Developing students’ interest in STEM careers in STEM education is important. This study explored the impacts of STEM instruction involving scientists or engineers on 224 Hong Kong students’ interests in STEM careers and their stereotypes about STEM professionals. The teachers who participated in professional development, namely “School-STEM professional collaboration”, implemented the STEM instruction with support from educational researchers and invited STEM experts. Throughout the STEM instruction, students were provided with STEM role models, and were engaged in authentic and hands-on activities to mimic the research work of invited STEM experts. Data were collected through pre- and post-surveys and were analysed using descriptive statistics, t tests, and ANOVAs. The results revealed increased interest in STEM careers, and more positive perceptions of STEM professionals among the students after the instruction. In addition, the impacts of the instruction were found to be influenced by gender-matching between students and STEM professionals. Girls were more likely to improve their interests and alter stereotypes with exposure to female role models. It can be concluded that the STEM instruction diversifying the stereotypes of STEM people can be beneficial to students. This study has implications for supporting more effective STEM education in primary schools. Copyright © 2020 National Institute of Education, Singapore.

This article describes the development of an instrument - the Career and Talent Development Self-Efficacy Scale (CTD-SES) - for assessing students' self-efficacy in applying life skills essential for personal talent development, acquisition of positive work habits, and career exploration. In Study 1, data were obtained from a large sample of Chinese middle-school students (N=15,113) in Grades 7-9 in Hong Kong. The CTD-SES is an 18-item questionnaire with subscales containing items that address students' orientations toward developing their own talents, acquiring and applying positive work habits, and exploring their career possibilities. Evidence is provided for internal consistency, temporal stability, and factor structure of the CTD-SES. Goodness of fit statistics provided support for a three-primary-factor-plus-higher-factor model, and this solution was used in the statistical analyses. The data also indicated that students with plans for university study reported significantly higher scores than those without on all three domains of career and talent development. In Study 2 (N=308) Grade 10 high-ability students' scores in CTD-SES were correlated with scores in career decision self-efficacy and academic performance. The development and validation of CTD-SES is the first step toward investigating career exploration, work habits, and talent development among Asian middle-school adolescents.
[Copyright of High Ability Studies is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13598139.2010.488089]

Mentoring as a time-honored and effective mode of training and teaching is briefly reviewed, highlighting the valuing of the mentoring relationship in educating gifted and talented youths in Chinese history. The current development of mentorship programs for gifted students at the Chinese University of Hong Kong is explained with examples from the search for potential mentors within the university community, and the development and operation of the mentorship program of Chinese creative writings for Hong Kong students. Future directions in the development of mentorship programs for gifted students using reformation technology and peer mentors in double mentoring are discussed, and a model of three levels of mentoring encompassing telementoring, double mentoring, and one-to-one mentoring is suggested.
[Copyright of Roeper Review is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02783190009554072]