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Drawing on Dweck and Leggett's (1988) implicit beliefs of intelligence framework, the present study explored the incremental belief of intelligence (IBI) and how it correlated to metacognitive skills that reflected vocational students' project design engagement. Data were collected from students from 2 vocational high schools involved in project design for a national invention exhibition. In all, 196 useful returns were subjected to confirmatory factor analysis with structural equation modeling. Study results indicated that there was a positive relationship between IBI and the three types of metacognitive skills: planning and thinking strategies, being aware and monitoring, and evaluating and revising. Moreover, planning and thinking strategies as well as being aware and monitoring were positively related to project design engagement, but no significant relationship could be found between evaluating and revising and project design engagement. Vocational school teachers may refer to this study to encourage their students to practice metacognitive skills in device design so as to reach a high level of behavioral engagement in finding and solving problems during the invention process.

A variety of studies have attempted to explain the dispositions of imagination; notably, imagination engages and develops an individual's creativity. In the present study, we propose that three types of imagination dispositions (i.e., epistemic, sensory, and future imagination) serve as cognitive mechanisms for the ability to efficiently generate new ideas relevant to imagination with-making and imagination without-making. The correlates between imagination disposition and imagination with-making and imagination without-making were subjected to confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling. The results showed that epistemic imagination was positively related to imagination with-making, but not to imagination without-making; future imagination was positively related to imagination without-making but was not related to imagination with-making; and sensory imagination was positively related to both imagination with-making and imagination without-making. Moreover, imagination without-making was positively related to imagination with-making. The results of this study offer a practical model for understanding imaginative disposition and ability, and provide a framework for future studies to explore imagination disposition and ability in various areas, such as craft creation.

Background: The linkage between group members' characteristics, group cohesiveness, knowledge application, and competitive performance has rarely been studied. Purpose: This study aimed to explore the correlations among individual characteristics (i.e. prosociality), collective mind (i.e. collective efficacy and cohesiveness), and how these variables affect scientific knowledge application. Sample: This study examined a STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics) competition, called the GreenMech contest, which required four members in a group to assemble all parts into many configurations for a ball to run and trigger the next junctures. Design and methods: The competition groups assembled their configurations in the morning, with judges assessing their efforts in the afternoon. The bulk of the scoring index in the assessment focused on groups' scientific knowledge application in the overall design. In addition to this assessment, this study additionally used questionnaire surveys for participants to self-rate their perceptions of those individual traits and collective states. Results: Prosociality is positively related to collective efficacy and cohesiveness, while collective efficacy is positively related to cohesiveness. Moreover, these two types of collective mind were both positively related to the application of scientific knowledge. Conclusion: The findings suggest that team members with a higher level of prosociality may provide collective efficacy and cohesiveness, which in turn can facilitate their achievement of competition goals by increasing their application of scientific knowledge in a STEAM contest.

Background: Students need to practice their hands-on skills when they are young to develop confidence for their future careers. Nowadays, iSTEAM (integrated science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics) contests provide opportunities for participants to experience meaningful and challenging hands-on tasks that may foster learning, and to generate positive attitudes that may enhance their self-confidence in their ability to make miniature models. Purpose: To understand the relations between mastery orientation of hands-on tasks, hands-on making interest, engagement, and self-confidence enhancement in an iSTEAM (integrated science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics) contest. Sample: The sample consisted of 212 junior high students including 131 males and 81 females who were preparing to join the iSTEAM contest. Design and Method: Data were collected from 212 questionnaires and subjected to confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling using AMOS 20. Results: The results indicated that mastery orientation of hands-on tasks was positively related to hands-on making interest and engagement. Engagement was positively related to hands-on making interest, and hands-on making interest and engagement were positively related to self-confidence enhancement. Conclusions: Students with high levels of mastery orientation might gain higher self-confidence, mediated by their interest and engagement in a science and technology hands-on making contest.

