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Purpose: This study introduces a policy with great strategic significance and far-reaching impact by analyzing the background, measures, and future development trends of teacher evaluation reform in China. Design/Approach/Methods: This study primarily conducts a policy text analysis of the section on teacher evaluation of the "Overall Plan for Deepening the Reform of Educational Evaluation in the New Era". Findings: The "Overall Plan for Deepening the Reform of Educational Evaluation in the New Era" was drafted to enhance the quality of Chinese teachers and address many problems in teacher evaluation. It comprised four sections: teachers' professional ethics, teaching effectiveness, evaluation models and methods, and honorary titles. The policy has distinctive features such as the high status and authority of the issuing body, a holistic and systematic nature, and an orientation toward practical issues. This article proposes three major policy foresights: promoting implementation through the force of political trends, giving schools autonomy in teacher evaluations, and implementing progressive reforms. Originality/Value: This study conducted a specialist analysis of the policy in combination with the real scenario and institutional environment of Chinese teacher evaluation, which could encourage international peers to better understand Chinese teacher evaluation policies and promote policy learning and dissemination internationally.

Science identity, encompassing perceptions of competence, interest, and recognition in science, alongside learning self-efficacy reflecting confidence to master science skills, are key drivers of outcomes. However, developmental patterns likely vary across contexts. Participants were 512 Chinese students spanning grades 1-3 who completed the Science Identity Scale and Science Learning Self-Efficacy Scale, with physics, chemistry, and biology achievement scores gathered. A Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Model assessed relationships. Results substantiated psychometrics for motivational measures. The model indirectly predicting achievement via first-order discipline-specific paths explained more variance than direct second-order effects. Effects significantly varied across groups stratified by grade and region. Interest and conceptual knowledge drove physics and chemistry success, while higher-order skills enhanced biology achievement overall. However, relationships differed within subgroups, suggesting personalized motivational support needs--self-belief/competence foundations for struggling learners, conceptual development for those with high prior achievement, and intrinsic enrichment for disinterested students. Results detail complex motivational profiles underlying science achievement requiring tailored identity safety and self-efficacy scaffolding alongside conceptual and skill-building for excellence across scientific disciplines. Motivational support systems may spur more equitable and optimal science outcomes among diverse adolescent learners.

Learning outcomes can be predicted with machine learning algorithms that assess students' online behavior data. However, there have been few generalized predictive models for a large number of blended courses in different disciplines and in different cohorts. In this study, we examined learning outcomes in terms of learning data in all of the blended courses offered at a Chinese university and proposed a new classification method of blended courses, in which students were primarily clustered on the basis of their online learning behaviors in blended courses using the expectation-maximization algorithm. Then, the blended courses were classified on the basis of the cluster of students who were present in the course and had the highest proportion. The advantage of this method is that the criteria used for classification of the blended courses are clearly defined on the basis of students' online behavior data, so it can easily be used by machine learning systems to algorithmically classify blended courses based on log data collected from a learning management system. Drawing on the classification of the blended courses, we also proposed and validated a general model using the random forest algorithm to predict learning outcomes based on students' online behaviors in blended courses with different disciplines and different cohorts. The findings of this study indicated that after blended courses were classified on the basis of students' online behavior, prediction accuracy in each category increased. The overall accuracies for Course I (380 courses out of 661 after screening), L (14 courses out of 661 after screening), A (237 courses out of 661 after screening), V (8 courses out of 661 after screening), and H (22 courses out of 661 after screening) were 38.2%, 48.4%, 42.3%, 42.4%, and 74.7%, respectively. According to these results, it was found that a prerequisite for the accurate prediction of students' learning outcomes in a blended course was that most students should be highly engaged in a variety of online learning activities rather than being focused on only one type of activity, such as only watching online videos or submitting online assignments. The prediction model achieved accuracies of 80.6%, 85.3%, 63%, 54.8%, and 14.3% for grades A, B, C, D, and F in Course H, respectively. The results demonstrated the potential of the proposed model for accurately predicting learning outcomes in blended courses. Finally, we found that there was no single online learning behavior that had a dominant effect on the prediction of students' final grades.

Background: Existing research has linked individuals' flow experience - a positive affective and cognitive state of deep immersion and engagement in daily activities - and their well-being, particularly among university students. A growing number of longitudinal studies have further contributed to this understanding. However, limited attention has been given to exploring the dynamic interplay between these two variables and their underlying mechanisms (i.e., the mediator) of psychological resilience, specifically among university students in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Aims: To address this research gap, the present study draws on self-determination, flow and broaden-and-build theories. It examines the temporal dynamics and relationships between flow experience and well-being, and the mediating role of psychological resilience among Chinese university students. Sample: The study adopts a three-wave longitudinal design with a sample of 474 university students in Southwest China. Methods: Participants' flow experience, well-being and psychological resilience were measured across three time waves. Results: The findings of this study reveal that flow experience predicts well-being across the three waves and that psychological resilience mediates this prediction. This empirical evidence emphasizes the significance of both flow experience and psychological resilience in contributing to the well-being of university students over time amid COVID-19. Conclusions: These findings enrich our understanding of the factors contributing to well-being in educational settings and provide highly relevant and timely insights for developing strategies to foster well-being among university students, especially in the transition into the post-pandemic era; findings also offer valuable insights not only for researchers but also for educators and policymakers.

This paper aims to investigate whether online private supplementary education, also known as shadow education, can alleviate educational inequality and what types of mechanisms can help alleviate it. We investigate this using an online learning platform dataset (3,603 anonymous students from China) with additional data from multiple sources and employ geospatial analyses to measure students' socioeconomic, regional and rural/urban inequalities. We find that taking part in online education narrows the performance gap in mathematics between privileged and unprivileged students in terms of school status and regional disparity in China. Theoretically, two micro-level mechanisms explain the alleviating differences: (1) equal access mechanism: students from lower city tiers and low-status schools show greater score improvement when having equal access to online education; (2) equal quality mechanism: students from rural regions improve their in-class rankings more substantially if they receive equal quality online education with the same tutoring and learning environment alongside urban students. This study comprehensively looks at the different effects of two mechanisms of online education--equal access and equal quality--for alleviating various types of inequality. Thus we speak to both educational inequality and digital inequality theory, finding that equal access to online education is not enough for rural students, as they also need access to classes of equal educational quality with their urban counterparts.

