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English is being used as a medium of instruction (EMI) for delivering science lessons in China. This study investigated Chinese high school international programme students' perceptions of and attitudes towards EMI, particularly about their perceived difficulties and support in learning. A questionnaire with Likert-type items, student group interviews, and individual teacher interviews were used in the study. Quantitative data were analysed using confirmatory factor analysis and descriptive analysis, while qualitative data were analysed by means of thematic analysis. The findings indicated a mismatch between the difficulties students encountered and the support teachers provided and revealed the problem of passive strategies for teaching science in English. Findings also suggested strategies for supporting students to learn science in the English medium, especially in inquiry-based science classrooms. These findings have important implications for integrating science and English learning.

The flipped classroom pedagogy has gained prominence in various educational contexts by reorganising the lectures of content knowledge via instructional videos, and squeezing in more time for class activities. Although there have been numerous studies of the design, implementation, and evaluation of the flipped approach, their outcomes varied in different disciplines. A pioneering scoping review was conducted to examine and illustrate existing research in K-12 science education. This study identified 358 peer-reviewed articles 15 of which were selected for analysis using a rigorously established five-stage scoping framework. The results indicated an overall positive impact from flipped classrooms, on motivation, engagement, and attitude, but there were mixed findings regarding academic performance. As in other flipped learning reviews, several student-related, faculty-related, and operation-related challenges were also identified in K-12 science education. To explore the current research gaps for flipping science classes, the identified studies were further analysed using a refined Spector's six pillars, and the synergetic incorporation of self-regulated and technology-enhanced predict-observe-explain (POE) strategies into flipped classrooms in K-12 science education was proposed.

Laboratory work, particularly the latest remote laboratories (RLs), has been assumed to have a general positive effect on science education because practical work can provide diverse learning experiences and enhance thinking skills suitable for the 21st century. However, there has not been a synthesis of the science education research to support this assumption. The objective of this study is to systematically review the growth of educational research on laboratory work, particularly in RLs, utilizing a series of review processes with innovative software for visualizing structural relationships. The combined use and support of "HistCite" and "CiteSpace" software enabled the visualization of the citation structure and history of articles. The findings revealed that RLs were a state-of-the-art subset of laboratory work and a new way of conducting laboratory work that has gained fairly wide research attention in engineering education over the past two decades. Thus, this innovative literature review process has established a solid background for future research and development efforts on RLs in science education dealing with scientific and engineering practices.

In this study, a new physics education programme is specifically developed for a famous theme park in Hong Kong to provide community-based science learning to her visitors, involving her three newly constructed rides. We make innovative use of digital technologies in this programme and incorporate a rigorous evaluation of the learning effectiveness of the programme. A total of around 200 students from nine local secondary schools participated in both the physics programme and its subsequent evaluation which consists of a combination of research and assessment tools, including pre- and post-multiple-choice tests, a questionnaire survey and an interview as specifically developed for this programme, or adopted from some well-accepted research instruments. Based on the evaluation of students' academic performance, there are two educationally significant findings on enhancing the students' physics learning: (a) traditionally large gender differences in physics performance and interest of learning are mostly eliminated; and (b) a less-exciting ride called the aviator (instead of the most exciting roller-coaster ride) can induce the largest learning effect (or gain in academic performance) amongst teenagers. Besides, findings from the questionnaire survey and interviews of participants are reported to reveal their views, perceptions, positive and negative comments or feedback on this programme which could provide valuable insights for future development of other similar community-based programmes.

Background: Students' daily-life experiences may render favorable effects on the students' affective domain like interest, enthusiasm, motivation, joy, curiosity, awareness, and eagerness to learn science as not commonly found in the classroom environment. However, no rigorous research has been reported on those aspects in Mainland China despite many recent studies done in various Western countries. Purpose: This paper aims to report and compare the science-related experiences of ninth-graders from two places (in Urumqi City of Xinjiang province and Shanghai) in China through a large-scale survey of their junior secondary three students. Sample: The sample consists of 4115 students in Urumqi City (from 28 schools) and Shanghai (from 25 schools). Design and methods: This study adopted a Likert scale questionnaire instrument, as translated from the international Relevance Of Science Education (ROSE) Project. From a confirmatory factor analysis of the data, we identify and focus on six factors which are directly correlated with students' science-related experiences outside school environment in Xinjiang and Shanghai and employ relevant factor scores to compare the gender, regional, and socioeconomic effects. Results: As revealed by the t-test, gender and regional differences were statistically significant in affecting (1) students' outdoor living experience, (2) handson experience of transportation, and (3) their daily-life experience with do-it-yourself tools and models. In all three aspects, boys and Xinjiang students possessed richer experiences than girls and Shanghai students, respectively. Conclusions: Based on ANOVA tests, Shanghai students' out-of-school sciencerelated experiences were more often significantly affected by various socioeconomic variables (including their parents' education and occupation and their family income) than Xinjiang students. From cross-regional comparison, Chinese students had much fewer science-related experiences than those of Greek and Finnish students. The limitations and educational implications of the present study are also discussed.

A Smartphone is not only a mobile device that is used for communication but is also integrated with a personal digital assistant (PDA) and other technological capabilities such as built-in acceleration, magnetic and light sensors, microphone, camera and Global Positioning System (GPS) unit. This handheld device has become very popular with the younger generation. The price of the device has also dropped as demand has increased and the latest model released. Therefore, Smartphone technology has the potential to serve as an excellent tool for students to conduct scientific investigation and learn scientific concepts. In this study, the research aim is to develop a hands-on activity for the determination of the speed of sound using a Smartphone device.

