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A STEM methods course was developed for undergraduate preservice teachers at the faculty of education. The course model design had three phases: 1) review of the STEM literature and conceptual considerations, 2) planning of the STEM methods course, and 3) evaluation by experts and revision based on their feedback. Research literature and other documentation were reviewed. A framework and guiding principles for primary-level STEM education were developed to identify key elements, including STEM focus/essence, student-centered, curriculum, learning environment, and assessment. A 15-week STEM methods course was planned to model good practices for teaching integrated STEM and to let preservice teachers confront real-world issues and problems that arise in STEM instruction and then design their own STEM lessons or activities for teaching. The result of implementing the STEM methods course was examined through pre and post-surveys which showed the influence of the methods course in promoting preservice teachers' STEM understanding.

Over the past few years, digital fabrication has been utilized in technology laboratories to emphasize hands-on learning processes in technology and engineering education. Recent studies indicate that hands-on activities can help students connect with science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines and develop key skills required in the 21st century. However, some argue that introducing 3D printing technology in schools could reduce pragmatic engagement and cause affective loss of hands-on interests. To explore the use of 3D printing machines in technology and engineering education, this research developed a STEM-based vibration isolator activity using a 3D printer and repetitive modeling. A nonequivalent control group design was employed in this research, and 192 Taiwanese high school students participated in this study. The conclusions are: (1) repetitive modeling in the STEM-based design activity enhanced student imagination; (2) repetitive modeling was effective in developing high school students' interest in technology and engineering careers; and (3) repetitive modeling, engineering design, and "conceiving imagination" were significant predictors of the students' final products. These results suggest a benefit to high school technology education of using 3D printers in a STEM-based vibration isolator design activity with repetitive modeling.

In light of the fact that technology teachers' understandings of the nature of technology (NoT) determine students' perceptions of NoT, this study turned attention to technology teachers, and developed a comprehensive theoretical instrument for assessing their understandings of NoT. The theoretical framework of NoT was proposed using a theory-based explanation informed by the philosophy of technology (PoT), historical, sociological and educational literature. The eight dimensions were as follows: 'technology as object', 'technology as knowledge', 'technology as activity', 'technology as volition', 'history of technology', 'the role of technology in society', 'the relationship between science and technology', and 'technology as a double-edged sword'. Eight international experts were invited to review the content validity of the NoT scale, and 835 valid questionnaires answered by Chinese high school general technology teachers were used to test the reliability and convergent validity of the scale. The results showed that the NoT scale had a high reliability and good validity, which could be used to measure and assess technology teachers' understandings of NoT. The development of the NoT scale provided a new perspective for interpreting NoT, and helped technology teachers consider how to more effectively transfer their understandings of NoT to students.

Considering teachers' attitudes as an important factor influencing pupils' learning performance, personality, attitudes and actions, this study explored differences in high school general technology teachers' attitudes towards technology in regard of the personal factors of gender, teaching experience, pre-service major and in-service training frequency. The result showed that Chinese high school general technology teachers were positive about teaching technology, valued the importance of technology and the technology curriculum, enjoyed teaching technology, and had confidence in their teaching. However, some teachers faced difficulties and had gender stereotypes about teaching technology, were worried about their teaching, and felt that there was little external support for their teaching. It was deduced that technology teachers' gender beliefs about technology may not only be the result of differences in individual cognition, but could also be influenced by the male attributes of technology; the accumulation of teaching experience has a subconscious and implicit impact on technology teachers' attitudes towards technology; subject matter knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge in technology teachers' pre-service majors are important factors influencing their attitudes towards technology; and in-service training events could be used as a means of reinforcement and stimulation to improve teachers' attitudes towards technology.

