Background Domain-general computational thinking (CT) is increasingly recognized as a fundamental competence for problem-solving in an AI-driven era. As CT and STEM education are widely regarded as mutually reinforcing, integrating CT into STEM education has become a growing priority. However, a clearly defined pedagogical framework for implementing CT–STEM education at the secondary level remains lacking. This study therefore aimed to develop and evaluate a 5E-based CT–STEM pedagogical framework using the Fuzzy Delphi Method (FDM) and to examine its feasibility from teachers’ perspectives. Results Feedback was collected from 20 experts using a researcher-developed FDM questionnaire. Expert consensus was reached on the CT practices assigned to the five instructional phases (i.e., 5Es), resulting in a framework comprising 14 core practices. Semi-structured interviews were then conducted with eight purposively selected in-service teachers using a developed interview protocol, and the data were analysed through epistemic network analysis (ENA). The findings supported the perceived feasibility of the framework and highlighted its potential cognitive and non-cognitive benefits for students. Teachers also identified potential procedural, educative, and instructional challenges associated with classroom implementation and emphasised the importance of contextual adaptation, instructional scaffolding, and the responsible use of generative AI. Conclusions This study provides a research-based pedagogical framework to support CT–STEM implementation and foster students’ domain-general CT in secondary education.

Promoting progressive discourse and sustained inquiry is a focus area of knowledge building research. Although different approaches for scaffolding productive discourse have been documented, the experimental investigation into the impact of teacher scaffolding on students’ knowledge building processes and outcomes in technology-supported environments is limited. Therefore, we designed a quasi-experimental study to examine the impact of teacher scaffolding on students’ interaction patterns, social-epistemic networks, and academic performance. Over a 14-week course, data were collected from undergraduates’ online interactions, discourse in the Knowledge Forum, and their group artifacts. We employed lag sequence analysis, social epistemic network signature, and the Kruskal-Wallis test to analyze the data and compare the differences between the control and experimental groups. Findings demonstrate that teacher scaffolding can effectively enhance students’ reflective behaviors, foster social and epistemic engagement, and improve academic performance within technology-supported knowledge building environments. This study provides valuable insights into the design and implementation of teacher scaffolding to facilitate student knowledge building processes and outcomes.

BackgroundRecognizing the declining interest of school students in Physics, this study sought to explore the situation in England, Hong Kong and Singapore.PurposeTo ascertain students' views about various aspects of physics.SampleA total of 2719 students participated in this study.Design and methodsA survey approach was used to ascertain the views of students. It was earlier validated in one of the countries. The Rasch model was used to treat the survey data.ResultsOn the utilitarian factor, the students from Hong Kong and Singapore held significantly negative attitudes towards career prospects for physics graduates. To them, obtaining a degree in physics would not, as compared to other subjects, appreciably assist them vocationally, which was in contrast to the view held by the students in England. On the intrinsic factor, while the students from all three countries found physics to be interesting, it did not appear to significantly motivate them to want to continue with physics at tertiary level. Nevertheless, they asserted that good grades do motivate them to study physics. On the social aspect, the students from the three countries endorsed significantly positively on the influence of their physics teachers in inspiring them to study physics, with the students from Singapore and Hong Kong endorsing slightly higher agreement. The former group also reported that their close friends generally think that physics is 'uncool' while those from England felt otherwise. Students' views were similar in terms of parental influence, with parents significantly discouraging them from studying physics at tertiary level. They did not exhibit significantly different views on subject matter. Enrichment activities and laboratory work were important to them in nurturing and maintaining interest in physicsConclusionThe survey data has provided useful insights on students' views of various aspects of Physics in the three countries.

