This paper reports the results of a quasi-experimental study that evaluated the effectiveness of collaborative mind mapping in three Hong Kong primary schools. More than 200 grade 4 students, divided into three pedagogical groups, participated in a variety of science learning activities with the aid of a mind map and/or collaborative group work. The results of diagnostic tests reveal the synergy of peer collaboration and mind mapping to be more effective than either collaboration or mind mapping alone in enhancing students' scientific achievement. Analysis of the students' science discourse and follow-up interviews indicates that collaborative mind mapping fosters learning motivation and facilitates the joint construction of conceptual knowledge in science. Recommendations are made for the integrative use of graphic organisers and group work, and implications for future research on science teaching in Hong Kong and elsewhere are further discussed. Copyright © 2022 Springer.

In many disciplines of STEM education, online experiments (OEs), commonly called remote-controlled experiments, become an emerging practice in technology-enhanced learning because of their many merits perceived in educational research. We recently formulated an innovative, low-cost, and open-source approach to developing new OEs rapidly. It won a gold medal and a special prize in an international innovation and invention competition in 2018. Using this new approach, teachers and students can easily access OEs with a lightweight web browser using any hardware and any operating system without installing additional software or apps. They can observe and/or control the experiments and collect authentic data (over a very short or long time) for further analysis by plotting graphs and/or conducting calculations to obtain important results. Some well-accepted instructional approaches or pedagogies have been integrated into online science/STEM experiments, which can also be aligned with school-based curricula to provide self-contained courseware for students’ online self-regulated learning. In this chapter, we will focus on whether OEs could really and effectively provide the essential elements of experimental learning to ‘school students’ as expected in traditional laboratory work. From our pilot implementation in four Hong Kong (HK) and Mainland China (CHINA) secondary schools with a total of 172 participants, we explored the OE experiences of different experiments and cognitive performance among students from different regions and genders using the conventional mixed methods research and design-based research. Students’ feedback and suggestions for improvement of the OEs were also analysed together with some specific implications for science/STEM education. Copyright © 2022 The Author(s).

The purpose of this study is to investigate into the possibility of utilizing socio-scientific issues as a vehicle to promote students’ metacognitive regulation, self-efficacy and conceptual understanding in an ecology classroom in Hong Kong. There has been little research to assess how these constructs are influenced by an issue-based inquiry classroom environment set in ecological context, and how these constructs interact with each other. The researcher has designed a metacognitive-rich environment for learning through a socio-scientific issue in a high school ecology classroom. Students’ perceptions about the metacognitive orientation of the classroom environment were assessed by the Metacognitive Orientation Learning Environment Scale (Science) to provide evidence for the validity of the lesson design in creating a metacognitive-rich environment. The effect of embedding explicit metacognitive tasks into a socio-scientific issue on students’ self-efficacy and metacognition were assessed through a quasi-experimental study using the Motivation Strategy for Learning Questionnaire and post-lesson individual interviews. 54 students from a Hong Kong long-established boy school participated in this study. The changes of the dependent variables under study were analyzed using an independent samples t-test and a 2x2 mixed-design analysis of variance to indicate the effect of this specially designed intervention in the biology classroom. The quantitative results suggested the intervention has created significant positive effects on students’ metacognitive regulation and self-efficacy but not conceptual understanding. Results from the multivariate analysis of variance and Pearson correlations suggest that the three dependent variables under study are correlated. To assist in the interpretation of the quantitative findings, individual interviews with students in the intervention group were analyzed thoroughly based on the concurrent triangulation approach. The interview results

In Hong Kong, student interest and achievement in science have been declining in recent years. We thus aim to seek ways to improve our science education. This paper reports an attempt of using the flipped classroom approach together with the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) to deliver a science unit ("electrical conductors and insulators"). This exploratory study was divided into two stages. In Stage 1, the teacher-researcher designed the science lessons using the NGSS and prepared flipped learning materials (e.g., pre-class videos, online exercises, class activities). In Stage 2, these lessons were implemented in a Hong Kong secondary school, involving a total of 32 ninth-graders from two classes. At the end of this study, two focus group interviews (five students each) were conducted to understand student perceptions of flipped science learning. Teacher reflections of the implementation were also collected and analyzed to reveal his experiences of flipping with the NGSS. Overall, the findings suggest that the students perceived flipped science learning positively because of the ability of self-paced learning, better class preparation, and more in-class interactions. From the teacher's point of view, however, the science curriculum in Hong Kong and the NGSS are different in terms of their focus and content. Time constraint and inadequate laboratory equipment in school also hindered the implementation of the NGSS in Hong Kong. We recommend further research be conducted to investigate how to adopt the NGSS in other topics of Hong Kong science education and examine its effects on student interest and achievement in the long run. Copyright © 2018 Copyright is held by the owner/author(s).

