During the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers faced challenges conducting data collection. However, emerging communication technologies, such as web-conferencing platforms, provided an alternative mode of data collection. Among these platforms, Zoom stands out for its functional affordances and unique features that support data collection methods, including screen-capturing, digital photography, drawing, polling, and artifact-based interviews, which attempt to reveal a child's viewpoint and ability. In this article, we explore the feasibility of using Zoom to conduct educational research by investigating the mathematical learning experience among 26 primary 1 and 2 students in Hong Kong on two topics—understanding time and addition and subtraction. Five mathematics teachers were recruited to participate in 2-month online workshops with assessments among three groups of students to understand the suitability for data collection. Based on teachers’ observations and students’ responses, our findings suggest that Zoom is a viable and effective tool for qualitative data collection. It offers a cost-effective method for researchers and educators to examine students’ mathematical performance in an online environment. We also investigate students’ perceptions of online assessment strategies, perceived usefulness of various Zoom functions, and explore the benefits and challenges teachers and students perceived throughout mathematical education using Zoom. However, several technical difficulties were encountered, such as the digital literacy gap and privacy concerns. Therefore, improving students’ digital literacy for remote learning and triangulation is important for online mathematical data collection and assessments. Copyright © 2023 The Author(s).

This paper reports a design and implementation of a STEM enrichment programme infused with affective elements designed for Hong Kong students. Specifically, it features a design-thinking approach to develop solutions to a self-selected problem addressing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Around 30 upper primary school (grades 5 to 6) and 20 lower secondary students (grades 7 to 10) enrolled in the study. Considering empathy as a core value of the design-thinking process and aligned with affective dimensions of thinking and learning, we investigate students' design-thinking development and STEM learning processes while highlighting empathy map as a pedagogical tool. We discuss the implications and insights of offering humanistic perspectives on STEM curricular design, especially for K-12 students. Our results showed that students at different age range were able to use empathy maps to devise designs effectively, despite their varying degrees of empathy. Furthermore, we conceptualize empathy maps as a pedagogical tool that creates physical boundaries in design thinking, making students' mental transitions across design stages more explicit. This study contributes to a better understanding of the educational potentials of design-thinking enhanced classrooms, with the results informing theoretical and practical advice on the integration of the empathy map in innovation-oriented projects. Copyright ©2023 Springer.

The Hong Kong Education Bureau's paper titled "Computational Thinking – Coding Education: Supplement to the Primary Curriculum" published in 2020 has been a crucial step towards encouraging CT and coding education in Primary 4 to Primary 6 in Hong Kong. With technology increasingly being utilized in various industries, it has become crucial for students to acquire knowledge and skills necessary to thrive in the digital era. Computational Thinking (CT) has been demonstrated as a method of problem-solving that has helped students become better problem solvers and fostered a deeper understanding of mathematical concepts. Therefore, incorporating CT into Mathematics Education (ME) has become a subject of much research in recent years, especially since systematic reviews have been carried out.In line with the Hong Kong Education Bureau (EDB)'s proposal, the Hong Kong Curriculum Development Council (CDC) has also emphasized the value of CT and coding instruction in preparing students for the digital era. Thus, the three-year study that has been conducted from January 2021 to May 2023 aims to examine the significance and impact of integrating CT into ME in senior primary education in Hong Kong.This study has concentrated on Hong Kong senior primary children, particularly those in Primary 6, and has employed a multi-phase approach. Initially, a comprehensive review of the current state of research on CT and ME has been conducted to inform the study design. Subsequently, data has been gathered from students, teachers, and schools using surveys and assessments. Statistical techniques have been applied to evaluate the collected data, focusing on establishing the relationship between CTE and ME, analyzing students' motivation to learn mathematics through CTE, and identifying the advantages of incorporating CTE into ME, including its impact on students' mathematical performance.The study uncovered several key findings concerning the integration of CT into ME in senior primary schools

