National Institute of Education

Estuarine surface fronts, where freshwater outflow and saline tidal inflow converge, may play a critical yet understudied role in microplastic (MP) accumulation. This study presents compelling evidence of strong convergence of MP at a small-scale surface front near the Eastern Johor Strait (EJS), a typical urbanized coast in Southeast Asia, revealing an estuary tidal intrusion front as a recurrent hotspot that concentrates MP at levels comparable to known estuarine frontal systems. Significantly elevated levels of floating microplastics (150.5 ± 19.8 MP pieces/L) were detected at the surface front compared to other surface water samples along the coast (p < 0.001; 9.2 ± 4.8 MP pieces/L). Hydrodynamic simulations demonstrate that the dynamic interplay between freshwater and seawater are the key mechanisms governing this process. The resulting convergence zones effectively trap buoyant plastics, forming quasi-persistent accumulation zones. Specifically, during ebb tide, parallel outflows from the Johor River and inner EJS amplify frontal convergence, actively trapping floating plastics at the salinity boundary. These findings highlight estuarine surface fronts as influential and previously underquantified systemic pathways influencing MP circulation and retention at marginal seas. Recognizing these traceable accumulation hotspots at ocean boundaries is an urgent priority, offering opportunities for targeted mitigation, particularly in high-leakage regions.

Religiousness has been proposed to promote prosociality among young people. Few investigations, however, have examined the underlying processes that facilitate these links, especially in non-Western and collectivistic societies. This study investigated the mediating role of the 5Cs (competence, confidence, connection, character, and caring) of positive youth development on the associations between religiousness, empathy, and altruism, while controlling for age and gender, among Southeast Asian emerging adults during COVID-19. Data were obtained from 1,888 emerging adults ( M age = 21.85; SD age = 2.81) from Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, and Thailand. Structural equation modeling showed that confidence, connection, and character mediated religiousness and altruism while confidence, connection, character, and caring mediated religiousness and empathy, even after controlling for the covariates. However, confidence yielded negative relations with both outcomes. The results highlight the importance of distinguishing self-oriented and other-oriented thriving characteristics in facilitating empathy and altruistic behaviors in difficult situations.

The rationale of TSG-28 was to engage participants in reflection on, and discussion of, the theoretical, empirical and practical issues. Twenty-five papers were reported, from twelve countries showing a great diverse cultural. The papers were grouped in four themes: Noticing, Preservice Teachers’ Learning, Preservice Teachers’ Knowledge, and finally one group with various issues (Other: University-school partnership, beliefs, and textbooks).

Systematic reviews play important roles, but manual efforts can be time-consuming given a growing literature. There is a need to use and evaluate automated strategies to accelerate systematic reviews in education. Here, we comprehensively tested classical machine learning (ML) and deep learning model families. We also assessed the performance of prompt engineering via few-shot learning of GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 large language models. We further attempted to understand when ML models can help automate screening. These ML models were applied to actual datasets of systematic reviews in education. Results showed that the performance of classical and deep ML models varied widely across datasets, ranging from 1.2% to 75.6% of work saved at 95% recall. LLM prompt engineering produced similarly wide performance variation. We searched for various indicators of whether and how ML screening can help. We discovered that the separability of clusters of relevant versus irrelevant articles in high-dimensional embedding space can strongly predict whether ML screening can help (overall R = 0.81). This simple and generalizable heuristic applied well across datasets and different ML model families. In conclusion, ML screening performance varies tremendously but researchers can consider using our embedding heuristic in various ways to aid ML screening efforts.

The use of a screening tool for school-wide screening of internalizing symptoms is an important strategy for early identification and prevention of more serious and impairing emotional and behavioral health problems in adolescents. However, threshold cut-off scores determined for screening tools may not be suitable for all populations. Using a sample of 237 Singaporean secondary school students, this study validated the Youth Internalizing Problems Screener (YIPS) for local use. Results of confirmatory factor analyses supported a one-factor solution for the construct. A threshold cut-off score of 27 was found to show good classification accuracy based on receiver operating characteristics (ROC) analyses. Correlational and path analyses provided evidence of convergent and predictive validity for using YIPS to indicate at-risk status. The YIPS status was uniquely associated with girls’ sense of school well-being over and above the nature of their interpersonal relationships and their sense of inadequacy. Overall, YIPS demonstrated comparable sensitivity and specificity rates even though a different cut-off score was used for this study sample. The use of YIPS as a screening tool in a multitier system of support and directions for future development were discussed.

Reusing waste through various activities and efficient and effective use of resources have led to the circular economy as a further growth opportunity. The circular economy has spread in various directions like agriculture and industry. The main focus of circular economy is to minimize or eliminate the use of non-renewable inputs in a production system and to maximize or optimize the reuse of these materials within the same system. In addition, circular agriculture is expected to reduce environmental impacts through soil regeneration and input use. Activities in rice cultivation include sowing, fertilizing, watering, and harvesting, and these activities can be done using biological and other agricultural methods in an environmentally friendly way instead of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides, and further minimizing the accumulation of waste. Burning rice straw and husks emits lot of CO2 into the environment. However, these can be used as raw materials for various industries. Rice residue is an excellent source of nutrients and beneficial for human health. Thus, circular economy methods can be used in rice cultivation by cultivating more productive and suitable rice varieties, reducing the amount of waste released into the environment in various ways, and using discarded waste as raw materials for industries. This study focuses on determining the applicability of circular economy methods to rice cultivation and processing. Accordingly, it appears that in the rice industry, circular economy methods are applied to reduce the release of unnecessary air and waste into the environment and effectively reuse the waste. This will create an eco-friendly and safe environment.

This chapter proposes a typology of teacher feedback practices organized around three phases. During the first phase, teachers prepare learners emotionally and cognitively to receive feedback. Typically, teachers share or co-construct success criteria for the task that the class is about to embark on. The second phase involves teachers giving intentional and actionable feedback to help students achieve learning goals. In the final phase, teachers involve the class in activities to help students process and act on feedback. These could involve class or group discussions or individual consultations. Together, the suite of feedback practices forms a feedback pedagogy that aims to bring about affective, behavioral, and cognitive engagement. The examples shown in the chapter are gathered across different subjects and levels. The chapter aims to provoke reflection on what the individual teacher, the whole department, and even the school could do to make this feedback pedagogy a sustainable practice.