近年，本港中小學開始推行STEM教育，透過教導學生靈活地綜合運用科學、科技、工程和數學各方面的知識，致力培養學生「廿一世紀技能」，以應對新時代的挑戰。本文將會簡介STEM教育在香港推行的狀況，並探討當中面對的困難和挑戰。Recently, Hong Kong primary and secondary schools have been promoting STEM education. Teaching students how to flexibly integrate science, technology, engineering and mathematics knowledge facilitates them to equip themselves with “21st century skills” so that they can face the challenges of this new era. In this article, we briefly describe the implementation of STEM education in Hong Kong and discuss the challenges. Copyright © 2018 The Hong Kong Federation of Youth Groups.

Multimedia-supported e-learning is considered useful as it can offer an enjoyable independent learning experience to learners. However, the effectiveness of e-learning for self-regulated science learning is still inconclusive. This study aimed to explore primary school students’ perceptions and experiences of self-regulated science learning in a multimedia-supported e-learning environment. A total of 11 classes from grades 3 to 6 from four Hong Kong schools participated in this study. All e-learning lessons were observed, and 33 (3 from each class) were interviewed using cognitive walkthroughs of how they made use of the multimedia resources and system tools, scaffolds, or prompts to direct their own learning in each of the three self-regulated learning phases (forethought, performance, and reflection). Results revealed that the combined use of the discussion forum and statistics table seemed to facilitate the students’ diagnosis of their prior knowledge of natural phenomena in the forethought phase. In the performance phase, the students mostly enjoyed learning with the graphic data, animations, and/or simulation experiments. Some perceived the prompts or tools from the e-learning system as useful for operation and science learning. In the reflection phase, the students self-assessed their learning using quizzes with emoticons as positive feedback which seemed to increase their enthusiasm for learning science. However, not all students were able to effectively use the system tools or prompts, to keep focused self-discipline, or to achieve deeper science learning without the teacher’s guidance. Hence, this study suggests providing more opportunities for students’ exposure to e-learning resources, while at the same time assisting them in the use of digital tools or resources, in adjusting their learning strategies, and in internalizing scientific ideas and inquiry processes so as to ensure more effective self-regulated science learning. Copyright © 2019 Springer Nature

Building on Carey and Smith’s work on epistemology of science, this study characterized elementary students’ scientific epistemology from the role-of-idea and theory-building perspective. The participants included 102 elementary students in Hong Kong. Open-ended questions and coding schemes were developed to examine and characterize their epistemic understanding of science. Four key dimensions were identified: role of idea, theory-fact understanding, theory revision and creation, and social process of scientific progress. The general pattern showed that students’ views of scientific inquiry ranged from seeing it as a mechanical process involving concrete materials and sets of scientific skills, to viewing it as an idea-driven process comprising collective theory-building and knowledge creation. The analysis showed that these students generally had a limited understanding of the role-of-idea and theory-building in science. Quantitative analysis indicated that this conceptualized epistemology of science was an important predictor of students’ academic performance in science. Implications for science education and future research are discussed.
[Copyright of The Asia - Pacific Education Researcher is the property of Springer Science & Business Media. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s40299-018-0411-4]

The nature of liberal arts education merits renewed attention and consideration, especially in the context of the modern university in both Hong Kong and mainland China, where there is growing recognition that quality education standards should be improved, and an interdisciplinary approach to education and research is the way forward. The liberal arts spirit is an illustration of the power of inspiration and transformation, and through engaging with different perspectives, students are enabled and encouraged to pursue independent study, which boosts their creativity and critical thinking. As a catalyst and facilitator, liberal arts education that encompasses fresh global perspectives and connections has proved its worth over the years. However, since it is sometimes easy to lose sight of some of the fundamental principles essential to university education, we need to realize that too little interaction between science and the humanities has widened the two-culture divide, and the question is how to reconcile, or better still combine, the two. The two-culture debate, although suffering neglect for a long time in China, is of profound relevance and implications for the modern university. It can be observed that participatory interaction inherent in the dynamism of pedagogical engagement is increasingly promoted as the preferred mode of teaching students, who have benefited from broad-based learning as the embodiment of liberal education. Overcoming rigid disciplinary exclusiveness is positively correlated with empowering students with broad knowledge and skills to succeed in the future.
[Copyright of European Review is the property of Cambridge University Press. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1062798717000667]

This study adopted a researcher-generated framework to analyze STEM activities demonstrated in primary students' science projects in an annual extracurricular event held in Hong Kong. Ten students' project reports were randomly selected from each of the three groups of 24 outstanding, 45 merit, and 68 consolation awarded projects. Content analysis was conducted to code the activities in each project. The coded information was then changed into numerical data for quantitative analysis. The results showed that, in general, more engineering and science activities than technology and mathematics activities were adopted by the primary students in their projects. More projects with the Outstanding Award conducted STEM activities than those projects with Merit and Consolation Awards, and significant group differences existed in the science and mathematics activities. Besides, science activities significantly positively related to engineering and mathematics activities. Furthermore, STEM-related content knowledge of discipline core ideas and crosscutting concepts were reported. This study sheds light on the pattern of STEM activities in students' science projects, and has implications for promoting STEM integration in primary education.
[Copyright © 2017 Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan.]