Sense-making is the process by which people give meaning to their collective experiences. Sense is viewed as knowledge, and the environment in which the sense is made is interconnected with communication effectiveness. Considering the critical role of sense-making in the learning process, scholars have emphasised the significance of providing interactive learning environments for students' effective learning. By employing a modified version of Dervin's sense-making theory, this qualitative case study explores the nature of students' sense-making processes in a peer self-founded online learning group without teacher involvement. The study analysed online Chat logs generated by 30 English language learning students from a secondary school in China. The Chat logs were students' discussions on a module of English writing: "Read and then write". The researchers made meaning of the students experiences through their dialogue and interaction, which revealed the essence of a sense-making process: gap facing, gapdefining, gap bridging and gap bridged. The observations were followed with students' interviews held to identify the factors contributing to an interactive learning environment for effective sense-making. The study found that the affordances of an interactive environment impact the communication outcomes through the interactional achievement in the sense-making process.

The past 20 years has seen a growing focus on the integration of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (iSTEM) disciplines in schools to provide students with authentic experiences in solving real-world problems. A frequently stated aim for iSTEM projects has been increasing engagement and interest in pursuing STEM subjects in senior high school and tertiary studies. In order to better understand the iSTEM projects' landscape in school classes, this systematic literature review analysed empirical studies of integrated STEM projects carried out in secondary schools to answer the following questions: What are the characteristics of the projects described and to what extent do these projects reflect characteristics of effective STEM projects; and to what extent does research into iSTEM projects in classrooms investigate specific methods of integration of STEM domains? Thirty-five peer-reviewed publications were identified from database searches that met the following inclusion criteria: (1) integrating two or more of the STEM areas; (2) middle/high school education; and (3) explicitly describing the research intervention. The review revealed a diversity of iSTEM approaches in the literature, with Engineering and Science, particularly Physics, the most commonly integrated fields. Concerns are raised about the degree to which projects are relevant to students and their context and address the diversity found within student cohorts. A gap was found in the literature in detailing how teachers and students enact integration of STEM skills in these projects.

Rationale: Oral treprostinil improves exercise capacity in patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH), but the effect on clinical outcomes was unknown.Objectives: To evaluate the effect of oral treprostinil compared with placebo on time to first adjudicated clinical worsening event in participants with PAH who recently began approved oral monotherapy.Methods: In this event-driven, double-blind study, we randomly allocated 690 participants (1:1 ratio) with PAH to receive placebo or oral treprostinil extended-release tablets three times daily. Eligible participants were using approved oral monotherapy for over 30 days before randomization and had a 6-minute-walk distance 150 m or greater. The primary endpoint was the time to first adjudicated clinical worsening event: death; hospitalization due to worsening PAH; initiation of inhaled or parenteral prostacyclin therapy; disease progression; or unsatisfactory long-term clinical response.Measurements and Main Results: Clinical worsening occurred in 26% of the oral treprostinil group compared with 36% of placebo participants (hazard ratio, 0.74; 95% confidence interval, 0.56-0.97; P = 0.028). Key measures of disease status, including functional class, Borg dyspnea score, and N-terminal pro-brain natriuretic peptide, all favored oral treprostinil treatment at Week 24 and beyond. A noninvasive risk stratification analysis demonstrated that oral treprostinil-assigned participants had a substantially higher mortality risk at baseline but achieved a lower risk profile from Study Weeks 12-60. The most common adverse events in the oral treprostinil group were headache, diarrhea, flushing, nausea, and vomiting.Conclusions: In participants with PAH, addition of oral treprostinil to approved oral monotherapy reduced the risk of clinical worsening.Clinical trial registered with www.clinicaltrials.gov (NCT01560624).

Design thinking has become increasingly important in the context of the current movement toward integrated STEM education. Allied teaching practices often take the form of project-based learning, which represents a major shift in the teaching and learning process and poses challenges for many teachers during implementation. Many professional development programmes for STEM teachers focus on the development of teacher beliefs and content or technological knowledge. Teachers may not have enough opportunities to gain sufficient knowledge of how to foster students' intrinsic motivation for project-based learning. The teacher-support dimensions -- autonomy, structure and involvement -- distinguished in self-determination theory (SDT) can foster student motivation, and the teaching experience can allow for feedback and reflection. Accordingly, this study aimed to investigate how to design a PD programme consisting of a workshop and actual teaching experience as a way of using SDT-based design thinking in teaching STEM project-based learning. Specifically, the study comprised two interventions designed to examine how teacher/student learning is affected by workshops alone and actual teaching experience, respectively. The participants were 60 teachers and 358 secondary school students. The findings revealed that it is beneficial for teachers to apply what they learned from workshops in classroom teaching and that SDT-based design thinking benefits students more than non-SDT-based design thinking. Hence, this study suggests that professional development should occur over a sustained period, enhance teacher capacity to support students' needs, and offer multiple opportunities for feedback and reflection. Consequently, a model of pedagogical design thinking for professional development programmes is proposed.

