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

Despite the increasing use of English as a medium of instruction (EMI), teachers who teach at EMI schools encounter significant challenges, such as difficulties in teaching content-subjects in English and students' limited understanding of content presented in English. To examine the extent of these challenges, six early-full and 14 late-partial EMI science teachers from eight schools in Hong Kong were invited to participate in semi-structured interviews on the challenges they faced as teachers of EMI science subjects. A biographic approach was used to analyse the interviews, and the results showed that despite the metacognitive overlap between the two groups of teachers, there were noticeable differences in their pedagogical strategies. These findings suggest that the implementation of EMI instruction influences teachers' metacognition and pedagogical practices. Teachers' frequent use of Cantonese (L1) further suggest that English language skills are not as prioritised compared to the subject content. Further research is needed to investigate the complex and diverse factors that influence teachers' metacognition under EMI contexts. Copyright ©2023 Routledge.

Cultivating students' enjoyment of science is one of the significant aims of science education. However, it seems challenging to achieve this goal in most countries or economies. Using the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 2019 Hong Kong data, this study aims to identify multiple configurations of school conditions to develop students' science enjoyment with a School Analytics model. A fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) was employed to capture the potential asymmetric relationships and measure multiple combinations of different conditions. Results indicated that no single school condition was necessary or sufficient for high enjoyment of science (ES). While lacking instructional clarity was a sufficient condition for low enjoyment of science (similar to ES). Three different configurations resulted in ES and similar to ES respectively. The combination of supportive school discipline and high instructional clarity jointly constituted a crucial science learning environment for developing science enjoyment in Hong Kong secondary schools. Under this environment, the effectiveness of science investigation was further discussed to enhance science enjoyment. Our study enlightens educational practitioners to improve students' science enjoyment with multiple combinations of school conditions. Copyright ©2023 Routledge.

This paper reports on an exploration into difficulties in junior secondary science lessons taught through English in the largely Cantonese-speaking context of Hong Kong. The study was carried out by an educational linguist and a science education specialist working in collaboration, and identified difficulties through student questionnaires, interviews with teachers, and classroom observation. Understandings of genre based in systemic functional linguistics were used in conjunction with knowledge of the science curriculum to investigate these difficulties. Extracts from lessons and teaching materials on energy conversion are discussed, with additional reference to interviews and questionnaires. Analysis revealed the influence of teaching materials on coherence between curricular objectives and teacher discourse. In particular, complex description detracted from explanations, affecting student understanding of the lesson. Copyright ©2024 Elsevier.

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.

Background: The number of artificial intelligence (AI) literacy studies in K-12 education has recently increased, with most research focusing on primary and secondary education contexts. Little research focuses on AI literacy programs in early childhood education. Objectives: The aim of this mixed-methods study is to examine the feasibility of an AI literacy program called AI4KG and explore how it might affect kindergarteners' perceptions of robots and attitudes towards engineering and science. Methods: A total of 26 child-parent dyads recruited from a Hong Kong kindergarten were involved in this study, consisting of 26 children (Mage = 4 years, SD = 0.28) and their parents. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected through surveys and interviews designed to explore children's perceptions of robots and attitudes towards engineering and science, and parents' perceptions of the AI4KG intervention. Results: It is found that children have increased their perceptions of robots after the AI literacy program, but the AI4KG curriculum had no significant effects on kindergarten children's engineering and science attitudes. Most parents (22 out of 26) agreed that their children's AI knowledge, AI skills, and AI attitudes have been enhanced after learning through the AI4KG curriculum. Conclusions: This study suggests that the AI4KG curriculum is potentially effective in promoting early AI literacy and favourable attitudes towards the technology, but further research is needed to develop age-appropriate measures and assess its long-term impact on children's education and career paths. Copyright ©2024 Wiley.

While increasing the equitable participation in computer science (CS) education at schools, most existing studies focus on the acquisition of computational skills and measurements of cognitive skills as the learning outcome. The potential benefits of developing psychosocial attributes in the process of computational learning are of less concern, particularly for the underprivileged youth with Special Educational Needs (SEN) and from low-income family. To improve the inequitable learning in school, the "Project C program" has been developed to integrate computational participation and mentoring scheme through social-cognitive approach for underprivileged youth. The aim of this research is to investigate the psychosocial impact of the program, and examine the interrelation between hope, sense of community, and perceived social support in computational learning. The Project C program was piloted in a special school in Hong Kong under the category of "Schools for Children with Moderate Intellectual Disability," targeting 8th grade students (n = 51) with SEN (i.e., mild autism) living in low-income residential districts, and a self-reported pre/post questionnaire was administered to measure the psychosocial changes before and after the intervention. The findings reveal a statistically significant change in hope, sense of community, and perceived social support through the program, and the relation between sense of community and hope was fully mediated by the perceived social support. Based on the findings, theoretical and practical implications of social-cognitive approach to computational learning are discussed. Copyright © 2023 Springer.

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.