BackgroundMany stakeholders recognise the importance of integrated STEM education in nurturing 21st century skills but little consideration has been given to how scientific creativity can be fostered through this approach among young learners.Purpose and MethodsThe study describes the classroom experience of incorporating three authentic design-based STEM projects (1. Development of a Disinfection Device, 2. Building an Intelligent Transportation Model, and 3. Design an Ecologically Smart Pond) of grades five and six primary students and illustrates how the activities integrated different STEM disciplines. Descriptions of the projects' three design-based integrated activities, lasting 12-16 weeks, were developed by three primary STEM teachers from three different schools in Macau, each of whom had at least two years of experience in implementing STEM learning. This is a mixed method research where semi-structured interviews with the teachers revealed how they fostered students' scientific creativity through design and how the incorporation of the design process stimulated their scientific creativity. The effects of the activities on scientific creativity development, on the other hands, were quantitatively compared for 120 students who participated in STEM projects and a control group of 120 students who were not from the three schools.ResultThe findings revealed that teachers foster scientific creativity of students throughout the design process and students who participated in the project exhibited significantly higher scientific creativity, particularly in dimensions related to design.ConclusionHence, the engineering design process is an effective instructional approach for supporting cross-disciplinary STEM learning in primary grades as well as nurturing scientific inquiry and fostering students' scientific creativity.

The purpose of this study is to unveil pre-service teachers’ (PSTs’) competencies and the challenges they encounter when designing 5E inquiry-based integrated Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (iSTEM) lessons, as well as their perspectives on the underlying factors for these challenges. Data were collected through lesson plans and reflections from 44 pre-service iSTEM teachers. We used a scoring rubric, descriptive statistics, and Friedman tests with Conover’s post-hoc tests to analyze the submitted lesson plans and evaluate PSTs’ competency in crafting lesson plans. Quantitative ethnography (QE), grounded in PSTs’ reflections, was then employed to identify challenges and factors, with epistemic network analysis (ENA) modeling the relationships among these identified codes. The results indicate that while PSTs can design high-quality iSTEM lesson plans using the 5E model, they face concurrent challenges in the Explore, Elaborate, and Evaluate phases. They also reported difficulties in ensuring coherence across different phases and providing adequate content. Various factors, including PSTs’ views on inquiry, their understanding of the 5E model, comprehension of STEM knowledge, and attitudes toward task design, contribute to these challenges, and the predominant reason is their low level of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). Based on these findings, this study offers practical suggestions for both teacher educators and PSTs and contributes to the design and implementation of iSTEM teacher education courses.

Abstract Background Integrating computational thinking (CT) into STEM education has recently drawn significant attention, strengthened by the premise that CT and STEM are mutually reinforcing. Previous CT-STEM studies have examined theoretical interpretations, instructional strategies, and assessment targets. However, few have endeavored to delineate the transfer effects of CT-STEM on the development of cognitive and noncognitive benefits. Given this research gap, we conducted a systematic literature review and meta-analysis to provide deeper insights. Results We analyzed results from 37 studies involving 7,832 students with 96 effect sizes. Our key findings include: (i) identification of 36 benefits; (ii) a moderate overall transfer effect, with moderate effects also observed for both near and far transfers; (iii) a stronger effect on cognitive benefits compared to noncognitive benefits, regardless of the transfer type; (iv) significant moderation by educational level, sample size, instructional strategies, and intervention duration on overall and near-transfer effects, with only educational level and sample size being significant moderators for far-transfer effects. Conclusions This study analyzes the cognitive and noncognitive benefits arising from CT-STEM’s transfer effects, providing new insights to foster more effective STEM classroom teaching.

