DREAMS Symposium

The inaugural DREAMS Symposium, titled “Adolescents at the Crossroads: Navigating Education and Society in the 21st Century”, took place on 8 January 2025. This symposium marked a milestone for the DREAMS project, a Ministry of Education (MOE)-commissioned longitudinal study on adolescent development led by Professor Kenneth Poon, Dean of Research at the Office for Research (OfR) and Centre Director at the Centre for Research in Child Development (CRCD).

The event welcomed 200 attendees, including researchers, policymakers, school leaders, and teachers. It served as a vibrant platform to discuss the complexities of adolescent development and its implications for education and society in Singapore and beyond.

Keynote Presentations by International Experts

The symposium featured thought-provoking presentations from DREAMS Principal Investigator Prof Kenneth Poon and the project’s international advisory panel (IAP) members, who are renowned experts from diverse disciplines.

Prof Kenneth Poon opened the symposium with his presentation, Why We Need to Understand Adolescent Development: Early Insights from DREAMS, a Longitudinal Study of Adolescents in Secondary Schools. He highlighted adolescence as a transformative period and shared key findings from the DREAMS study on career aspirations, environmental influences on well-being, and the role of relationships in sustaining engagement and motivation.

Prof Alissa Goodman, Professor of Economics and Director of the Centre for Longitudinal Studies at University College London, presented Secondary Schooling Years and Youth Development: A Life Course Perspective. She discussed findings from the UK’s national birth cohort studies, emphasizing how inequalities widen during adolescence and how early life predictors impact outcomes across adulthood.

Prof Kathy Sylva, Emeritus Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Oxford, delivered a talk on Family and School Influences on the Well-Being of Adolescents in England: Evidence from a Longitudinal Study. Drawing from the Effective Provision of Preschool, Primary and Secondary Education (EPPSE) study, she shared how school factors shape not only academic outcomes but also broader developmental indicators such as citizenship values and self-concept.

Prof Robert Crosnoe, Rapoport Centennial Professor at the University of Texas at Austin Department of Sociology, concluded the presentations with The Intertwining of Educational Trajectories and Social Psychological Development in Adolescence in the U.S. He highlighted the importance of fostering a growth mindset in adolescents and shared details of an effective intervention his team developed to prime growth mindsets and improve student-school alignment.

The symposium concluded with a lively Q&A panel featuring all four professors. The discussions delved into pressing issues, such as the pervasiveness of technology in adolescents’ lives, and explored strategies to translate research findings into actionable policy and practice.

The DREAMS Symposium underscored the interdisciplinary nature of its IAP, which includes an economist, an educational psychologist, and a sociologist. In addition to the symposium, the IAP members spent four days with the DREAMS team, providing invaluable advice on how to maximise the effectiveness of the project. Their guidance has been instrumental in refining strategies and ensuring that the study delivers impactful findings to inform policies and practices.

The DREAMS project team extends their gratitude to all attendees and speakers for their contributions to this enriching symposium. Together, we aim to drive impactful research and practice to support the growth and development of adolescents in the 21st century.