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In this study, we explored the extent to which Australian, Chinese, and Korean middle school students perceived themselves to have scientific literacy as global citizens and attempted to identify differences and/or commonalities in their perceptions. A total of 655 middle school students (8th and 9th grades; 358 girls and 297 boys) from the three countries participated in the study. We used Global Scientific Literacy Questionnaires (GSLQ) as a survey instrument to assess the students' perceptions. The GSLQ was developed based on a conceptual framework of Scientific Literacy suggested by Choi, Kim, Lee, Mun, Choi, Krajcik & Shin (2011) and Choi, Lee, Shin, Kim & Krajcik ("Journal of Research in Science Teaching", 48(6), 670-697, 2011) for citizenship education in the 21st century. The results indicated that most of the students from the three countries showed a tendency toward higher scores for Science as human endeavor; the lowest scores were in Meta-cognition and self-direction. A pattern of gender difference was also examined among the three countries. We suggest future research questions based on a cross-cultural perspective in order to explore the reasons for the existence of these similarities and differences.

ABSTRACT As another wave of COVID-19 outbreak has approached in July 2020, a larger scale COVID-19 pediatric Asian cohort summarizing the clinical observations is warranted. Children confirmed with COVID-19 infection from the Republic of Korea, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) and Wuhan, China, during their first waves of local outbreaks were included. Their clinical characteristics and the temporal sequences of the first waves of local paediatric outbreaks were compared. Four hundred and twenty three children with COVID-19 were analyzed. Wuhan had the earliest peak, followed by Korea and HKSAR. Compared with Korea and Wuhan, patients in HKSAR were significantly older (mean age: 12.9 vs. 10.8 vs. 6.6 years, p  < 0.001, respectively) and had more imported cases (87.5% vs. 16.5% vs. 0%, p  < 0.001, respectively). The imported cases were also older (13.4 vs. 7.6 years, p  < 0.001). More cases in HKSAR were asymptomatic compared to Korea and Wuhan (45.5% vs. 22.0% vs. 20.9%, p  < 0.001, respectively), and significantly more patients from Wuhan developed fever (40.6% vs. 29.7% vs. 21.6%, p =0.003, respectively). There were significantly less imported cases than domestic cases developing fever after adjusting for age and region of origin ( p  = 0.046). 5.4% to 10.8% of patients reported anosmia and ageusia. None developed pediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome temporally associated with SARS-CoV-2 (PMIS-TS). In general, adolescents were more likely to be asymptomatic and less likely to develop fever, but required longer hospital stays. In conclusion, majority patients in this pediatric Asian cohort had a mild disease. None developed PIMS-TS. Their clinical characteristics were influenced by travel history and age.