Learning electromagnetics often involves dealing with problems with strong mathematical skills or thinking about problems in abstract and multiple spaces. Moreover, many students are often unable to explain some related physical phenomena using the appropriate electromagnetic principles. In this paper, we report on integrating two effective pedagogies in science education. Those were STS (science, technology and society) instruction and guided discovery approach by designing some alternative experiments on electromagnetics at university undergraduate level. Based on a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) system, three sets of scientific investigation activities are specifically designed for helping undergraduate physics and engineering students explore the electromagnetic phenomena in real-world situations and acquire a better understanding of the inter-relationship amongst science, technology and society.

With the restructuring of the senior secondary education system in Hong Kong in 2009, the senior secondary curriculum was overhauled substantially by the conversion of the two-year Certificate Level and the two-year Advanced Level to a new three-year senior secondary level. This process entails changes to the contents and organization of various science subjects. This study was designed to explore, through questionnaires and interviews, the perceptions of science teachers about the design of the three science curricula, namely Physics, Chemistry, and Biology, and the challenges teachers perceived for teaching and learning these subjects in the new education context before the full implementation of the reform. The findings show that the respondents were well aware of the emphases of the new curricula. However, the respondents were likely to experience difficulty in putting rhetoric into practice due to limitations inherent to the curriculum design, increased diversity of students' ability, teachers' inertia in changing old practices, and resource constraints. (Contains 6 tables.)

This paper argues with evidence that conditions for teacher professional development can be enhanced for mentor teachers through a Learning Centre (LC) project which has been introduced in Hong Kong as a collaborative project between the government, a primary school, a secondary school, and the Hong Kong Institute of Education. The LC teachers perform the role of mentor teachers to enhance professional development of other teachers through web-based workshops or forums, face-to-face teacher education workshops, and school-based support. While the LC teachers are expected to gain professional development themselves as mentors, as suggested in the literature, the environment that may enhance their own professional development is not clear. Using structured interviews, the authors identified the professional development environment that the LC teachers experienced. The paper concludes with recommendations for environmental conditions enhancing the professional development of teachers in schools and conditions to support LC teachers.

Students' learning interests and attitudes toward science have both been studied for decades. However, the connection between them with students' life experiences about science and technology has not been addressed much. The purpose of this study is to investigate students' learning interests and life experiences about science and technology, and also their attitudes toward technology. A total of 942 urban ninth graders in Taiwan were invited to participate in this study. A Likert scale questionnaire, which was developed from an international project, ROSE, was adapted to collect students' ideas. The results indicated that boys showed higher learning interests in sustainability issues and scientific topics than girls. However, girls recalled more life experiences about science and technology in life than boys. The data also presented high values of Pearson correlation about learning interests and life experiences related to science and technology, and in the perspective on attitudes towards technology. Ways to promote girls' learning interests about science and technology and the implications of teaching and research are discussed as well.

In order to facilitate senior primary school students in Hong Kong to engage in learning by observation of the phenomena related to electrical circuits, a design of a specific courseware system, of which the interactive human-machine interface was created with the use of an open-source software called the LabVNC, for conducting online remote-controlled experiments was developed in this study. The statistically significant results of a pre-test-post-test evaluation study showed that the LabVNC-based system has potential to promote students to learn the target topic under the approach of learning by observation. The assertion of the teacher on the pedagogical value of the remote-controlled experimentation and the enthusiasm of students in using the LabVNC-based system reveal the potential to integrate the use of the LabVNC-based system with the practice of scientific experiments. Based on the feedback from the teacher and students, the existing LabVNC-based system will be refined under the design-based research approach. (Contains 5 figures and 7 tables.)

Based on the author indices over the past ten years in three international journals of physics teaching, we have constructed networks of physics educators. The latter are connected if they have published one or more articles together in any one of the three journals. We obtained some important sociological characteristics of the research collaborations or linkages between physics teachers. These results indicate how experiences, ideas, and methods are shared, the degree of collaboration, the existence of clusters between physics teachers, and the productivity distribution. Many aspects of our results differ significantly from those recently found by other researchers on the co-authorship networks of scientists in various fields. The present work can serve as an example of the application of the concepts and features of social network analysis.

Bismuth dopants have attracted intensive studies experimentally for their extremely broad near-infrared luminescence. Here we performed first-principles calculations to investigate the site occupancy and valence state by taking the condition of synthesis into consideration, and then calculated the excited states and various transitions of the bismuth ions by focusing on the targeted valent state Bi+ in a variety of ternary chloride MXCl3 (M = K, Rb, Cs; X = Mg, Cd) hosts. The results on formation energies and charge transition levels show that vacant defects play an important role in the charge compensation for the bismuth dopants, and a lower chemical potential of chlorine benefits the stabilization of Bi+ at monovalent M sites. The multi-configurational quantum-chemical method and the constrained occupancy approach together confirm the near-infrared photoluminescence of Bi+, and the spontaneous emission rates due to electric–dipole and magnetic–dipole contributions are evaluated and analyzed in terms of transition selection rules, to affirm the Bi+ nature of the long lifetime luminescence. Our results show that the mechanisms revealed in this study, and the combination of density-functional calculations for defect formation energies with the wave-function based calculations for optical transitions, are effective in exploring the luminescence of bismuth dopants in solids. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]