Background: Hands-on activities and makerspaces have rapidly gained popularity in recent years. One of the reasons for this is that they have the potential to stimulate interest and identity development in STEM or STEAM. Taiwan has organized many technology and science competitions for students to raise their interest and creativity in the past years. Purpose: The iSTEAM contest in Taiwan plan to assist public schools in rural areas to develop students' capability in making activities. To motivate rural students to experience an integrated science, technology, engineering, art, and math (iSTEAM) contest, this study invited rural school students to prepare for and join a competition focusing on making miniature models. The related variables relevant to motivation orientation, such as participants' hands-on making self-efficacy, perceived value, cooperative attitude, and competition preparedness in the iSTEAM contest were explored. Expectedly, with an understanding of the correlates between those variables, the results of this study can be applied to successfully implement other STEAM contests. Sample: A total of 187 students who participated in the competition filled in the questionnaire for the survey participants. After invalid questionnaires were excluded, 167 valid questionnaires were obtained. Design and Methods: This study adopts the purposive sampling method, based on the value-attitude-behavior model, the quantitative research method was adopted. Results: The results showed that students who participated in the competition had high self-efficacy for making miniature models, appreciated the value that the competition brought them, and had a positive attitude about cooperating with team members as well as preparing for the competition. Conclusion: There is a close and positive correlation between the four constructs of self-efficacy, perceived value, cooperative attitude, and competition preparedness.

The scientist-practitioner gap refers to the phenomenon of individuals with a scientific background exhibiting non-scientific beliefs. Informed by the social-cognitive process model, this study aimed to develop a more coherent understanding of how such non-scientific beliefs can be predicted by individuals' cognitive flexibility mediated by their epistemic curiosity. A questionnaire was administered to 332 undergraduate students majoring in science at 2 universities in Taiwan. It included items on cognitive flexibility, 2 types of epistemic curiosity, and non-scientific beliefs. After the reliability and validity of the items and constructs were validated, structural equation modeling was applied to verify the research model. Results indicated that the 2 types of epistemic curiosity, interest-type and deprivation-type, were positively predicted by cognitive flexibility but were negatively reflected in the students' non-scientific beliefs. The study also tested the gender difference for each factor and found that female students majoring in science tended to have stronger non-scientific beliefs than their male counterparts. The results imply that if a higher level of cognitive flexibility is attained, the scientist-practitioner gap may be reduced.

In science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STEAM), hands-on making is the interplay of the sensuous forces of object-free and object-related intelligence transcendence in the continual process of quality improvement. The present research involved the design of a STEAM contest that focuses on having students use hand tools to produce three miniature models in the morning and then use these models to compete in relay races and tug-of-war contests in the afternoon. They were required to rely on their intelligence practice without the assistance of teachers or parents. Thus, this research aimed to explore the correlates between students' object-free (bodily-kinesthetic, spatial, logical) and object-related (naturalistic) intelligences, and their hands-on making self-efficacy (HMSE) reflected in their attitude toward quality improvement (ATQI) when participating in a STEAM contest. Data were collected from 330 junior high school students on the day of the STEAM competition and were subjected to confirmatory factor analysis with structural equation modeling. The results indicated that the students' 4 types of multiple intelligences were positively related to HMSE. Consequently, HMSE was positively related to ATQI. The results imply that ATQI was essential for students to win in the STEAM contest, which benefited those students with a high level of the 4 types of intelligence mediated by HMSE.

The Chinese proverb "heal a headache by curing the head and heal foot pain by curing the feet" alludes to ineffective work resulting from a lack of covariation in reasoning. Actually, much problem solving relies on the analysis of how two or more factors vary in correlation with another related variant (i.e., covariation reasoning). To further investigate covariation reasoning and its related affective factors, we designed a website called "No Good (NG) Bread" for senior vocational high school students in Taipei who had taken baking courses for 1 year to apply their knowledge in solving baking-related problems. Data collected from 113 participants aged 16 to 17 were validated by confirmatory factor analysis using Visual PLS 1.04 to examine the interrelatedness among metacognition, experiential values, and performance achievement. The examination revealed that metacognition was positively related to hedonic and utilitarian experiential values, which were subsequently positively related to the students' learning achievements. The results imply that websites can be developed for specialized courses, such as nursing or automobile repair, to develop students' covariation reasoning for more effective problem solving.