Background: Executive function (EF) plays a crucial role in children's reading. However, previous studies were based on offline products of reading comprehension. Online research is needed to reveal the core mechanisms underlying children's reading processing. By measuring children's working memory (WM) and cognitive flexibility (CF), we investigated whether individual differences in EF could modulate sentence processing and, if so, how they exert their roles. Methods: The present study manipulated semantic congruency and the association between crucial words in a sentence. We recruited 89 Chinese children aged 9-12 years and monitored their eye movement. Results: The study revealed distinct associations between reader- and text-related characteristics, as evidenced by eye-movement patterns during reading. A significant incongruency effect was observed in reading, underscoring the children's capacity to discern incongruent information. Children's WM and CF were found to modulate this process. Specifically, high-WM children showed more effective integration of incongruent information when the textual context was closely related during the later-stage processing. In contrast, low-WM children faced more challenges with incongruent words. Additionally, CF was influential during the early processing period. High-CF children exhibited longer early-stage reading times for incongruent words in associated contexts. Conclusions: Individual differences in EF can modulate children's online sentence processing. However, different EF components may play different roles.

K-12 artificial intelligence (AI) education requires cultivating students' computational thinking in the school curriculum so as to transfer their computational thinking to diverse problems and authentic contexts. However, students may be limited by traditional computational thinking development activities because they may have a lower degree of computational thinking efficacy for persistent learning of AI when encountering difficulties (computational thinking efficacy in learning AI). Accordingly, this study aimed to explore the relationships among Chinese secondary school students' computational thinking efficacy in learning AI, their AI literacy, and approaches to learning AI. Structural equation modeling was adopted to examine the mediation effect. Data were gathered from 509 Chinese secondary school students, and the confirmatory factor analyses showed that the measures had high reliability and validity. The results revealed that AI literacy was positively related to students' computational thinking efficacy in learning AI, which was mediated by more sophisticated approaches to learning AI, contributing to the current understanding of learning AI. It is crucial to focus on students' AI literacy and deep approaches (e.g., engaging in authentic AI contexts with systematic learning activities for in-depth understanding of AI knowledge) rather than surface approaches (e.g., memorizing AI knowledge) to develop their high-level computational thinking efficacy in learning AI. Implications for designing the AI curriculum are discussed.

Parental involvement in learning, entertainment, emotion, and daily care is crucial to the growth and development of children. Due to the increasing significance of educational attainment in China, parental involvement in child learning is receiving ever-increasing weight and is now the most prevalent of the four aspects. In the wake of the implementation of the Double Reduction Policy, family education has encountered new obstacles, resulting in a shift in parental involvement in education. In the framework of policy execution, the learning involvement of parents of senior students merits special consideration, as they are burdened with the upcoming enrollment in secondary school. The objective of this essay is to describe the current state of parental involvement in learning under the new policy and investigate the causes of existing problems. Also presented are suggestions for enhancing the effectiveness of parental involvement in child study.

The disparities in the quality of senior secondary education opportunities are one of key topics in educational equity research in China as they have a critical impact on students' access to higher education and even their future occupational attainments. Students' senior secondary education opportunities are related to multiple factors. This study attempted to examine the relationship between family capital and the quality of children's senior secondary education opportunities. The research into the post-junior secondary education tracking in County B of Jiangsu Province demonstrated that compared with vocational secondary education opportunities, children's access to general senior secondary education (including ordinary and key high schools) was significantly and positively affected by family social capital and less so by family cultural capital, but had a weak correlation with family economic capital; and that cultural capital had more significant impact on children's admission to high-quality senior secondary schools than to ordinary high schools. Subjective aspects of family capital helped improve the access to ordinary senior secondary education of children from underprivileged classes, whilst objective aspects of family capital could limit their key high school enrollment opportunity. It was suggested that the government push through the implementation of the "quota allocation policy" to promote balanced distribution of high achieving students; and that disadvantaged families make more efforts to increase their cultural capital, and schools and communities provide more support to disadvantaged groups to compensate for their paucity of cultural capital and to upgrade the quality of senior secondary education opportunities of their children.

Physics education aims to develop sophisticated thinking abilities and enhance conceptual depth, but student interest has decreased, emphasizing the importance of teacher quality in fostering success and positive attitudes. The aim of the study was to examine the physics teachers' self-efficacy, innovative teaching, and comprehensive teaching approach levels. As data collecting instruments, self-efficacy, innovative physics teaching, and comprehensive teaching approach scores were utilized. In the pilot research group, validity and reliability assessments were conducted on the scales. The primary research involved 241 physics teachers. As the measurement variables were constantly changeable, Latent Profile Analysis was utilized. The present study's results suggest that teachers have high self-perceptions in various dimensions related to teaching effectiveness, including self-efficacy, innovative teaching, and comprehensive teaching approach. These results are consistent with previous research that has shown a positive relationship between teacher self-perceptions and teaching effectiveness. Future research could explore the relationship between teacher self-perceptions and student achievement to better understand the impact of self-perceptions on student outcomes. Overall, the results of this study highlight the importance of supporting teachers' self-efficacy and providing opportunities for innovative teaching and professional development to improve comprehensive teaching approach.

Although antecedents of teacher identity have been well investigated over decades, the role of demographic variables in teacher identity variance has received relatively little research attention. The study explored how teacher identity (grounded in a four-indicator model comprising occupational commitment, teacher self-efficacy, job satisfaction, and motivation to teach) might differ on three key demographics: gender, taught subject, and grade level taught. To reduce possible noise from other demographic constructs (e.g., age, tenure, and job level), participants were recruited from a cohort of 464 first-year school teachers in Mainland China. Using multiple analytic techniques, findings indicated that female teachers were less committed to the teaching occupation than were male teachers. Those teaching social sciences in primary schools showed lower levels of occupational commitment and teacher self-efficacy than did those teaching sciences at secondary schools. Implications and suggestions are provided.

Our study explored the effect of perceived inclusive leadership on job performance of university teachers and the serial mediation effect of perceived school support and psychological empowerment among those teachers. Using the questionnaire method, data were collected from a valid sample of 895 university teachers in China. The findings indicated that perceived inclusive leadership significantly and positively affects university teachers' job performance. Among university teachers, both perceived school support and psychological empowerment have a partial mediation effect on the relationship between perceived inclusive leadership and job performance. Perceived school support and psychological empowerment have a serial mediation effect between perceived inclusive leadership and job performance. This study provides theoretical and empirical evidence for research related to job performance of university teachers.

Since pre-internship medical students appeared inefficient in acquiring fundamental knowledge in large classes, a hybrid instructional method of problem-and-lecture-based learning (PLBL) was designed to leverage the complementary strengths of PBL in reasoning under minimal guidance and LBL in immediate knowledge retention. We improved PBL (IPBL) in its instructional process and grading in a way that's feasible in large classes, divided in IPBL almost 50 students into 7-10 squads as a figure simulating student counts in classic PBL class to strive for each squad member to achieve the same level of knowledge, and applied IPBL to about half of the instructional contents while LBL to another half for their complementary strengths. In this case, PLBL led to more number of test questions correctly answered by all students in a class, more students in higher test score buckets, and higher student perception scores on the methodology. PLBL facilitates fundamental knowledge acquisition in large classes within 50 students prior to medical internships.

Recent emergence of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) technology has stimulated interests as well as concerns in their potential in teaching and learning. Situated in the new and transforming context, this study provides an avenue for students to introspectively explore their use of GenAI in a postgraduate course. Seventy-four students from three Chinese universities participated in this study. By analyzing student interviews conducted pre- and post-course, alongside their chat logs with GenAI and reflective journal entries detailing their learning approaches, the research uncovers a spectrum of student perspectives on GenAI's impact, ranging from beneficial optimism, to cautious skepticism and adaptable pragmatism. Notably, student agency is identified as a crucial element in relation to these themes. This was articulated in four types of learning activities: receptive, resistive, resourceful, and reflective. The research underscores the importance of supporting and empowering student agency in the learning approaches aided by GenAI in education, highlighting its role in optimizing its use and enhancing autonomous, lifelong learning skills amidst the evolving technologically advanced learning landscape.

Background: Both teacher support and math attitudes have been identified as associated with math anxiety in primary school children. However, little is known about how they are interrelated longitudinally. Aims: The study was designed to examine the associations among perceived teacher support, math attitudes, and math anxiety in Chinese primary school students. Sample: The sample included 1802 students (56.16% boys) initially in the third and fourth grades in two public schools in China. Methods: A three-year cross-lagged panel design was conducted to examine the associations among perceived teacher support, math attitudes, and math anxiety. Moreover, a multigroup analysis was used to examine whether the associations varied by gender. Results: There were reciprocal associations over time between math attitudes and math anxiety. Meanwhile, both math attitudes and math anxiety significantly predicted perceived teacher support one year later, but not vice versa. Further, the association between T1 math anxiety and T3 perceived teacher support was mediated by T2 math attitudes; the association between T1 math attitudes and T3 perceived teacher support, on the other hand, was mediated by T2 math anxiety. Moreover, there were no significant gender differences in these associations. Conclusions: Math anxiety and math attitudes objectively affected each other, and both of them significantly predicted later perceived teacher support, but not vice versa. This study demonstrates that children are not merely passive recipients of environmental influences and offers theoretical guidance for intervention practices that aim to reduce the risk of math anxiety.

Researchers have found that violent online game addiction has become a serious global problem that negatively affects younger people. This study used a cross-sectional research design to examine the effects of violent online game contact on individuals' academic procrastination. We further explored the mediating role of emotional self-regulation and the moderating role of peer communication in the link between violent online game contact and academic procrastination. A sample of 1132 students completed self-reported questionnaires regarding violent online game contact, emotional self-regulation, peer communication, and academic procrastination. Participants were randomly selected from Guangdong Province, China. Results indicated that violent online game contact was positively correlated with academic procrastination, while emotional self-regulation indirectly affected the relationship. Peer communication played a moderating role in the indirect effect between emotional self-regulation and academic procrastination. The general pattern of this mechanism illustrates that as peer communication increased, the effects of emotional self-regulation on academic procrastination decreased. The findings elucidate how and for whom violent online game exposure is related to academic procrastination. This research demonstrates that violent game contact is an important factor affecting academic procrastination, clarifies the role of peer communication and emotional self-regulation, and provides practical suggestions for preventing academic procrastination in the field of school psychology.

This study reports on the results of a semester-long Chinese-American telecollaborative exchange via WeChat, in which students from China and the U.S. shared thematically similar songs in their respective languages and discussed relevant cultural topics that were suggested by the students. Various types of qualitative data collected from the exchange (i.e. WeChat group discussion transcripts, videoconferencing audio recordings, final reflection journals, and end-of-semester interviews) showed that the students participated actively in the program and were able to engage in in-depth conversations on various topics with their partners through WeChat group discussion and one-on-one videoconferencing. Many students attributed their positive experience to the intrinsic ability of music to engage college students. In order to evaluate the students' intercultural learning, Byram's intercultural competence assessment model was adopted to guide the data analysis. Results showed that the students demonstrated evidence of developing four types of intercultural competences during the exchange: interest in knowing other people's way of life and introducing one's own culture to others, knowledge about one's own and others' culture for intercultural communication, ability to change perspective, and knowledge about the intercultural communication process, with particularly overwhelming evidence indicating the prominence of the first two types.

"Research Findings:" This study examined the financial literacy of 5 and 6-year-old children in Shanghai, including their understanding of financial concepts and their preference for and ability to use digital payment methods. Using a mixed-methods research design, a sample of children ranging in age from 62 to 73 months completed multiple tasks to assess their financial literacy and participated in a semi-structured interview. The results suggested that most young Chinese children had a basic understanding of coins and their value, but there was variation in their perceptions of the need to provide change after making a payment. The majority of young children preferred to pay with digital devices and had a positive attitude toward mobile payments, although some children expressed concerns about their ability to use this method accurately. "Practice or Policy:" The study findings suggest that perceptions of financial literacy may vary across families from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds. These results lay the groundwork for future digital financial literacy rating scales or behavior coding studies based on the initial findings of young children from middle-income families. The study also emphasizes the importance of providing formal and informal financial education to young children, particularly in regards to digital literacy, in order to prepare them for the future.

Purpose: Whilst professional learning communities (PLCs) have been widely explored at the school level, they have received less attention at the departmental level. The study takes the variance between departments and the role of departmental teacher leaders into consideration, and the relationships amongst departmental-level PLC dimensions, two types of teacher leadership (TL) and individual teacher self-efficacy are investigated. Design/methodology/approach: The sample consisted of 907 teachers from 81 departments in Chinese schools. The associations between the studied variables were explored through a multi-level analysis approach. Findings: The results show that two specific characteristics of departmental PLCs, namely reflective dialogue (RD) and collective responsibility (CR), exhibit a positive correlation with individual teacher self-efficacy. Additionally, the findings indicate that teacher transformational leadership significantly predicts teacher self-efficacy, whereas teacher instructional leadership (IL) does not emerge as a significant predictor. These findings may be attributed to the contextual factors of Chinese teachers' collective work and the practice of teacher leaders. Originality/value: This research contributes to the existing literature by addressing the variance between departments and uncovering the impacts of departmental PLC dimensions on individual teachers. Furthermore, two TL styles at the departmental level are differentiated, and their distinct influences on teacher self-efficacy are further analysed.

Background: In a context where synchronous online teaching has become a new trend of instruction for online education due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it is valuable and insightful to examine what factors contribute to teachers' satisfaction with synchronous online teaching. Objective: Informed by the technology acceptance model (TAM), this study investigated English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) university teachers' synchronous online teaching satisfaction in China from social (i.e., subjective norms), institutional (i.e., facilitating conditions), and individual (i.e., self-efficacy, attitudes toward use, perceived usefulness, and perceived ease of use) levels during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: A total of 250 in-service EFL university teachers participated in this study. An online questionnaire was adaptively developed to measure teachers' perceptions of and satisfaction with synchronous online teaching. The structural equation modelling (i.e., path analyses) was performed to find out a model that can best represent EFL university teachers' synchronous online teaching satisfaction. Results and Conclusion: The results showed that facilitating conditions, self-efficacy, attitudes toward use, and perceived usefulness are direct contributors to EFL university teachers' satisfaction with synchronous online teaching. Whereas, perceived ease of use, self-efficacy, and subjective norms are indirect contributors through the mediation of attitudes toward use. Moreover, different from previous TAM research, facilitating conditions have been found to be the most significant direct factor positively contributing to satisfaction. The findings of this study are expected to shed light on how to enhance teachers' synchronous online teaching satisfaction.

Psychological variables (e.g. L2 grit) remain a much under-investigated sub-category of individual differences compared with cognitive ones (e.g. aptitude). The present paper aims to gain a better understanding of the psychological effects of multilingualism by investigating tolerance of homosexuality (TH), which has received little scholarly attention from multilingualism researchers. Relevant data from the 2015 Chinese General Social Survey, which utilised a representative national sample (N = 10968) from China, were analysed. Out of the 11 initial independent variables, multilingualism and Internet use emerged as statistically significant predictors for TH; their effect sizes fluctuated around the typical-effect benchmark, suggesting that both were important predictors. Although gender role belief was also a statistically significant predictor, its effect sizes fell well below the small-effect benchmark and hence its link with TH was negligible. As the first systematic attempt to link multilingualism with TH in the field of applied linguistics, the present multidisciplinary study: (1) confirms and expands previous studies which show that multilingualism can be considered as an enduring social factor contributing to the shaping of individuals' psychological profiles, and (2) helps broaden the scope along the research line on homophobia in gender studies by linking it with more social correlates (e.g. multilingualism).

Chemistry academic engagement has received considerable attention for its role in enhancing students' learning and overall development. As a significant factor influencing students' chemistry improvement, research on chemistry academic engagement has emerged as a focal point. However, the methods to improve students' chemistry academic engagement remain limited until now. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the mechanisms of chemistry academic engagement, self-handicapping, chemistry academic buoyancy and teacher support, and offer suggestions to improve students' academic engagement. We assumed a moderated mediation model and evaluated all variables for twelve different schools in China (N = 3344, Grade 10), then analyzed the data with structural equation models (SEM). The results suggested that (1) self-handicapping in chemistry negatively predicted chemistry academic engagement; (2) chemistry academic buoyancy moderated the relationship between chemistry academic engagement and self-handicapping to a certain extent, and this indirect effect was significant irrespective of teacher support levels; (3) instrumental support moderated the mediating process in the academic buoyancy to academic engagement pathway; (4) teacher emotional support moderated the direct and indirect pathways of the mediating process from self-handicapping in chemistry to chemistry academic engagement. Finally, we analyzed the results of this research, highlighted its educational significance, recognized the limitations and made recommendations for further research.

Recently, researchers have proposed to leverage technology-supported data (log files) to investigate temporal and sequential patterns of interaction behaviors in learning processes. There are two major challenges to be addressed: clarifying the positioning of interaction levels and identifying the evolution of the interaction action patterns in learning processes, particularly for students with differing achievements. This paper explores the use of sequential pattern mining to address the evolution of student action patterns in Massive Private Online Courses (MPOCs) and compare these patterns between different achievement groups. The study was conducted with first-year undergraduate computer science students enrolled in a computer application course at a traditional open university in one of the Chinese provinces (N = 1375). The results showed the development of various action patterns in each phase of the course and the distinct action patterns for high-achieving and low-achieving students. The findings of study provide a new perspective for instructors and students to understand interaction patterns at the fine-grained level, and can help instructional designers develop learner-cantered courses and platforms to improve online learning.

This study identified maths motivation profiles in a sample of 878 Chinese secondary school students, and examined the effects of perceived parent/teacher achievement goals on maths motivation profiles and the effects of the latter on academic outcomes. Latent profile analysis conducting on three achievement goals (mastery-approach, performance-approach, and performance-avoidance) and four interest components (emotion, value, knowledge, engagement) identified four profiles: "medium, high all, low, and high mastery-oriented and interest." Students who perceived more parent/teacher mastery-approach and performance-approach goals were more likely to belong to the high all profiles. Students with the high all and the high mastery-oriented and interest profiles showed the highest use of deep and surface learning strategies and maths achievement. The results revealed distinct motivational profiles by integrating achievement goal theory and four-phase interest development theory, and provided preliminary evidence to help parents and teachers enhance students' maths motivation.

This study examined the mediating effects of cognitive empathy and affective empathy in the relationship between dispositional awe and prosocial behaviour in medical students, and whether perceived stress moderated this association. A total of 631 medical students from two medical tertiary institutions in Liaoning Province, China, participated in this survey. The findings revealed that (1) dispositional awe was positively associated with prosocial behaviour; (2) the positive association between dispositional awe and prosocial behaviour was partially mediated by cognitive empathy and affective empathy; (3) perceived stress significantly attenuated the association between dispositional awe and cognitive empathy, and the association between cognitive empathy and prosocial behaviour. The findings yield practical implications for the improvement strategies of prosocial behaviour among medical students and provide suggestions for future educational interventions.

This study aimed to understand the nature of learning English in the digital age from students' personal 'learning lives'. Drawing on hermeneutic phenomenology's principles, this study conducted conversational interviews and obtained reflective reports from students over 5 months. The findings reveal that students' English learning experiences are sociocultural processes involving a complex interplay between learner agency, other agents, the cultural practices using smartphones, and the wider context. Furthermore, learning English using smartphones facilitates an approach to it or Computer Assisted Language Learning that embraces 'anytime' and 'anywhere' learning and involves a seamless integration of personal, social, formal, and informal learnings. Therefore, we propose smartphone-assisted English language learning (SAELL), addressing smartphone use for learning English, based on qualitative data and recent trends in the field. Future research should include rich qualitative evidence to support the SAELL framework in practice in multiple empirical settings. Empirical studies are mostly applied within university settings; however, the practical implications have more relevance to students, teachers, educators, and policymakers who may be involved in shaping novel smartphone learning spaces for formal and informal contexts.

International students are fundamental actors in the university's knowledge management process, but little is known about their knowledge activities. The purpose of this study is to understand how the knowledge sharing process in higher education unfolds in the context of international students' perspectives. Based on a qualitative approach, data were collected through interviews with Chinese international students studying at Russian universities. The results of this study were synthesized into a proposed process model for knowledge sharing, describing the activities and four stages related to knowledge sharing by international students. This study found that the relative weights of influencing factors vary across the four stages of knowledge sharing and that international students' knowledge sharing is an iterative process that occurs in an incremental way. As a result, the study reveals the knowledge source role of international students, and extends the existing knowledge-sharing model to more accurately reflect the micro-processes of international students' knowledge sharing. Future research can examine the applicability of the identified micro-processes in different higher education contexts. Based on the different needs of international students in the four stages identified in this study, leaders can facilitate knowledge management in higher education.

Eight percent of adolescent girls were found to be engaged in problematic social media use. Problematic social media use is associated with serious physical and mental consequences. This study aimed to explore the effects of thin-ideal internalization on problematic social media use and the role of selfie-related behaviors and friendship quality. We recruited 903 Chinese adolescent girls with an average age of 13.73 years (ranging from 11 to 16 years) recruited to complete the self-report questionnaire, which contained four measures. Results revealed a moderated mediation model. Girls who had internalized thin-ideal images were more vulnerable to social media's addictive properties, constantly engaged in selfie-related behaviors, and developed subsequent problematic social media use. However, for adolescent girls, high friendship quality buffered against developing problematic social media use, despite selfie-related behaviors. The study provides suggestions to reduce problematic social media use among adolescents to promote their physical and mental health.

Purpose: During the past decades, China has seen a rapid urbanization that has (re)shaped not only its city landscape but also (re)created public space where children live, play, and learn. However, little research has focused on how urban public space influences young children's learning and development and how parents navigate children's development in the public space. Therefore, this research aims to study how public space influences parents' engagement with their young children. Design/Approach/Methods: This study is informed of Bronfenbrenner's Processes, Person, Context, and Time (PPCT) model that sees children's learning as complex and multilateral interactions among various stakeholders including schools, families, and environment. It employed ethnographic approach to study the interactions between children and their parents in a public playground in a Western Chinese city. Findings: It found that parents realized public space had been reshaped by urbanization. While they accompanied their children to play, they actively monitored children's safety and cultivated children's physical and social development. In this process, male parents tended to contribute more than they would do in other settings. Originality/Value: This study fills the gap by providing a nuanced study exploring how parents fulfill their responsibilities in an integral space of children's development, which has rarely been explored.

The necessity for the development and enhancement of teacher commitment to satisfying students' learning needs in response to the COVID crisis is increasingly highlighted. It is not known, however, how to increase commitment in schoolteachers to boost online teaching in light of the fact that they, too, are struggling to cope with the rapid, unexpected change. A total of 601 teachers from primary and secondary schools across China participated in this study, with an average teaching experience of 15.9 years. Structural equation modelling was used to verify the significance of contextual, cognitive, affective and behavioural factors in boosting teachers' commitment to online teaching. The findings demonstrated that teacher agency played a complete mediating role in the predicting power of other factors to teacher commitment. Therefore, it was recommended that attention be paid to the practice and opportunities for teacher agentic actions, which necessitates real encounters with online teaching, allowing teachers to act meaningfully and initiate a new set of teaching strategies.

Background: The ability to translate concrete manipulatives into abstract mathematical formulas can aid in the solving of mathematical word problems among students, and metacognitive prompts play a significant role in enhancing this process. Aims: Based on the concept of semantic congruence, we explored the effects of metacognitive prompts and numerical ordinality on information searching and cognitive processing, throughout the process of solving mathematical word problems among primary school students in China. Sample: Participants included 73 primary school students (38 boys and 35 girls) with normal or corrected visual acuity. Methods: This study was based on a 2 (prompt information: no-prompt, metacognitive-prompt) × 2 (number attribute: cardinal number, ordinal number) mixed experimental design. We analysed multiple eye-movement indices, such as fixation duration, saccadic amplitude, and pupil size, since they pertained to the areas of interest. Results: When solving both types of problems, pupil sizes were significantly smaller under the metacognitive-prompt condition compared with the no-prompt condition, and shorter dwell time for specific sentences, conditional on metacognitive prompts, indicated the optimization of the presented algorithm. Additionally, the levels of fixation durations and saccadic amplitudes were significantly higher when solving ordinal number word problems compared with solving ordinal number problems, indicating that primary school students were less efficient in reading and faced increased levels of difficulty when solving ordinal number problems. Conclusions: The results indicate that for Chinese upper-grade primary school students, cognitive load was lower in the metacognitive prompting condition and when solving cardinal problems, and higher when solving ordinal problems.

The development of school education depends on the quality of the education provided, and it is a key metric for assessing the effectiveness of schools in developing talent. Building specialized, intelligent education quality monitoring (EQM) databases is crucial for speeding EQM progress in the big data era. This article examines the development of regional EQM databases in the areas of operational procedure and logical structure based on the idea of data lakes by using the development of databases for the EQM data analysis system (DAS) in Suzhou City as a case study. The goal of this study is to assist in addressing the current issues with regional EQM data processing and ensuring EQM's successful implementation.

The effect of language aptitude on grammar attainment of second language learners with different ages of onset became one of the hot topics in the last decades. However, most previous studies were conducted in a second language context with inconsistent results, and few studies were conducted in a foreign language context. To fill this gap, the current study investigated the impact of language aptitude on grammar attainment of EFL learners with different ages of onset in the Chinese context. A Timed Grammatical Judgment Test and an Untimed Grammatical Judgment Test, a Metalinguistic Knowledge test, and a Language Aptitude test were used in the study, and 112 participants were sampled. The results show that the aptitude scores of the three groups of EFL learners with different ages of onset have no significant difference; language aptitude moderates performance on the Untimed Grammatical Judgment Test and the Metalinguistic Knowledge test, which was mainly reflected in the earlier starters; and higher aptitude learners outperform lower aptitude learners in all three grammar tests. Overall, this study provides evidence to support the impact of language aptitude on EFL learners in the Chinese context.

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many college students in developing countries to engage in online learning for the first time, and the sudden transit has raised concerns regarding students' competencies for, perception of, and attitude towards online learning. To address those concerns, this study measured three essential constructs of online learning (self-regulated learning, perceived presences, and learning motivation) based on a national survey in China (N = 12,826) and employed structural equation modeling to investigate their intertwined relationship. The study results reveal that (1) college students' academic achievement cannot effectively predict their self-regulated learning in an online learning context; (2) self-regulation can be further differentiated into general and task-specific strategies with a varying impact on three types of presences; (3) online learning motivation is best predicted by cognitive presence, followed by social presence and teaching presence; and (4) the path of task-specific self-regulated learning [right arrow] cognitive presence [right arrow] online learning motivation generates the largest positive compound effect. Implications for online teaching and learning practice are also discussed through the stakeholder perspectives of students, teachers, and platform developers.

This article aimed to examine the relationships between Chinese parenting styles and child academic achievement through a meta-analytical review. After literature screening, 54 studies and 793 independent effect sizes that met the inclusion criteria were incorporated into the analysis (n = 24630). According to the results of the study, positive parenting styles like "emotional warmth and understanding" had prominent beneficial effects on child academic achievement, whilst negative ones such as "punishment and harshness", "overinvolvement and overprotection", "preference for the subject", "rejection and denial") were significantly unfavorable for child academic performance. In addition, the relation between parental overinvolvement and overprotection and child academic achievement was moderated by parental roles. Children's ages could moderate the relationships between parenting styles (except for overinvolvement and overprotection) and child academic results. The connection between parental preference for the subject and child academic achievement was moderated by disciplines. The effects of parents' emotional warmth and understanding as well as overinvolvement and overprotection were moderated by times.

The process of internationalization requires people to have higher intercultural communicative competence, which refers to a person's ability to successfully communicate in different cultural environments. It consists of cognition, emotion, and behavior. The study of intercultural sensitivity actually focuses on the emotional factor in intercultural communication competence. Based on the concept of intercultural sensitivity and English teaching practice, this article intends to contribute a little to the intercultural communication teaching and relevant study by analyzing the current level of intercultural sensitivity of junior high school students and interviewing English teachers about the implementation of intercultural teaching strategies.

Triggered by the pilot of the "Gao-Kao" reform, the avoidance of physics courses in senior high school has aroused the concern of society in China. The factors that influence the motivation to learn physics are an important research topic, especially for countries that have a disciplinary-based education tradition in secondary school. However, there is a lack of instruments for evaluating secondary school students' physics learning motivation, as most motivational studies consider science learning motivation as a single construct and do not distinguish between the motivation to learn different science disciplines. Therefore, we developed an instrument for measuring physics learning motivation and used this instrument to investigate the trend of physics learning motivation from middle school to high school and how physics learning motivation was influenced by teachers, parents and peers. Adopting achievement goal theory as the theoretical foundation, we developed a survey for physics learning motivation by adapting previously validated instruments. After pilot testing, 502 middle school and senior high school students completed the survey. Statistical tests, such as factor analysis, were conducted to test the reliability and validity of the instrument. Descriptive statistics confirmed some of the findings from past research (such as an overall decline in motivation to learn science), but more detailed analysis also led to new findings. Using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) we investigated the relationships between students' perceptions of the environment's goal emphases, their personal goal orientations, and their engagement in physics learning in and out of school. The results showed that the students' goal orientations were influenced by teachers and parents, but primarily by their peers. Finally, we discuss possible explanations of the findings and their implications for follow-up studies and policy adjustments.

In the era of knowledge economy, how to promote knowledge sharing behavior of university students deserves close attention from academic and practical circles. As a character strength, purpose in life can predict individuals' thriving and positive development, but its predictive effect on knowledge sharing behavior has not been explored. This study investigated the association between purpose in life (meaningfulness, goal orientation, and beyond-the-self) and knowledge sharing behavior, and the potential mediating effect of gratitude. Data were collected from 493 students (mean age = 20.86, standard deviation= 1.69) from two universities in the Hunan province of China. They completed the scales of purpose in life, gratitude, and knowledge sharing behavior in June 2022. This study conducted structural equation model analysis to test the hypothetical model. The results showed that goal orientation and beyond-the-self positively predicted knowledge sharing behavior, and gratitude partially mediated the association between goal orientation and knowledge sharing behavior, and beyond-the-self and knowledge sharing behavior. The findings highlight the importance of purpose in life and gratitude in promoting knowledge sharing behavior among university students.

The coronavirus disease 2019 outbreak has the potential to trigger declines in individual mental health, potentially in the form of depressive symptoms. However, few studies have explored factors protective of mental health during the ongoing pandemic. For the sustainable development of individual health, this study was conducted during the pandemic and examines the relationship between gratitude and symptoms of depression, as well as the moderating effect of psychological capital. Latent variable structural equation modeling was used to analyze depressive symptoms and protective factors in 3123 college students. This study measures gratitude, depressive symptoms, and psychological capital, using the Gratitude Scale, Patient Health Questionnaire-9, and the Positive Psychological Capital Questionnaire, respectively. Gratitude was negatively related to depressive symptoms, with psychological capital as a moderator of the relationship. Specifically, psychological capital had a powerful protective effect against depressive symptoms. Students with high psychological capital had lower depressive symptoms than those with low psychological capital, regardless of their level of gratitude. In students with low psychological capital, gratitude had a protective effect against depressive symptoms. These findings suggest that psychological capital is a powerful protective factor against depressive symptoms during a pandemic and improving psychological capital could enhance mental health.

This study investigated visual arts college students' perceptions of the gender stereotyping of creativity and the influence of this stereotyping on creative self-efficacy. The sample consisted of 1198 Chinese visual arts college students. The results showed that (a) both male and female students identified stereotypically masculine traits as more important to creativity than stereotypically feminine traits are, (b) male students demonstrated higher creative self-efficacy than their female counterparts did, and (c) students' gender significantly moderated the effect of the gender stereotyping of creativity on creative self-efficacy. Specifically, the gender stereotyping of creativity had a positive effect on male students and a negative effect on female students. These findings revealed that gender stereotypes dominate concepts of creativity in Chinese art education and may hinder female students' development of creative self-efficacy, resulting in gendered inequality in the visual arts field. The implications of these findings for visual arts education in China are discussed.

Computational thinking (CT) is an imperative competency in the 21st century. Mindtools can assist students in understanding concepts and decomposing tasks during CT development through programming. However, students may encounter challenges in complex CT problem-solving tasks due to being confused when using mindtools without proper guidance. Research evidence shows the potential of reflection in complex CT problem-solving by regulating cognitive activities. Accordingly, this study designed a reflection-guided visualized mindtool strategy to address CT development challenges. A quasi-experiment and lag sequential analysis were conducted by recruiting 97 junior high school students to examine the effects of the proposed strategy on CT development and to explore students' behavior patterns. Results revealed that the proposed approach improved students' CT performance, CT disposition, meta-cognitive awareness, and learning motivation. Students learning with the proposed strategy exhibited more key behaviors of facilitating CT problem-solving (e.g., generalizing the knowledge, re-designing the algorithm scheme, and evaluating the feasibility of their proposed schemes) than students in the control group, revealing the essential process of CT development and enlightening teachers on guiding students to produce such learning processes when cultivating CT.

The new paradigm approaches to technology-enhanced feedback (TEF) have piqued the interest of educators seeking to shift away from feedback monologic processing and toward feedback dialogic exchange. The way teachers demonstrate constructive TEF behaviours for their students is essential to the development of students' feedback literacy. However, there is a general lack of multidimensional theoretical conceptualisation for understanding, and instrumentation for measuring teacher TEF literacy. To fill this gap in the literature, this study designed and empirically validated a teacher TEF literacy scale (TTLS) using exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis on two distinct samples of teacher participants chosen at random. A total of 632 school teachers from throughout most of China, with a variety of subject backgrounds, participated in this study. The results show that the TTLS' three-factor structure is valid and reliable. To provide supplementary evidence of structural validity, the status quo of TEF literacy among primary and secondary school teachers in China was tested, and a discipline variation in teacher TEF literacy was identified, as hypothesised.

This study aims to explore teacher noticing differences of the sampled US and Chinese elementary teachers from cross-cultural mathematics videos. A total of 34 expert teachers commented on 25 video clips online. We coded what and how teachers noticed from the videos both quantitatively and qualitatively. Findings reveal teachers' strong interests and profound reflections, especially in the teaching domain including representations, communication, and teacher questioning/guide. Cross-cultural differences in teacher noticing were identified, which were discussed based on possible cultural influences. Implications in research and practice, teacher support, and methodology are discussed.

Continuing motivation in science can promote science literacy, identity, and lifelong learning, which has received considerable attention. As a crucial part of the science discipline, the study on continuing motivation in chemistry has also become a research hotspot. Yet, we have little knowledge about how to improve students' continuing motivation in chemistry. Due to this situation, the present study was designed to explore the mechanisms of students' perceived social support (parents support, teacher support and peer support), interest and self-efficacy in continuing motivation in the context of chemistry, further offering suggestions to the progress of students' continuing motivation in chemistry. Measures were collected from 1260 Chinese high school students aged 15 to 17 years. Structural equation modelling (SEM) tested the hypothesized direct and mediated relations between these variables. The results showed that (1) parents support significantly negatively predicted students' continuing motivation in chemistry; teacher support, peer support, interest in chemistry and chemistry self-efficacy significantly positively predicted students' continuing motivation in chemistry; (2) both interest in chemistry and chemistry self-efficacy played mediating roles in the relationship between social support and continuing motivation in chemistry, respectively. We concluded by discussing the main findings of this study, highlighting their educational implications, acknowledging their limitations, and proposing lines of future research on chemistry education.

Mainstream research in higher education and motivation has shown the importance of intrinsic and instrumental motivation on student learning and achievement. However, the role of social motivation has been relatively neglected. This gap is especially salient in a collectivist cultural context where social factors play a critical role. Drawing on a nationally representative sample of Chinese college students (n = 67,182), this study investigated how social motivation towards (a) parents and teachers, (b) peers, and (c) the broader society are associated with deep approaches to learning including higher-order, integrative, and reflective learning. Structural equation modelling was used to analyze the data with the different types of social motivation posited as predictors of deep approaches to learning. Confirming prior research, the results showed that students with higher intrinsic and instrumental motivation were more likely to use deep approaches learning. More interestingly, students who had higher levels of social motivation directed towards parents/teachers, peers, and the broader society were also more likely to engage in deep approaches to learning. Furthermore, we also found significant mean-level differences in social motivation and deep approaches to learning for students of different genders, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, year levels, and institutional types. These findings demonstrate the importance of taking students' diverse socio-demographic and institutional backgrounds into account. This article advocated for the importance of exploring social motivation to develop a more nuanced understanding of college students' motivation and learning in a collectivist context.

Prior research demonstrates that primary and secondary school teachers often find teaching young learners to write in a second language a slow and effortful process. Moreover, students in this age range lack the motivation to write. Therefore, it is important to explore the EFL writing pedagogy suitable for young learners. The present study investigated how story continuation (with or without reading input) under different topic familiarity conditions serves as a viable pedagogical means for secondary school students. Ninety-one Chinese students in four intact classes of comparable proficiency levels were assigned four writing task conditions in a 2 ? 2 factorial design. Group 1 (Fam) was provided with the beginning of a familiar story in L1 Chinese and was required to complete the story in L2 English. Group 2 (UnFam) had the same task as Group 1, with an unfamiliar story. Group 3 (Fam+Input) was initially provided with the complete familiar story in Chinese (the same story as Group 1) as reading input and were then instructed to write the story in English with the reading material taken away. Group 4 (Unfam+Input) received the full unfamiliar story in Chinese (the same story as Group 2) as input before writing. Again they were not allowed to refer to the reading in the composing process. The results revealed that the young learners who wrote on familiar topics (Groups 1 and 3) produced longer texts and demonstrated greater lexical diversity than those with unfamiliar stories (Groups 2 and 4), although topic familiarity did not affect their writing quality or lexical sophistication. As for the story continuation conditions, students who completed writing the story without the L1 reading input on the topics (Groups 1 and 2) developed longer compositions and better writing quality than those with such input (Groups 3 and 4), although their lexical profiles (both lexical diversity and lexical sophistication) remained uninfluenced. Pedagogical implications for EFL writing among young learners were also discussed in the present study.

In 2017, the Ministry of Education promulgated the General High School English Curriculum Standards (2017 Edition), which stressed the importance of affective factors in English learning. This study uses a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods such as student questionnaires and interviews to explore the motivational function of affective factors and its negative influence upon English reading of 80 students with low English reading ability in a high school in Jiujiang. The results of the study show that reading anxiety is common among high school students, the internal motivation for English reading is weak and the external motivation is strong, the self-efficacy of reading is not clear and firm. The study further found that the great academic pressure and high school students' self-awareness which are subject to external environment, language and other factors cause high school students' anxiety, the international social environment and examination system have a large impact on high school student' external motivation. In order to improve the English reading ability of high school students, this research tries to make corresponding suggestions for teachers, students and other aspects from the perspective of affective factors. As for the English teachers, they should set up diversified activities and increase the interest of teaching content in order to promote emotions with knowledge. As for the students, they should clarify their tasks to enhance learning motivation. The school should set up mental health courses and psychological counseling room and provide psychological training for teachers. Then, parents should try to communicate with students and learn to ask for help rather than paying too much attention to students' performance.

This ethnographic case study explored the benefits associated with culturally responsive art learning experience in a Chinese rural town in the process of urbanisation. The case of this study, Fuchong Art Education Programme (FAEP), provided culturally relevant art activities for primary and secondary rural students who cannot access enriched art programmes in schools. Art studio learning, a summer art camp, an art exhibition, neighbourhood sketching, online teaching, student home visits and teacher meetings were documented and examined over an eight-month period of fieldwork. Semi-structured interviews with the participating students, their teachers and parents and the programme coordinator were conducted to elicit the participants' perspectives on the FAEP experience, the benefits of participation and the challenges involved in implementing a culturally responsive art programme. The emerging themes included artistic, personal, social and external benefits, which were examined in relation to previous research on the intrinsic and instrumental benefits of art learning and a local understanding of the value of community art engagement in the lives of rural people. The implications offer guidance for promoting culturally responsive art learning in rural settings.

Objectives: To characterize the health behaviors and outcomes of first-year international students (FYIS) studying in the U.S. Participants and methods: Three different cohorts of FYIS from a large midwestern university in the U.S. completed three laboratory visits between August and March. The study began in 2017 and ended in March 2020. Anthropometrics, acculturative stress, eating behaviors, sleep, physical activity, and eating habits were assessed. Results: Fifty-four students completed the study. Females had a significant increase in percent body fat (p = 0.036) and a decrease in sleep quality (p = 0.006) at the final visit vs. baseline, and uncontrolled (p = 0.006) and emotional (p < 0.001) eating behaviors were higher. FYIS who gained more than the median 1.2 kg over the study period experienced higher acculturative stress (p = 0.004) and a decline in sleep quality (p = 0.003). Conclusion: Reducing acculturative stress and improving sleep quality should be explored as interventions to protect against undesirable changes in adiposity among FYIS.