, we have several programmes and research studies that investigate the development of children. There are a good number of measures that we have put in to support children in early childhood. Instead, what I want to do today is to talk about the second window of opportunity, that is adolescence.

In adolescence, there is a window of not only opportunity, but also risk. These occur in conjunction with the physical and sexual maturation of the young person, with the physical changes we see in our children as they traverse the hump of adolescence. There are also physical changes in the brain, such as in cortical dopamine development. Less clearly or physically observable are the changes in sleep and circadian regulation patterns, the increased tendence to explore novelty and excitement, and the changed motivation for status, prestige, and respect. You will see the young person being more sensitive to comparison with others, to the reorientation of attention towards their peers. These can be said to encapsulate the turbulent changes of adolescence and have an impact on outcomes as well.

These changes usually occur at the time the young person enters secondary school. We see the young person with greater demands placed upon them, their development, and the care of what happens now and beyond school. As I previously mentioned, the young person also focuses more on self-agency, is influenced by their parents less, and experience changes in their relationships.

Important Factors Affecting Adolescent Development

There are some changes in recent years that adolescents must confront. It is important to investigate these events because they influence the development of young people, as we are beginning to further understand from international research.

There is a lot of talk about screen time, and it is important for us to take a step back and realize that the youths engage in quite high levels of screen time now. Of course, this increase in screen time certainly offers some risk, but also some opportunities as well. The first aspect deals with the reality of young people having more screen time these days, and we need to consider what this means for our youths. The young person may experience a reality that is not only based on the physical embodied relationships that they have. They can also have relationships with people they might not have met in person. That might influence how they develop their sense of identity. It’s no longer only about the home, or only about the school. With access to the internet, we see young people who are exposed to a variety of viewpoints and perspectives.

As for the second aspect, let’s think back to a couple of years before: to the pandemic. During that point in time, we saw a dip in the quality of life and the well-being of people across all ages and countries. Our understanding from both international and local research is that this quality of life and well-being rebounds. However, research has indicated that the well-being our youth did not return to baseline levels after the rebound, and we don’t quite know why. This is something for us to further explore: What is going on and how can our young people be supported in this area?

The third aspect is the pace and scope of the technological changes we are seeing these days. Our young people are increasingly having interactions with artificial intelligence and with different ways of learning. To reiterate, I am talking about this from a neutral perspective. How is that affecting how they learn? How is that affecting how they interact with their peers? This is an area we don’t know much about and are just beginning to have a think about.

Last, the fourth aspect – the impact of climate change. There are direct and indirect effects of climate change. There are acute and chronic effects, as well as longer-term impacts. How exactly are these effects impacting our young people? We know that some youths experience climate-related anxiety, but we’re not sure as to who the ones affected are and how they are being affected.

If we think about it all, the period of adolescence is a window that presents us with the opportunity to do something. There is a lot more that we do not know about young people than we thought. Our young people are all generally in secondary schools too, so there is a lot more that we can do from a public policy standpoint. It is with this in mind that makes it important to investigate how young people develop.

Introducing the DREAMS Study

We have a study currently in progress that we affectionally call DREAMS, “Drivers, Enablers, and Pathways of Adolescent Development in Singapore”. DREAMS is a 4-year longitudinal study with a mixed-method design.

We chiefly collect our data using surveys that we send out to students. Each participant completes the core survey containing short questions about the key constructs that we are interested in. In addition, each participant also completes one of three other forms that will allow us to have a further look at certain aspects that we think are important. We also hold qualitative interviews and focus group discussions with some subgroups of the student participants. Our participants joined the study when they were in Secondary One and they are currently in Secondary Two.

There are four things we are interested in finding out about from this project. First, what are the outcomes and pathways of development? Second, what factors contribute to development and how do they contribute to development? The third thing that we are keen on understanding is to know more about adolescents with different pathways. While we are interested in our young people at risk, we are even more interested in our young people who are resilient. Last, we want to know why certain factors have an impact on development, and what we can do about it. This is especially important for us as we think about interventions, particularly interventions that can be conducted within schools.

Moving ahead, what we want to do is to gain a better understanding of adolescent developmental pathways. We have only collected data from one time point as of now. To further understand these pathways, we need to identify groups, subgroups, and factors contributing to changes in developmental pathways. Lastly, and importantly, we are very interested in unpacking the social environment of youths.