Computational thinking (CT) practices is a critical cognitive tool for students to overcome challenges in this technological era. Few studies investigated CT practices from a development perspective. A two-year intervention was implemented in 30 intervention and 22 control schools in Hong Kong to promote CT education (T1baseline: N = 13,056; T2: N = 16,367; and T3: N = 15,269). Senior primary students (grades 4 to 6) around 8–12 years old were targeted. Among them, 34% were girls at T1baseline. Their learning progression of cognitive development was assessed with a CT practices test. Data were analyzed using item response analysis. Learning trajectories of CT practices were modeled to understand how students’ cognitive development differed between schools. Insights of findings were discussed in bringing CT practices to life. Copyright © 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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.

The ability to formulate problems is an important part of computational thinking (CT) development for nurturing creative problem solvers. However, problem formulation is inadequately addressed in primary school education. This study aimed to investigate the problem formulation processes of primary school students. Students from eight winning teams in a primary school CT competition in Hong Kong participated in the study. Focus group interviews were conducted with the students and teachers separately. Data analysis revealed that the students’ problem formulation processes could be divided into three stages, namely, the Find, Investigate, and Define stages. The Investigate stage was an essential stage connecting the Find and Define stages. Interviews showed that support from teachers and parents was necessary for students to gain a positive experience of formulating problems in primary school context. Findings suggest that CT curriculum should be designed to allocate sufficient project time and learning space for students to develop their problem formulation ability. Problem formulation abilities are critical in the development of students’ creativity in computational thinking. Copyright © 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.

This chapter presents two case studies on e-Learning policy and implementation in universities dedicated to teacher education in Hong Kong and Beijing. The case studies provide an overview of e-Learning in teacher education in the two cities in China; introduce strategies of the university-specific policy on e-Learning in teacher education; share examples of the policy-informed practice for e-Learning in teacher education and then discuss issues for the successful implementation of e-Learning in teacher education. In the case study from Hong Kong, the university-specific policy concerns the development of both e-Learning competency and digital competency to empower student-teachers to be lifelong learners who are active, constructive, interactive and reflective in their learning and professional life. The strategies for e-Learning are implemented to engage student-teachers in blended learning in course delivery, mobile technology-supported learning hub, online assessment-submission platform with plagiarism check and digital portfolio. The strategies for digital competency are implemented to nurture student-teachers with coding, app development, 3D printing, STEM/STEAM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics/science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics) literacy and artificial intelligence literacy to groom creativity and innovation for their competitiveness in the digitalised society. In the case study from Beijing, the university-specific policy aims to develop student-teachers’ digital literacy and the capability of design, development and utilisation of digital learning resources and to develop the ability of ICT-based instructional design. The e-Learning strategies are implemented through engaging student-teachers in learning in technology-rich environments (such as smart classrooms, MOOCs [massive open online courses] or SPOCs [small private online courses]), and through the compulsory course of ‘Introduction to Modern Educational Technology’