Purpose Metadiscourse is an important dialogue technique used in productive knowledge building to help a group evaluate and advance their knowledge progress. Previous studies have identified and defined various types of metadiscourse. However, there is scant knowledge about how different metadiscourse types emerge among different groups or what implicit correlations lie between progressive discourse and metadiscourse. Moreover, research on how different types of metadiscourse influence groups' knowledge advancement and artifacts is still inadequate. Therefore, this study aims to further examine the roles that different types of metadiscourse play in the collaborative knowledge building community on both a fine-grained (i.e. progressive discourse) and coarse-grained (i.e. group knowledge advancement and group artifacts) level. Design/methodology/approach Data for this study are drawn from the behaviour of undergraduate students participating in a 12-week course at a key university in China. On the fine-grained level, epistemic network analysis (ENA) is applied to illustrate how metadiscourse promotes the development of progressive discourse. On the coarse-grained level, two different chi-square tests are conducted to examine the roles of different types of metadiscourse in groups' knowledge advancement and artifacts. Findings The analysis allowed several conclusions to be drawn. First, the types of metadiscourse that students most often adopted were reflecting on ideas development (RD) and commenting on ideas (CI); they less frequently adopted setting group goals (SG) and making group plans (MP). Second, most types of metadiscourse correlated with developments in progressive discourse, particularly RD and CI. Third, the metadiscourse types RD, CI and coordinating group efforts (CE) played essential roles in knowledge advancement. Fourth, higher-quality artifacts could be created by using the metadiscourse type reviewing the state of knowledge building progress (RP). Originality/value A more profound comprehension of the role that metadiscourse plays in the collaborative knowledge building community not only contributes to the literature in the knowledge building field but also carries a significant meaning in regulating community, promoting learner agency and sustained knowledge, and consequently improving collaborative learning performance.

We report the validity of a test instrument that assesses the arithmetic ability of primary students by (a) describing the theoretical model of arithmetic ability assessment using Wilson's (2004) four building blocks of constructing measures and (b) providing empirical evidence for the validation study. The instrument consists of 21 multiple-choice questions that hierarchically evaluate arithmetic intended learning outcomes (ILOs) on arithmetic ability, hierarchically, based on Bloom's cognitive taxonomy for 138 primary three grade students. The theoretical model describes students' arithmetic ability on three distinct levels: solid, developing, and basic. At each level, the model describes the characteristics of the tasks that the students can answer correctly. The analysis shows that the difficulty of the items followed the expected order in the theoretical construct map, where the difficulty of each designed item aligned with the cognitive level of the student, the item difficulty distribution aligned with the structure of the person construct map, and word problems required higher cognitive abilities than the calculation problems did. The findings, however, pointed out that more difficult items can be added to better differentiate students with different ability levels, and an item should be revised to enhance the reliability and validity of the research. We conclude that the conceptualizations of such formative assessments provide meaningful information for teachers to support learning and tailoring instruction.

The landscape of higher education has changed dynamically with an increasing focus on online education, especially in response to the pandemic and learner-centered pedagogies. However, changes with respect to increased effective use of online learning in many Asian universities have been minimal, and many Asian educators claim that it is mostly due to cultural disposition and that instructors teach based on how they were taught. We describe the use of learner-centered teaching and e-portfolios that empowers students and nurtures deeper learning in courses for training pre- and in-service teachers at a public university in Macau. A total of 67 teacher students in three cohorts across two academic years participated in the study. During the 14-week courses, they were required to do weekly e-portfolio entries of their learning experience, which were shared with peers to build community and foster peer learning and the entries provided formative assessments to the instructor. A survey instrument was used to assess the impact of these changes by using e-portfolio to facilitate pre-service and in-service teachers' development. Student survey responses strongly support that the use of e-portfolios fosters deep learning by helping them to document their learning, engage in self-directed learning, receive feedback from their peers, and increase motivation for learning and the use of online technologies through pedagogies focused on students' actions or active learning.

BackgroundThere are relatively few studies in the literature on attitudes towards science that focus on cross-national comparisons and, more importantly, on gender differences in this regard.PurposeTo explore attitudes towards science with respect to gender for three developed countries, each from a different continent - England, Singapore, and USA.SampleThe entire TIMSS 2011 data set for England, Singapore and USA was used (N = 20,246)Design and methodsThe survey on attitudes towards science used in TIMSS 2011 formed the basis for this study. Rasch analysis was used to treat the survey data rather than classical test analysis,ResultsWhen data for the three countries are aggregated together, overall, males showed more favorable attitudes towards science as compared to females. There are gender differences for most of the items in the attitudes scale, not only between genders in a country but also across countries as well, and the differences are statistically significant for a number of items. Though Singapore topped in science achievement, their students' confidence in science, irrespective of gender, is low compared to those in England and USA. Also, students from the USA, especially males, disagreed more on the value of studying science as compared to the other two countries.ConclusionLarge-scale international assessment data provide not only robust sample sizes but also more representative data which can be meaningfully analyzed. This has shed some useful light on not only overall gender differences in the samples but also on a country-wide and cross-national basis. Even though the three counties selected for the study are economically developed, there are still gender differences on attitudes towards science. A few factors can possibly help to explain the differences on a cross-national basis - for example, educational ecosystem, relative levels of economic development and culture.

