Background: Artificial Intelligence (AI) literacy is a crucial part of digital literacy that all individuals should possess in today's technologically advanced world. Despite the potential benefits that AI education offers, little research has been done on how to teach AI literacy to children. Objectives: This study aimed to fill that gap by investigating how children were engaged in AI literacy activities that are supported by intelligent agents. These activities were implemented in a Hong Kong kindergarten with a class of six 5-year-olds (Mage = 62.83 months, SD = 2.91) over a 6-week period. Methods: The study gathered data from multiple sources, including classroom observations, teacher interviews, and documents/artefacts. Results and Conclusions: The results showed that children could learn about AI through interaction with intelligent agents in embodied learning contexts. The findings of this study have implications for the broader field of digital technology education, particularly in the context of early childhood education. Copyright © 2023 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

This study trialed a pedagogy of “To Play and Learn, To Inquire, To STEM and Code”. Supplementary with seven hands-on activity worksheets and 19 coding product templates and samples, the pedagogy was designed to expose students to the construction of electric circuits with Micro:bit in STEM classrooms for developing knowledge of electric circuits and problem-solving skills. The pedagogy was implemented as a 280-minute teaching in eight lessons for 23 selected Grade 5 classes, which involved 369 students from nine primary schools at Hong Kong. The results of pre-post-test validate the success of the pedagogy in students' statistically significant growth in all three topic-specific knowledge points. The results of questionnaire survey demonstrate the impact of the pedagogy on students' statistically significant growth in their awareness of and their confidence in applying the target problem-solving skills. The results of focus group interviews confirm that students were satisfied with the experiences and outcomes of the pedagogy in developing topic-specific knowledge and problem-solving skills. This study reveals that the pedagogy is well received by students; noticeably effective to enhance students' knowledge of electric circuits; and potential to promote their development of problem-solving skills. Future directions to extend the pedagogy for senior primary curriculum are discussed. Copyright © 2022 Asia-Pacific Society for Computers in Education.

Artificial intelligence (AI) education for K-12 students is an emerging necessity, owing to the rapid advancement and deployment of AI technologies. It is essential to take teachers' perspectives into account when creating ecologically valid AI education programmes for K-12 settings. However, very few studies investigated teacher perception of AI education. Phenomenography is an empirical research method that was widely used to understand teacher's interpretive understanding of new phenomenon, in this study, the teaching of AI in secondary school. Therefore, the present study investigated teachers' conceptions of teaching AI using a phenomenographic approach. Twenty-eight in-service teachers from 17 secondary schools in Hong Kong were invited to participate in an interview after implementing an AI curriculum. Six categories of teacher conceptions were identified: (1) technology bridging, (2) knowledge delivery, (3) interest stimulation, (4) ethics establishment, (5) capability cultivation, and (6) intellectual development. The hierarchical relationships of the six concepts were organised as an outcome space. The space shows a range of surface to deep conceptions and offers an understanding of how teachers perceive AI education through their teaching experience. Two learning paths have been suggested for cultivating technical and non-technical teachers for teaching AI. These learning paths provide insights for teacher educators and policymakers to enhance teachers' competence in teaching AI and promote general AI education for K-12 students. Copyright © 2022 Springer.

Background and aims: Mathematics is one of the critical elements of STEM education. However, the importance of mathematics has not been fully emphasized in the practice of STEM education (Martín‐Páez et al., 2019). Promoting STEM education in mathematics education is one of the focal points of the Hong Kong school curriculum (CDC, 2017). In this study, we introduced an innovative STEM learning activity in the classroom based on the topic of 3D shapes in the primary mathematics curriculum. The aim was to provide an example of a school-based mathematics curriculum integrated with STEM education and offer teachers the design and development of STEM pedagogy.Methodology or process(es) undertaken: Focusing on the learning objective of recognizing the concept of 3D shape, we designed an interdisciplinary STEM learning activity in grade two in a Hong Kong primary school. Students learned the concept of a cylinder in the Funny Zoetrope Project. A curriculum consultant, a mathematics teacher and a visual art teacher collaborated to implement the whole teaching design within seven lessons (five mathematics lessons and two visual art lessons). A series of learning booklets were designed for teaching and learning. Regarding the process of preliminary preparation, teaching arrangement, course implementation, and after-class feedback, the STEM learning activity was incorporated into the school-based mathematics curriculum.Results and conclusions: The STEM learning activity based on the mathematical topic provides students with opportunities to see, know and understand the mathematical concept in STEM education. Students experience interdisciplinary learning during the process of making a zoetrope. They learn to integrate and apply knowledge and skills they have learned in mathematics and visual art. Some generic skills such as problem-solving, collaboration, communication, and self-assessment skills are also developed. Copyright © 2022 7th STEM in Education Conference.

