Maker education is regarded as a global initiative. Empowering STEM makers in schools becomes an important task for K-12 educators. Creativity, critical thinking, STEM identity, and STEM interest are all vital attributes of a good STEM maker. While researchers have proposed various pedagogical approaches to supporting the processes of STEM making, rare studies have been carried out to compare the effectiveness of these approaches. To fill the research gap, we have conducted a quasi-experimental study (with 63 secondary school students in Hong Kong) to explore the pedagogical effects of mentoring and authentic problem-solving strategies in supporting STEM making. Implications for the development of maker education and future work are also discussed in this paper. Copyright © 2021 Publication of Asia Pacific Society for Computers in Education.

In this article, we use the family resemblance approach as a framework to contribute to the debate about the similarities and differences between the constituent disciplines of STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics) and to explore the implications for education. The family resemblance approach has been used in science education in various ways, for instance, in teacher education and undergraduate teaching and as an analytical tool for examining science curricula and assessments. The relevant sense of application of the family resemblance approach for our purposes in this article is that it is a framework that has the potential to differentiate the disciplines underpinning STEAM. We explore the utility of the family resemblance approach for clarifying what is meant by the nature of STEAM and, subsequently, we elaborate on some practical examples drawn from a project conducted in Hong Kong with Year 7 (12–13-year-old) students to illustrate how the use of the family resemblance approach can help articulate a contrast of nature of science and the arts in school activities. Copyright © 2024 Sibel Erduran and Kason Ka Ching Cheung.

Entrepreneurial STEM, an interdisciplinary approach blending STEM and entrepreneurship education, has become a new trend for cross-subject collaboration that aims to instill an entrepreneurial mindset in students, enabling them to apply their STEM knowledge across various contexts. In this study, we investigate the challenges and corresponding strategies of head science teachers who initiated an entrepreneurial STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) curriculum in their schools. Grounded in social exchange theory, we explore how head science teachers with entrepreneurial attributes navigated asymmetrical power distribution presented by principals and other subject heads. This collective case study focuses on three schools in Hong Kong that successfully implemented a renowned entrepreneurial STEM curriculum. The findings reveal a common trajectory among head science teachers: initial enthusiastic promotion of the curriculum while meeting resistance; a downscaling and team reform struggles; and a handover and scale-up. This study illuminates the intricate process of balancing power dynamics and stakeholder perceptions through reciprocal negotiation, which were in turn shaped by societal norms. Copyright © 2024 The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V.

Background: The concept of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) capital can serve as a framework for understanding how various resources contribute to aspiration formation in STEM fields. However, to date, it remains unclear what factors should be included in STEM capital and how they may help explain why students do or do not aspire to STEM careers. Purpose: This study aimed to validate the instruments and explore the predictive effect of various factors, including STEM capital and other non-STEM specific cultural capital factors, on students’ STEM aspirations while comparing these variables among primary, junior secondary, and senior secondary levels. Sample: A stratified sample of students (N = 3,991) from the upper-primary to senior-secondary level in Hong Kong participated in the study. Design and methods: An online survey investigation was conducted for data collection. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were performed to validate the instruments before ANOVA, correlation analysis, and regression analysis were performed. Results: The elementary students had significantly greater scores on the STEM capital variables than did the students at the junior and senior secondary levels. Gender, age, parental school involvement and expectations, informal STEM participation, positive views of professionals, and self-concept in mathematics positively predicted STEM aspirations, while having a parent/guardian with a STEM career negatively predicted students’ aspirations. In addition, the results showed that having STEM books at home and self-concept in information technology were additional predictors at some educational levels. The explored factors can explain approximately 30% of the variance in students’ STEM aspirations. Conclusion: Senior students’ STEM capital factors exhibit lower levels compared to their younger peers. The developed, adapted, and translated instruments are valid for measuring the factors composing STEM capital, where some

Rapid developments in building information modeling (BIM) are escalating the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry toward digital transformation. However, the lack of skilled BIM professionals is a critical issue slowing this transformation. Currently, few educational institutions include BIM topics in their curricula, especially those developed for quantity surveying (QS) programs. Moreover, the learning outcomes of BIM curricula may not meet the current industrial requirements. Thus, this study investigated the current states, gaps, and challenges of BIM education for QS practices in Hong Kong. This study conducted surveys to determine industrial requirements and a case study to examine the BIM curricula currently offered at Hong Kong educational institutions. The results suggest that the current BIM education for QS practices is in line with the pace of BIM development in the AEC industry. However, some advanced topics are not covered in BIM education. Additionally, the non-standardized BIM competencies to be attained by students lead to uncertainty and challenges in BIM education for quantity surveyors. © 2022 Associated Schools of Construction.

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.

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

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.