This paper reports on teachers’ experiences of a 10-week, wiki-based, predominantly mobile science education intervention for secondary school students. It was designed to shift traditional pedagogical approaches towards more inquiry-based approaches by combining the strengths of wikis and mobile smart devices. The four participating Macau science teachers, with shared responsibility for 250 students, noted greater student engagement and reported some shifts towards more constructivist pedagogy and more active student learning. Evidence emerged of the value of personalization, collaboration, online feedback, and authentic learning, but the lack of mobile optimization of the wiki platform negatively impacted the degree of personalization, collaboration and authenticity. Lessons were learned about the need for educational technology interventions to carefully consider the intersection between software and hardware; the reasons for the recent decline of wikis as educational tools; and the ongoing educational value of web 2.0-style collaboration in our increasingly mobile era.

Because human processes are subtle, complex, and contextualized, computational representations of those processes face highly significant unmet design challenges. Design Thinking (DT) offers a potential new paradigm of creativity and innovation in education capable of effecting meaningful culture change. DT is nonlinear but encompasses elements of empathy, problem definition, ideation, prototyping, and tests that may freely move as needed from and to each other. DT's empathic focus on end users' needs suggests educational measurement's information infrastructures will have to coherently integrate assessment and instruction across multiple levels of complexity in communication. Applying DT reveals the need to attend to previously undeveloped technical issues in communication. Especially important are developmental, horizontal, and vertical forms of coherence, and denotative, metalinguistic, and metacommunicative levels of complexity. New solutions emerge when classrooms are reconceived as meta-design ecosystem niches of creativity and innovation structured from the bottom up by flows of self-organizing information. Recently identified correspondences between educational measurement and metrology support efforts aimed at developing multilevel common languages for the communication of learning outcomes. Prototype reports illustrate how emergent measured constructs can be brought into language in ways that integrate developmental, horizontal, and vertical coherence across levels of complexity. Coherent information infrastructures of these kinds are capable of adapting to new circumstances as populations of persons and items change, doing so without compromising the continuity of comparisons or the uniqueness of locally situated knowledge and practices.

Students’ attitudes towards science (SAS) is a prominent research area as evident in the science education literature. Many SAS studies incorporated science confidence (SC), science enjoyment (SE) and importance of science (IS) into the study of SAS. However, the incorporation of these constructs often depends on the subjective judgment of the researchers. This study examines the incorporation of the three constructs in the measure of SAS based on the Asian Student Attitudes Towards Science Class (ASATSC) instrument. A total of 1,133 7th to 11th graders from China completed a survey of the three constructs. Data was collectively assessed in terms of fit to the Rasch model that requires invariant and consistent response category functioning. Results indicated that SC was not correlated well with IS whilst SC and SE were consistent with each other in the measure of SAS. Recommendations were provided on how constructs on the measurement of SAS can be better designed.

Parenting young children could be stressful at times and parenting stress could have an impact on parenting styles and child behavior problems which could lead to difficulties in later life. Therefore, the relationship among these three factors is worthy of examination. In this study we aim to examine the direct relationship between parenting stress, parenting styles, and perceived child behavior problems; and to investigate a model that illustrates the mediating role of negative (authoritarian and permissive) parenting styles on the relationship between parenting stress and perceived child behavior problems in China. A total of 371 parents with preschool age children (3 to 7 years old) were recruited. The results showed higher level of parenting stress was associated with higher level of reported child behavior problems. Parenting stress was positively related to negative parenting styles, and negative parenting styles partially mediated the relationship between parenting stress and child behavior problems. Findings from this study suggested that reducing parenting stress, improving parenting behaviors such as parenting styles, and enhancing parent-child relationship through early support (e.g., parenting skills training) are of vital importance and mutual benefits to the parents, children, and family relationships at large.