Background: Students’ positive perceptions of scientists or engineers have been reported to be positively related to their science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) career aspirations. However, other research indicates that positive perceptions of experts in these fields might not necessarily lead to students’ pursuit of STEM careers. Self-concept, defined as one’s perceived abilities in specific academic domains, likely plays a moderating role in the relationship between perceptions and career aspirations according to the motivational theory of role modelling. Moreover, students’ perceptions of STEM professionals might be sourced from STEM-related media and school experiences. Therefore, through running a moderated mediation model, this study examined whether and how the influences of media consumption and school STEM learning opportunities on career aspirations would be mediated by perceptions of STEM professionals, and whether the mediation effect would be conditional on students’ self-concept. Methods: Data were collected through an online survey of 608 primary and secondary school students from Hong Kong, and were analysed using structural equation modelling. Results: Results revealed that the students’ positive perceptions of STEM professionals were positively associated with their career aspirations, and mediated the links from media consumption and school opportunities to career aspirations. In addition, this mediated pathway depended on STEM self-concept, such that perceptions of STEM professionals were only linked with STEM career aspirations for adolescents with average or high levels of self-concept. Conclusions: The findings of this study suggest the need to pay attention to the STEM perceptions and self-concept interaction while designing and implementing learning activities to connect a diversity of students with STEM careers. It is not only important to foster students’ self-concept, but also to enrich their knowledge of diverse occupations

Adopting a language other than the first as the medium of instruction in teaching mathematics can create significant problems for students' mathematical learning. However, there is little research on the ways in which bi/multilingual mathematics teachers can make use of diverse multilingual and multimodal resources to keep students engaged in learning abstract mathematical knowledge. This article aims to explore how an English-medium-instruction (EMI) mathematics teacher creates different hypothetical scenarios through embodied enactments to enhance students' mathematical understanding and motivate students' interest in learning mathematics. The data of this study is obtained from a focused classroom observation in a Hong Kong EMI secondary mathematics classroom. Multimodal conversation analysis is employed to analyse the classroom interaction data, and the analysis is triangulated with video-stimulated-recall interviews which are analysed with interpretative phenomenological analysis. This article aims to extend the notion of embodied enactment as a form of translanguaging to facilitate mathematical learning and develop students' motivation in learning mathematics in the EMI setting. Particularly, this article argues that embodied enactment creates a translanguaging space for the EMI teacher to achieve mathematical teaching. Copyright ©2023 Sage Publications Ltd.

A lack of evidence bridging the chasm between professional learning practices and commonly used, publicly available resources such as YouTube videos, remains a long-term challenge in both research and practice. The study introduced a YouTube video club for female early childhood teachers in Hong Kong (N = 29) to view, analyse and discuss STEM teaching videos. The participants wrote reflections and discussed with peers to exchange views on teaching content and strategies. All participants completed pre- and post-intervention surveys reporting their teaching beliefs, and five participants from the experimental group were invited for individual interviews. The questionnaire survey data were analysed using statistical analysis, while the interview data were analysed through inductive thematic analysis. The study, which was pre-post quasi-experimental, showed that the video club enhanced teachers' beliefs and attitudes towards professional practices in early childhood education. Qualitative analysis of teacher interviews revealed benefits and constraints of using YouTube videos for professional learning. The study transformed video clubs into a web-mediated mode using YouTube, Google Classroom and Zoom. The results have implications for the design and implementation of video clubs in teacher learning programmes. Copyright ©2023 Wiley.