This study explores how students in a joint process of knowledge construction through the use of multilingual and multimodal resources in groups promotes the learning of scientific concepts in the context of laboratory work. Inductive qualitative discourse analysis was conducted to examine how students’ translanguage in a group completing tasks in two Grade 10 secondary science labs (biology and chemistry) in a Hong Kong EMI secondary school and how such a joint process of knowledge construction promotes the learning of scientific concepts. Using translanguaging as a theoretical framework, the analysis shows that even though schools have imposed an English-only policy, students use their linguistic and semiotic resources to both co-construct their scientific knowledge and practise their science apprenticeship. Translanguaging plays a role in mediating the students’ understanding of science, facilitating peer work and creating an enjoyable learning environment in the lab. The result implies that translanguaging as a pedagogical tool may create a space for content subject learning in Hong Kong EMI school setting. Copyright © 2021 Taylor & Francis Ltd.

Undergraduate courses on the nature of science (NOS) often involve teaching a set of core elements. Without extensive unpacking and reflection, the complexity of those NOS elements could be easily misinterpreted and oversimplified by the students. Our paper will explain how we teach our Hong Kong university students the NOS by introducing traditional Chinese science in a general education common core course. This course adopted a seminar method of teaching by introducing and discussing the cultural–historical context in its pedagogical design. There are indicators that this approach is effective as the conflict between students' own culture and what they are learning generated a deeper reflection and integration of the newly learned with their prior knowledge and personal beliefs. We believe our pilot study would be an invaluable case study for exploring ways to improve NOS teaching for other educators. Copyright © 2021 Springer.

The aim of this study was to compare the effectiveness of two teaching approaches for senior secondary biology students to learn about the nature of science (NOS): the History of Science (HOS) approach, which is the most commonly used approach in Hong Kong schools, and the Socio- scientific Issue (SSI) approach, which develops students’ understanding of NOS through analysis of socio-scientific issues. This study was motivated by the consistent reports by the Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority (HKEAA) on the poor performance of Grade 12 Biology students in the Hong Kong Diploma of Education Examination (HKDSE) regarding their understanding of the Nature of Science (NOS). From the literature, the SSI approach presents a viable alternative in improving students learning of NOS. Three research questions were construed. 1) Could the SSI or HOS approach enhance Hong Kong senior secondary students’ understanding of major tenets of NOS? 2) Which approach, SSI or HOS, could help Senior Secondary Biology students develop more informed conceptions of major NOS tenets? 3) Are there any influences of gender or biology performance on students’ learning of NOS using either approach?This research was based on a quasi-experiment design. The sample consists of 67 secondary students from four intact classes, two of which were biology classes at Grade 11 and two biology classes at Grade 12. They were divided into two treatment groups (HOS and SSI), with each group comprising one Grade 11 and one Grade 12 class. All students received a pre-test consisting of 10 open-ended questions based on the Views of Nature of Science form D+ (VNOS-D+) instrument to test students’ understanding of NOS before the intervention. After this, both groups went through a 3-day learning process to enhance their understanding of NOS. The only difference was that one group was taught through the HOS approach, while the other group received the intervention by using SSI. After almost two weeks of the

Nature of science (NOS) has become one of the major emphases in curriculum and assessment. This study explores what NOS is included and how this is achieved in the Hong Kong biology curriculum and 7-year high-stakes assessments. While conceptualizations of the official definition of NOS differ, this study employs the family resemblance approach (FRA) to analyze the inclusion of NOS in the curriculum and the high-stakes assessments. In one characterisation of FRA (i.e. Erduran and Dagher 2014), NOS comprises a cognitive-epistemic system and a social-institutional system. There is a total of 11 categories in these two systems and these categories are interconnected with one another. By adopting the epistemic network analysis (ENA), the frequency of connections among these NOS categories in the curriculum and the high-stakes assessments can be visualized and compared. Two main similarities are observed when comparing the epistemic networks of the curriculum and the high-stakes assessments: (1) a greater emphasis on the cognitive-epistemic rather than the social-institutional system and (2) the rarity of connections between categories in the social-institutional system. However, the high-stakes assessments differ from the curriculum in that they have more connections between the cognitive-epistemic system and the social-institutional system. Moreover, assessment items in the Hong Kong biology examinations involve a limited range of contexts and skills. Implications for the design of curricula and high-stakes assessments will be discussed. Copyright ©Springer Netherlands.

In recent years, research on students' scientific competencies has generated much discussion. According to the PISA 2015 Assessment and Analytical Framework, both scientific competencies and attitudes towards science - interest in science, valuing scientific approaches to enquiry (or epistemological beliefs about science), and environmental awareness - are integral aspects of scientific literacy. However, few studies have focused on the relationships between them. This article examines how students' scientific competencies are affected by their attitudes. Based on a theoretical analysis, the present study argues that the three attitudinal factors have a direct impact on scientific competencies, interest has an immediate influence on the other two attitudes, and epistemological beliefs are directly affected by environmental awareness. To test this hypothesis, a model was constructed to verify such relationships. PISA 2015 assessment instruments were used for data collection. The participants were 25,658 students from different parts of China, containing Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Guangdong, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macao. Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) was employed for data analysis. The results confirmed our hypothesis. The way in which Chinese students' attitudes affected their scientific competencies did not differ (to a statistically significant level) by gender or district. The limitations and implications of this research are discussed below.
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