This paper presents a case study of a teacher's experience in implementing an inquiry approach to his teaching over a period of two years with two different classes. His focus was on using a range of information technologies to support student inquiry learning. Data was collected over the two year period by observation, interview and student work analysis. The study demonstrates the need to consider the characteristics of students when implementing an inquiry approach, and also the influence of the teachers level of understanding and related confidence in such an approach. The case also indicated that a range of information and communication technologies can be effective in supporting student inquiry learning.

In Semester 1 of the 2020 academic year, face-to-face higher education students in many institutions were instructed to not attend classes or lectures on campus soon after the semester commenced, due to precautions put in place to limit the spread of COVID-19 in institutions across Australia. To sustain education and course progression, students were rapidly transitioned to learning-platforms, and synchronous or asynchronous online instruction. Although this action was needed to help ensure undisrupted learning, little consideration was given to the impact this would have on the students who had chosen to study in the face-to-face mode. The instrumental case study reported in this paper sought to capture the lived experiences of students enrolled in initial teacher education (ITE) programs in mathematics, science, and technology (STEM) units in on-campus, face-to-face mode as they moved to emergency fully online instruction. An initial online survey, constructed in "Qualtrics" and using a 4-point Likert scale, was sent to these students in Semester 2, and this was followed by semi-structured interviews with those who indicated their willingness to participate. Thirty-two students participated in the survey and 11 in the interviews, and these data were examined through the lens of self-determination theory. The majority of participants preferred the face-to-face mode, yet some were surprised about the affordances of fully online. Although the respondent group was small, the insights gained are of interest to educators in higher education and have the potential to inform new ways of designing and delivering authentic and engaging online and blended learning in these programs.

The purpose of this Indonesian-based study is to assess students' perceptions of their written communication competence and their writing performance. Third-year undergraduate accounting students who had completed an introductory, content-oriented auditing course participated in the study. The analysis included descriptively scoring questionnaires and writing products. Students completed a questionnaire based on the International Accounting Education Standards Board competencies of audit, technology, communication, teamwork, professional scepticism and judgment and ethics. The findings showed that students perceived their competence in written communication to be very low compared with other competencies. The findings from the writing test revealed that students were unable to develop a professional audit document. To support the development of written communication competence necessary for success in the audit profession, accounting educators should address the writing shortcomings by implementing curriculum redesign using a constructive alignment framework.

Background: This study focuses on probing preservice technology teachers' cognitive structures and how they construct engineering design in technology-learning activities and explores the effects of infusing an engineering design process into science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) project-based learning to develop preservice technology teachers' cognitive structures for engineering design thinking. Results: The study employed a quasi-experimental design, and twenty-eight preservice technology teachers participated in the teaching experiment. The flow-map method and metalistening technique were utilized to enable preservice technology teachers to create flow maps of engineering design, and a chi-square test was employed to analyze the data. The results suggest that (1) applying the engineering design process to STEM project-based learning is beneficial for developing preservice technology teachers' schema of design thinking, especially with respect to clarifying the problem, generating ideas, modeling, and feasibility analysis, and (2) it is important to encourage teachers to further explore the systematic concepts of engineering design thinking and expand their abilities by merging the engineering design process into STEM project-based learning. Conclusions: The findings of this study provide initial evidence on the effects of infusing the engineering design process into STEM project-based learning to develop preservice technology teachers' engineering design thinking. However, further work should focus on exploring how to overcome the weaknesses of preservice technology teachers' engineering design thinking by adding a few elements of engineering design thinking pedagogy, e.g., designing learning activities that are relevant to real life.