Understanding secondary student attitudes towards science (SAS) is important if we are to increase the number and diversity of students who pursue STEM fields and address the gender imbalance in STEM careers. Existing studies that measured SAS tended to directly translate an ordinal scale (e.g., from 'strongly agree' to 'strongly disagree') into a set of linear scores (e.g. 5 for strongly agree and 1 for strongly disagree). We suggest that SAS constructs need to be calibrated on an interval scale in order to be meaningfully quantified. We propose the use of Rasch measurement where SAS constructs can be ranked according to their prevalence as SAS measurements. This paper implemented Rasch measurement to examine how Chinese boys and girls perceived different aspects of physics. A total of 495 boys and 490 girls from five secondary schools in Hong Kong participated in this study. An invariance analysis of SAS constructs important to boys and girls were found to have shown a similar hierarchy and that there are gender differences with respect to some but not all construct items. Main findings on how Asian boys and girls perceived physics, its implications and recommendations focusing on possible strategies to encourage girls to study physics are discussed.

Assessment for learning aims to improve learning by feeding back information on the attainment of intended learning objectives to students and teachers. In this form of assessment, the student acts as a measuring instrument and learning attainment is the quantity to be measured. Current practices in classroom assessment, unfortunately, often are not grounded and have been focused on total correct scores without reference to the evidence hidden within them concerning the attainment of learning objectives. Our goal in this study is to clarify what assessment for learning is, why it is important, and how it works in a metrologically coherent context of equated assessments administered from calibrated item banks. The main focus lies in how item content can be framed according to intended learning outcomes that are meaningfully interpreted using a construct map. An example involves empirical datasets of 283 secondary three students from two formative tests designed by two science teachers. Coherent formative assessment of this kind applies a scientific model that belongs to the same class metrologists consider as defining measurement. The results illuminate the potential for establishing item banks that enable teachers to more efficiently and effectively assess and improve the attainment of learning objectives across different cohorts of students in a common metric.

The study looked at early childhood education teachers' views on teaching science in China using the Preschool-Teachers' Attitudes and Beliefs toward Science Teaching (P-TABS) instrument. A total of 245 teachers from 60 preschools in Guangdong province in China, selected through a stratified random sampling approach, participated in the current study. The instrument was validated and results were analyzed using the Rasch model. Results revealed that although the sampled teachers support child-centered learning, early childhood education teachers are somewhat uncomfortable in planning science activities that are engaging of preschoolers. The teachers report low confidence in their ability as science teachers and perceived themselves to have inadequate science knowledge. They noted a number of challenges associated with the teaching of science including the overloaded teaching commitments and the lack of resources for use in science activities.

Student Evaluations of Teaching (SET) have been adopted worldwide as a standard practice to enhance teaching and learning quality. However, improvement efforts are threatened by various problems involving ordinal scores and interpretive frameworks restricted to individual item sets and uninformed by a well-defined invariant construct. In this study, an approach to framing SET items according to theory rather than personal or subjective decisions is described. A sample of 920 students from the University of Macau participating in this study provided responses to 42 SET items. Applying a scientific model of measurement, the data collected were analysed and interpreted. Justification between theoretical and measurement analysis informed the creation of a theoretical SET construct map. That map and the associated item hierarchy were used as reference sources for configuring SET reports and recommendations. A new coherent paradigm for SET documentation is proposed for further study.

We report here on a comparative study of middle school students' attitudes towards science involving three countries: England, Singapore and the U.S.A. Complete attitudinal data sets from TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study) 2011 were used, thus giving a very large sample size (N=20,246), compared to other studies in the journal literature. The Rasch model was used to analyse the data, and the findings have shed some useful light on not only how the Western and Asian students responded on a comparative basis in the various scales related to attitudes but also on the validity, reliability, and unidimensionality of the attitudes instrument used in TIMSS 2011. There may be a need for TIMSS test developers to consider doing away with negatively phrased items in the attitudes instrument and phrasing these positively as the Rasch framework shows that response bias is associated with these statements.