Programming is perceived to be an indispensable type of literacy in the digital era. To effectively promote and implement programming in K–12 education, it is necessary to understand school principals' perception of programming education. This study adopted a mixed methods design to explain principals' understanding, expectations, and support for programming education in primary schools using Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA). In study 1, survey questionnaires were distributed to all principals from public primary schools in Hong Kong. Two hundred and sixty-six principals responded to the survey (response rate = 55.6%). In study 2, a follow-up interview study with 13 principals was conducted to further explore their perception of programming education. The results of study 1 indicated that principals with a better understanding of programming education tend to have clearer expectations of how to implement programming education in their schools, which consequently leads to greater support for the implementation of programming education. In study 2, the thematic analysis further supported the results obtained in study 1. Specifically, the results of study 2 demonstrated that most principals show understanding, expectation, and support for the implementation of programming education, which in turn results in various positive student and teacher outcomes. The results also showed that challenges are inevitable during implementation, principals show capabilities and willingness to adjust their expectation and support to better integrate programming education into their school curricula. Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Computational thinking (CT) practices have gained increasing importance in primary school education. However, there are few tools to measure primary school students' CT practices that are based on rigorous psychometric approaches. This study developed an operational definition for CT practices by exploring the key dimensions of their composition and, more importantly, developed and validated a generic test tool that can effectively assess students’ CT practices. Items to measure CT practices were developed using the evidence-centered design (ECD) approach. These items prompted students to exhibit behaviors that demonstrated their skills in the four dimensions of CT practice, namely testing and debugging, algorithmic thinking, reusing and remixing, and abstracting and modularizing. A test consisting of these items was administered to 13,956 Grade 4–6 primary school students from 56 public schools in Hong Kong. The data were analyzed based on the item response theory (IRT) approach, together with other psychometric tests. A bi-factor three-parameter logistic model was ultimately adopted for test validation, as it fitted the data better than the corresponding two-parameter and one-parameter logistic models. The results validated the four-dimensional structure of the CT practices test. The reliability, test item characteristics, and CT practice abilities of students are also discussed. Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

A study was conducted for creating digital classrooms to support students to learn subject knowledge and develop information literacy competency as well as critical thinking skills. A total of 144 students in four Secondary 1 classes in a secondary school in Hong Kong were invited to participate in the study. In the 12 trial lessons, every three students shared a Tablet PC for learning the topic “Air Pollution Problems in Hong Kong” in the Integrated Humanities subject. After the trial teaching, the students and teachers were interviewed about their perception of the support from the designed digital classrooms. The study found that the students and teachers positively perceived the support from the designed digital classrooms on developing subject knowledge, information literacy competency and critical thinking skills. Three recommendations are made for enhancing the pedagogical designs in digital classrooms that emphasize the use of mobile technology. Copyright © 2012 Asia-Pacific Society for Computers in Education.

This study aimed to explore the principals’ perspectives in terms of their understanding, support and expectation towards programming education among primary schools in Hong Kong. 147 primary school principals (30.2%) responded to the survey. The results indicated that all principals have positive perspectives towards programming education in all three aspects. Their major concern was the competency of teachers in teaching programming. They suggested that more teacher development courses should be provided to address this problem. Copyright © 2019 Central China Normal University.

The study looked into how school partnership generates benefit. It aimed to identify the structures of partnership among collaborating schools and to examine elements that can contribute to sustainable eLearning development. Six cluster project cases were purposefully selected from an e-Learning pilot scheme in Hong Kong to investigate how school partnership functions in e-Learning implementation through semi-structured focus group interviews. The findings identified five types of partnership structures that were adopted by the six e-Learning cluster projects, namely, a traditional leader-centered team leadership; a fusion of traditional leader-centered and distributed team leadership; a distributed-coordinated team leadership; an intermediate form of distributed-coordinated and distributed-fragmented team leadership; and a duplicated distributed team leadership structure. Elements including mutual benefit, active school engagement with dynamic communication and interaction, reasonable team size, and co-building of online sharing platform for channeling ideas and actions efficiently are critical to keep e-Learning school partnership sustainable. Copyright © 2019 National Taiwan Normal University.

This study aims to establish a robust measurement to obtain a comprehensive understanding of perceptions of programming education (POPE) of teacher and principal groups. In this study, the POPE scale contains three dimensions: (a) understanding in programming (UP), (b) support for programming (SP), and (c) expectation of programming (EP). Self-reported questionnaires were administrated among 258 teachers and 229 principals. Multigroup analyses were used among the two groups. The results of measurement invariance tests show that configural and metric invariance are fully supported, and scalar invariance is partially supported, suggesting the factor structures, loadings, and most item intercepts of the POPE scale are equivalent across the groups examined. Implications of the study are discussed.
[Copyright of Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment is the property of SAGE Publications. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0734282918787670]