Using visualized bibliographic data and a range of quantitative research methods, the analysis of the International Journal of Technology and Design Education (IJTDE), which is included in the core collection of Social Science Citation Index, reached a number of conclusions. Firstly, IJTDE is an important platform for the exchange of research results in the field of technology education, and has a significant influence. Secondly, De Vries, Williams, Ankiewicz and a number of others are influential and prolific authors in the IJTDE. Authors from the USA, England, New Zealand, Taiwan and Australia make most contributions to the IJTDE, Delft University of Technology, University of Auckland and the University of Waikato are the more prolific institutions in the IJTDE. Thirdly, technology education, education, design, science, creativity, technology, design education, knowledge, student, technological literacy and problem solving are the most frequency keywords in the IJTDE. Creativity, design education, problem solving, curriculum development, design and critical thinking, practice, engineering education, and STEM education are research trends in the IJTDE between 2000 and 2018. Fourthly, the discipline knowledge base mainly focuses on teaching and design methods in the technological environment, and the definitions of technology-related concepts. The results enable a deeper understanding and consideration of the content and influence of IJTDE, and the research hotspots in the field of technology education.

Background: STEM education has become a focus of research and teaching interest in recent years. However, not all scholars agree on the definition and purpose of STEM education. This paper summarizes related past research and suggests that, according to the requirements of Taiwan's educational environment, STEM education should focus on the cultivation of middle school students' attitudes toward technology and their ability to engage with technological inquiry. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to explore the effects of STEM education on attitudes toward technology and technological inquiry abilities of middle school students, this study used the 6E Learning byDeSIGN™ model proposed by the International Technology and Engineering Educators Association in the US to design a 6E-oriented STEM practical activity. Sample: The sample of the study consisted of 139 seventh-grade students from six different classes who participated in a practical activity related to egg protection devices. Design and methods: To achieve this research purpose, a quasi-experimental design was used, with pre-treatment and post-treatment evaluations of each group. Both the experimental and control groups participated in the activity; however, the experimental group students were guided through the activity using a 6E teaching strategy, whereas the control group students were guided using a problem-solving teaching strategy. Results: The results showed that a 6E teaching strategy had a positive effect on middle school students' attitudes toward technology and technological inquiry abilities, but these effects were not statistically different from the effect on the control group with problem-solving teaching strategy. Conclusions: This study indicates there is no significant advantage in using a 6E process over a problem solving approach. Technology teachers aiming to improve students' attitudes toward technology and their technological inquiry abilities consider refining the 6E-oriented STEM practical activity process, and students may demonstrate better performance in these two areas.

The term 'STEM literacy', while often used as a slogan for the goal of STEM education, is open to multiple interpretations and used without much research evidence to support its validity. The purpose of this paper is to review the research literature in science, technology/engineering and mathematics education to examine how literacy in each respective discipline has been defined, conceptualised and studied. The literacies across the disciplines are then compared to identify similarities and differences in order to determine on what basis these literacies can be conceptualised collectively, or not. Based on the similarities found in several language and thought processes of the disciplines, we conclude that there is presently a research basis for postulating a unitary STEM literacy that reflects the shared general capabilities required in all the STEM disciplines. At the same time, there are also substantial differences that support the retention of the existing literacy constructs (i.e., S.T.E.M. literacies) to reflect the specific linguistic, cognitive and epistemic requirements found in each disciplinary area. This distinction from the singular STEM literacy is necessary to highlight the skills and practices that are unique to each particular discipline, and therefore not applicable in all the other disciplines. Given the haphazard rhetoric regarding STEM education, what STEM literacy comprises requires analysis and clear articulation that is framed by literacy research and scholarship in each STEM discipline.

Vietnam's Ministry of Education and Training has introduced educational reforms that require Vietnamese teachers to acquire new understanding and skills using information communication technology (ICT) to support teaching. However, there was little literature to guide Vietnamese teachers on how to achieve these goals. The research goals were to implement a theoretical pedagogic model to integrate constructivist and sociocultural learning principles with ICT for teaching physics, and test whether the model would increase interaction within the learning environment, and improve students' physics test results and critical thinking skills. This research was conducted in a Vietnamese context. Data collection methods included student interviews, physics tests and critical thinking skills tests. The result of this study showed that the use of ICT informed by the model can enhance interaction in the learning environment, and students' physics test performance and critical thinking skills. This study can provide guidance for the current strategy of implementing ICT into education. At a global level there is little searchable research on the integration of ICT in teaching physics in Vietnam. The current study contributes to the literature by providing insights into the use of ICT in teaching physics in the Vietnamese context.

This paper reports on a three-year study conducted in Western Australia, which commenced in January 2008, and was completed by December 2010. It concerns the potential to use digital technologies to represent the output from assessment tasks in two senior secondary courses: Engineering Studies and Physical Education Studies. The general aim of this study was to explore the potential of various digitally based forms for external assessment for senior secondary courses in terms of manageability, cost, validity and reliability. The problem being addressed in this research is the need to provide students with assessment opportunities that are authentic, where many outcomes do not lend themselves to being assessed using pen and paper over a three-hour period, and that are also able to be reliably and manageably assessed by external examiners. These two courses both have a significant performance-based component, and a certain level of dissonance results when students have performance expectations, and teachers teach to the theory examination in an attempt to ensure high pass rates. In Engineering Studies, a computer-managed examination was designed that consisted of a design task that was broken down into a number of timed activities. Students were paced through each activity, recording their input in the form of a portfolio. Input consisted of text, graphics through a camera and voice, and the exam outputs were uploaded to an online repository for marking by external assessors. In Physical Education Studies, a digitally based examination was designed that incorporated four inter-related components. Two of these required computer-based responses and two were video-recorded practical performance components. Digital output from all parts of the task was collated into evidence portfolios and uploaded to an online repository for marking by external assessors. This paper focuses specifically on issues of authenticity in relation to the examination tasks designed for each course. It discusses longstanding concerns relating to authenticity associated with courses with a strong performance dimension in which there tends to be a dissonance between the teaching and learning of theory and practice. Ways in which digital technologies were utilised to address these issues are critically examined in this research.

The STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) movement has developed from a non-educational rationale. Although some think it may enliven the delivery of maths and science in classrooms, the social and economic rationales are those that have initiated this movement. Spurred on by the global financial crisis, it is hoped that coordination and integration of STEM activities will better equip a workforce for dealing with the contemporary nature of business and industry, and encourage more school leavers to seek further training and employment in areas of engineering and science. The problem for educators here is that the consequent absence of a sound educational rationale for this combination of subjects inhibits its development. There needs to be a reason for integrating these subjects which relates to quality learning outcomes for students. Given the developing momentum of the STEM agendas, it may be unwise for technology educators to isolate themselves from this movement. In addition, it may be an opportunity to reinforce the place of Technology Education in the school core curriculum. Rather than integration, a more reasonable approach may be to develop interaction between STEM subjects by fostering cross-curricular links in a context where the integrity of each subject remains respected. However, almost as many impediments remain to interaction as to integration: rigid school timetables and curriculum structures, deficient awareness by teachers of other subject areas, inflexible classroom design, and assessment. With a focus on STEM interaction, driven by teachers, interventions can be developed which will overcome these impediments. A focus on STEM integration will not overcome the barriers, and may result in the decimation of technology as a distinct component of the school core curriculum. A STEM orientation, therefore, must be approached with caution.

Recent curriculum changes in the educational system of Australia have resulted in allowing optional Engineering course work to count for university entrance for students choosing to apply to a university. In other educational systems, Engineering is playing an increasingly important role, either as a stand-alone subject or as part of an integrated approach to Science, Mathematics, and Technology. These developments raise questions about the relationship between Engineering and Technology education, some of which are explored in this article. (Contains 4 tables.)