According to social dilemma theory, students may be characterized as being indifferent to reciprocal behavior and disengaged from interacting with the board gaming process. Given a common goal, students' prosociality can affect the collective efficacy and goal achievement motivation that reflects their flow experience in a cooperative-competitive computer-based digital board game, called "Strike-Up." The players were randomly provided with five numbers, addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division signs, and parentheses, and needed to complete the arithmetic calculation to find the best approaches to achieve the goal of reaching the end of the game. In addition to the cognitive strategies, the game allowed players to help each other to win. To explore the correlation, 240 students were randomly grouped into three-player teams to play "Strike-Up" against other teams. Data of 180 players were effectively returned and subjected to confirmatory analysis with structural equation modeling. The results revealed that prosociality can positively predict players' flow experience mediated positively by collective efficacy and performance-approach goal motivation. The results also implied that the higher level of prosociality students had, the higher level of flow state they experienced in the game which involved a social dilemma.

Interest in educational research can be categorised into situational interest (SI) and individual interest (II); the sequential phases of interest development for learning have long been recognised as triggered SI, maintained SI, emerging II, and well-developed II. This study proposes an interest development model which involves SI and II mentally developed during students' preparation for and participation in annual 'PowerTech' STEAM contests in Taiwan. In July 2015, data were first collected to examine students' triggered SI, and 4 months later in the world contest to examine the local contest winning students' maintained SI. Also, during the contest, data were collected on-site to examine the students' emerging II. Finally, the same measurement tool was administered again for the world contest winning students 2 months later in February 2016. The results of this study showed that triggered SI is positively related to maintained SI. Maintained SI is positively related to emerging II, but it is not significantly related to well-developed II. Emerging II is positively related to well-developed II. The implication of this finding is that a well-designed competition may raise students' SI so that emerging II and well-developed II could mature due to the effect of maintained SI.

Based on the cognitive-affective theory, the present study designed a science inquiry learning model, "predict-observe-explain" (POE), and implemented it in an app called "WhyWhy" to examine the effectiveness of students' science inquiry learning practice. To understand how POE can affect the cognitive-affective learning process, as well as the learning progress, a pretest and a posttest were given to 152 grade 5 elementary school students. The students practiced WhyWhy during six sessions over 6 weeks, and data related to interest in learning science (ILS), cognitive anxiety (CA), and extraneous cognitive load (ECL) were collected and analyzed through confirmatory factor analysis with structure equation modeling. The results showed that students with high ILS have low CA and ECL. In addition, the results also indicated that students with a high level of self-confidence enhancement showed significant improvement in the posttest. The implications of this study suggest that by using technology-enhanced science learning, the POE model is a practical approach to motivate students to learn.

Microteaching has gained considerable attention for its effectiveness in rapid and contextual training in professional development programs. However, the interpretive quality of the teaching demonstration and peer feedback may influence individuals' attribution and self-correction, leading to ineffective learning. In this study, a microteaching workshop in a professional development program for 78 elementary school science teachers was investigated. The results showed that the effectiveness of microteaching was negatively affected by participants' perception bias due to social categorization. Moreover, it was indicated that the participants' perception of the in-group and out-group, classified by the degree of the individuals' science knowledge, fostered social categorization. Participants tended to experience perception conflicts caused by their inability to see personal faults, and a typical perception bias of "seeing one's own strengths and seeing others' shortcomings" was more frequently recognized in the out-group. These results converge to highlight the importance of social categorization in perception bias relevant to microteaching.

Hands-on making (e.g., "Maker") has become prevalent in current educational settings. To understand the role that students' epistemic curiosity plays in hands-on making contests, this study explored its correlation to students' positive affect and continuance intention to participate in a hands-on making contest called "PowerTech". PowerTech requires students to produce miniatures in the morning and use the miniatures to take part in relay racing and tug-of-war competitions in the afternoon. Data from 514 individuals were collected and subjected to confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling by AMOS 20. The results revealed the two types of epistemic curiosity (EC), interest (I-type) and informational deprivation type (D-type), played a mediating role in bonding participants' positive affect and their continuance intention to join a hands-on making contest. The implication of this study suggests students' epistemic curiosity can be aroused in the process of participating in competitive hands-on making contests such as PowerTech.