Creativity, one of the cornerstones of students' 21st-century skills, is regarded as an important learning outcome of science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STEAM) education. Meanwhile, problem-based digital making (DM), which combines the child-friendly programming activities of DM with problem-solving elements, is an emerging instructional design to facilitate STEAM learning. This qualitative case study examines the implementation of a problem-based DM instructional program that used the block-based programming tool Scratch to cultivate the participants' creativity. Fifty-four middle school students (aged 10-14 years) in Hong Kong participated in the program, which totaled 10 contact hours over five consecutive weeks. Through triangulating students' DM artifacts, video recordings, field notes, and interviews, the researchers characterized the students' creative expression, examined the role of problem-based DM in encouraging creative work, and investigated the use of Scratch for mediating student creativity. The results showed that problem-based DM activities fostered students' creative expressions in the dimensions of novelty, utility, aesthetics, and authenticity. While Scratch mediated the way the students presented their solutions, it had limitations that hindered the students' digital artifact construction. The findings provide theoretical insights for framing creativity and offer practical implications for the implementation of problem-based DM in K-12 contexts. Copyright © 2023 SAGE Publications.

This study analyzed the variation in teachers’ mathematical educational values between distance and traditional face-to-face teaching. Enabled by the unique circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic, the research explored the impact of remote teaching on primary and secondary mathematics education in Hong Kong. An online survey, completed by 109 practicing mathematics teachers, assessed their pre-existing educational values and their adaptability to the shift towards distance teaching, as well as their teaching practices. Findings indicated that despite the multitude of digital teaching tools, the implementation of most mathematical educational values was more restricted in distance teaching. Rationalism and Control were prioritized, reflecting the challenges of assessing student progress remotely. Among the 13 values identified, Fun and Engagement, along with Thinking and Problem-solving, Achievement, and Reasoning, were significantly diminished, highlighting the shortcomings of one-way and superficial concept-based teaching. The study concludes that distance teaching, when completely isolated from traditional methods, may not offer the benefits suggested in the literature, impacting student engagement, motivation, and higher-order thinking. This necessitates a unique curriculum development model to effectively incorporate blended and self-directed learning. Copyright © 2023 Mathematics Education Research Group of Australasia, Inc.

We presented a design-based study within the context of a four-session Scratch programming activity among 23 fourth-grade students in Hong Kong. Inspired by the computational thinking (CT) strategies and the 5E instructional model, we investigated students’ mathematical learning of fractions in a Scratch (block-based programming) environment. Students developed CT concepts, practices, and perspectives by building a “fraction magic calculator” in groups. This study analyzed the lesson design, students’ drawings, interviews, and work expressing their mathematical understanding of fractions in Scratch applications. The learning tasks were designed to support the students’ fraction learning and utilized computational abstractions in the form of variables, functions, and iterations to formulate mathematical models in a programming context. Students’ artifacts and feedback showed they were interested in learning fractions in a programming learning context, contributing to exercising and improving their fraction concepts and CT. Ultimately, we emphasized the benefits of CT integrated into mathematics education, promoting students’ understanding of fraction concepts, a set of CT abilities (concepts, practices, perspectives), and learning motivation. Moreover, we suggested a set of non-cognitive skills (e.g., socializing, expressing) to enrich the CT perspectives in the framework and show the importance of developing coding communities to co-create digital artifacts among learners. Overall, we highlighted that mathematics teachers should apply and create learning tasks that promote computational thinking to forge mathematical ideas and thinking. Copyright © 2023 The Author(s).

This study investigated 14 Hong Kong primary school teachers’ conceptions of and concerns about the implementation of integrated STEM education in primary school. Data were collected through concept maps and interviews with the teachers. Results revealed that in addition to representing STEM as simplistic models (e.g., STEM as an acronym), the teachers mostly seemed to model STEM integration conceptually using integrated disciplines, science as context, or real-world problem solving as context. Not many teachers were found to represent STEM using engineering design progress as context. Results also indicated that the teachers expressed intense concerns regarding personal inadequacy of STEM knowledge or skills (personal), student outcomes of STEM education (consequence), and limited instructional time (management). This study suggested providing sustained teacher professional development, creating supportive school environments, and building a collaborative STEM community as strategies to facilitate changes in teachers’ concerns and to advance STEM implementation in primary schools. Copyright © 2022 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden.