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Learning and teaching Mendelian genetics are central topics in school science. This study explored factors associated with the learning outcomes of Taiwanese junior high school students in an online inquiry learning environment. Research within face-to-face classroom settings had revealed that Asian students are more likely to be tutor-oriented and collectivistic learners. However, results of how these orientations affect learning in online environments are needed. In this analysis, seventh-grade students from Taiwan (N = 290) completed a genetics lesson using an Inquiry Learning Space (ILS) on the Go-Lab platform. Students were randomly assigned conditions in which support was provided either by general text or by an expert person in the form of a cartoon figure. In addition, students completed questionnaires assessing their cultural orientations, as well as their computer self-efficacy. Results revealed that the presence of a virtual expert did not influence students' learning outcomes. However, the extent to which students identified as collectivistic and their level of computer self-efficacy were positively associated with the learning outcomes. Students' computer self-efficacy was positively related to their behavioral intentions as well. These results illustrate the importance of Asian students' disciplined personality and computer self-efficacy for online inquiry-based learning.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, educational institutions around the world have closed, affecting more than 60% of students and causing massive disruption to the education system. Taiwan is no exception. For this sudden and dramatic change, teachers, students, and parents all confront significant challenges. In order to make specific suggestions for improvement, the study aims to explore the current state of e-learning in Taiwan and to understand the difficulties faced by teachers, parents, and students. The study conducted in-depth interviews with 20 teachers, 12 parents, and 24 students. The research results show that in New Taipei City, there are barely any online courses for grades 1 and 2, blended learning is mainly for grades 3 and 4, and synchronous e-learning is designed for grades 5 and 6. The main challenges in adopting e-learning in primary schools include, as follows: (i) Teachers, parents, and students are unfamiliar with the user interface of the e-learning platform; (ii) Insufficient hardware and software equipment at home; (iii) Teachers cannot take care of special students; (iv) Communication between teachers and parents is not smooth; (v) Difficulty in assessing learning progress online; and (vi) Students are easily distracted from their studies. Based on the above research results, the researchers put forward specific suggestions for future online teaching practices.

This technical note provides descriptions on a collaborative research project between Université Paris 8/École Pratique des Hautes Études-Laboratoire des Usages des Techniques d'Information Numériques (Paris8/EPHE-LUTIN) and National Taiwan Normal University-Science Education Center (NTNU-SEC). This project, entitled "Franco-Taiwanese Research on Extended Reality Experience", is about research and development of new, innovative, performant eXtended Reality (XR) contents, methods, procedures, and services in order to enhance science teaching and learning and to bring subsequent great benefices to education. The aim of the collaboration is the making of eXtended Reality eXperience (XRX) for teachers and pupils of the 12-year basic education curricula. As a result of reaching our aim, we expect that the XR systems and instructional modules developed through our project will be learning efficient for the students acquiring knowledge and the know-how of Science Education.

This study aims to determine the role of worldview perspective on science students' decision-making process by a socio-scientific issue-based instruction through an integrated Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education. Understanding the decision-making process in complex themed learning is one of the most important instruments in understanding the way students think. The participants were one hundred and nine junior-high-school students from two different schools. Furthermore, the method used was a pre-experimental design with two collective groups, namely the pre-and posttest, starting with an educational study design. The results showed that there was a different perspective pattern based on the worldview perspective on students' initial decisions. Furthermore, interventions with socio-scientific issues (SSI) based instruction through integrated STEM education provided significant dynamics of change in the final science decision made by the students on the basis of a worldview perspective and gender. Some practical implications were extremely discussed, such as the crucial role of the teacher during a complex lesson topic. Therefore, this study makes an indispensable contribution to the development of the knowledge of science teaching practice, especially on how a decision-making process occurs by a socio-scientific issue-based instruction through integrated STEM education.

Utilizing an inquiry-learning space (ILS) via the Go-Lab platform, we investigated students' technology acceptance, knowledge integration [KI] process, and learning outcomes of both the high-achiever KI student and low-achiever KI student. This study aimed to understand how students engage in knowledge integration tasks using an inquiry-learning space to learn Mendelian genetics and realize the relationship between student KI and domain knowledge. Using a quasi-experimental design, we examined 41 seventh-grade students in Taiwan completing Mendelian genetics KI tasks in ILS, pre/post-testing of domain knowledge tests, and a technology acceptance questionnaire. The analysis of students' interaction in the ILS and domain knowledge tests was conducted through descriptive statistics, t-tests, Pearson's correlation, and content analysis to indicate the direction and relationship between students' KI processes and learning outcomes. A technology acceptance questionnaire was analyzed through descriptive statistics and Pearson's correlation to reveal whether students accepted learning on the Go-Lab platform. The study showed that (i) students responded positively to the perceived usefulness of the Go-Lab platform, (ii) the high-achiever KI students could gradually construct links from simple to complex and diverse among genetic ideas, and the low-achiever almost built simple links, but (iii) the high-achiever and low-achiever KI students had similar learning outcomes. These findings have implications that the instruction design of knowledge integration tasks promotes students' Mendelian genetics conceptual understanding and KI progress.

The aim of this study was to develop a scale to measure students' blended learning course experience. A total of 792 undergraduate students from Malaysia participated in this study. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was employed to evaluate the factor structure of the scale. As a result of EFA, three factors with 19 items that explained 68.06% of the total variance were obtained. The three factors are: course design, learning experience, and personal factors. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to establish the structural validity of the scale, and item discrimination was conducted to validate the scale. The Cronbach's coefficients (a) for the factors ranged from 0.71 to 0.95. The overall Cronbach's coefficient (a) of the scale was .92, demonstrating a satisfactory level of reliability. The results showed that the developed scale is reliable and valid. Future implications for course designers and instructors are discussed.

Scientific modeling (SM) is a core practice of science and an important component of scientific literacy. Supporting students in developing the competence to construct, use, evaluate, and revise models is hence of particular relevance. While research has shown that spatial visualization (SV), a core component of spatial ability, is correlated with students' SM performance, it is unclear which role SV plays in students performing the four elements of SM: the construction, the use, the evaluation, and the revision of models. This study analyzes the role of SV in the performance of a series of SM tasks by 279 students in Grades 4 and 7. The findings indicate that SV affects students' performance in SM but that the effect is more significant in Grade 4 than in Grade 7. More specifically, SV is significantly predictive for model revision in Grade 4, but significant for model evaluation in Grade 7. However, there was no gender difference in the effect of SV on SM. The implications are that science teaching and learning must better attend to supporting younger students through visual aids when engaging them in SM. The study also suggests that further studies are needed to understand the different cognitive processes involved in students' SM and their complex interplay.

Factors affecting the quality of education can be observed from students' problem-solving abilities and academic learning achievements. This research aims to examine a direct relationship between students' problem-solving abilities and academic learning achievement by using a science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education at a coffee plantation area in Indonesia. In analyzing data, students' problem-solving abilities and academic learning achievements were exposed to quantitative descriptive of correlation bivariate rank Spearman. This study consisted of 148 junior-high-school students in a coffee plantation area. The results indicated that there was a positive correlation between the students' problem-solving abilities and academic learning achievements in favor of STEM education. This means that the more problem-solving skills the students have, the better academic learning achievement they perform. These positive results recommend that the integrated STEM education, as an approach, should be included varied contexts, especially in the Asian region. Moreover, science teachers should hone students' problem-solving skills via a mixed way, e.g., the integrated STEM education. In addition, STEM education will be helpful for students (who especially work and live in plantation areas) to understand the role of science in their everyday lives.

This article reports the design of a scientific board game, named "Element Enterprise Tycoon" (EET), which creates a scenario combining chemical elements, techniques, and products in daily life. The game cards are designed to motivate students not only to retrieve information about chemical elements, but also to be proficient in chemistry. Moreover, the game creates opportunities for group interactions and competitions to engage students in learning chemical elements as they do in regular science curricula. The EET has been field-tested with a group of middle school students to evaluate its applicability. Empirical data show that students improve their understanding of chemistry concepts with a median level of effect size. In particular, students achieve better performance in terms of chemistry-related technique concepts. The follow-up interviews reflect students' positive feedback and attitudes toward science learning through board game playing and their willingness to continue to play the game. It is suggested that learning through science games can indeed help students learn new chemical knowledge.

The development and deployment of STEM education in every continent and country are different. An instrument to access the current situation of the application, knowledge, as well as attitude towards STEM education, is necessary. This research aimed to design and develop a valid instrument that can be used to assure the quantitative degree of attitude, knowledge, and application of STEM (AKA) by science teachers. Research data were collected from 137 Indonesian secondary school science teachers. In order to determine the validity of the scale, reliability test, exploratory factor analysis (EFA), as well as the content and face validity from experts were used. Results showed that the designed and developed AKA instrument was adequate to reliabilities and validities as well as can be used to collect data. The development of AKA instrument enables users worldwide to obtain information about the development of STEM as well as the problems and challenges faced by science teachers in the field. Further work is also suggested.

By investigating scholarly output in science communication from 1997 to 2018, this research sought evidence that science education has been increasingly focusing on communication methods to reach the public. Through an automatic scientometric method, this study analyzed 1300 articles published in two leading journals in the field of science communication. As a result, seven trends were revealed and categorized into three themes: Public engagement with science (PES); Media and science (MS); and Issues in science (IS). Furthermore, PES and MS scholarly output were found increased significantly. The findings confirmed the goal of this research. However, it then suggested a research area of bridging science education and science communication that is currently less explored. Given increased focus towards PES and MS, these fields are primed for further collaboration to more engage the public in science learning.

This research uses board games as teaching material to develop students' decision-making ability and basic scientific literacy and to foster students' value for nature and social caring by working with socioscientific issues. The board game structure contains four perspective systems: ecological, economic, cultural, and political. In the game processing, students must handle, consider, and understand the different role players' positions and face different missions that involve socioeconomic and environmental conflicts. When making any decisions, students affect the follow-up game behaviors and develop tendencies. The board game instruction was field-tested with 38 high-school students from two different high schools. Students played the board game for a total of 200 minutes. Students' scientific conceptions concerning biodiversity (closed-ended) and perspectives on socioscientific issues (open-ended) were assessed before and after the board game lesson. The results showed that students in both high schools significantly increased their understanding of biodiversity concepts, with a high level of effect size (Cohen's d equal to 1.40 and 1.06, respectively, for the two schools). In the semistructured interviews, the interviewed students were able to reflect on the value of animals and provide various opinions about animal conservation and economic development.

This study aims to test the effectiveness of a socio-scientific issue (SSI) based instruction through STEM-6E (engage, explore, explain, engineer, enrich, and evaluate). Controversial science topics (e.g. genetically modified organisms) in many countries, especially Indonesia, can be approached via integrated STEM education. One hundred and nine junior-high-school students from two different schools were involved in this study. Qualitative and quantitative data analyses were used to interpret the data obtained. Furthermore, a multi-level assessment framework (proximal and distal assessment) was employed in the quantitative analysis. The study results revealed that socio-scientific issue-based instruction by STEM-6E can probe a unique natural classroom interaction initiated by the teacher. The results also showed that both proximal and distal assessment had significant pre-test and post-test score differences (t-test value: proximal = -14.89; distal = -8.92). Practical significance from Cohen's d in the two assessments also showed a large effect (distal: d = 0.85; proximal: d = 1.42). The students' perceptions of this curriculum intervention, are extensively discussed. In conclusion, this current study's results support the claim that STEM-SSI can foster students' understanding, performance, motivation, and self-awareness in learning science. Furthermore, such findings contribute to science teachers in planning, processing, and evaluating classroom learning via controversial science topics through integrated STEM education.

The intricate blend morphology of ternary systems and its correlation with organic photovoltaic (OPV) performance remain incompletely understood. Here, three unfused-ring small-molecule acceptors were utilized as guest acceptors of the benchmark active layer PM6:Y6 to probe nanophase separation and energy loss phenomena. Those acceptors feature a napththobistrazole (NTz) bridging two cyclopenta[2,1-b,3,4-b′]dithiophene (CPDT) groups as the central unit which is equipping 2-(3-oxo-2,3dihydro-1H-inden-1-ylidene)malononitrile (ID), 2-(5,6-difluoro3-oxo-2,3-dihydro-1H-inden-1-ylidene)malononitrile (2F), and malononitrile (CN) groups as terminal groups respectively. The blend morphology of ternary active layers along with their optoelectronic properties were fully analyzed. Grazing-incidence wide-angle X-ray scattering (GIWAXS) unveiled that the end group of the guest acceptor influences nanophase separation within the ternary blend, affecting energy losses, particularly non-radiative recombination in the corresponding OPV. Among them, NTzCPDT2F, sharing the same end group as Y6, exhibited the highest open-circuit voltage (VOC) and power conversion efficiency. This can be attributed to favorable end-to-end molecular packing between NTzCPDT2F and Y6, promoting nanophase separation. Our demonstration offers a deeper understanding of how blend nanophase separation governs the energy loss and VOC of OPVs, providing a new design principle for acceptors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study used a systematic review and meta-analysis as a method to investigate whether STEM enactment in Asia effectively enhances students' learning outcomes. Verifiable examples of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education, effectively being applied in Asia, are presented in this study. The study involved 4768 students from 54 studies. Learning outcomes focused on the students' academic learning achievement, higher-order thinking skills (HOTS), and motivation. The analysis results of effect sizes showed that the STEM enactments in Asia were effective at a moderate level (0.69 [0.58, 0.81 of 95% CI]) of improving students' learning outcomes. Sequentially, the effectiveness of STEM enactment starts from students' higher-order thinking skills, moves to students' academic learning achievement, and ends with the motivation. In addition, STEM enactments in Asia were carried out with several variations where STEM integrated with project-based learning was preferred. The recommendations of this study include a combination of the learning approach, learning orientation, and duration of instruction, all of which contribute to the STEM enactment effectiveness and maximize results in STEM education. Some practical implications, such as the central role of the teacher during the STEM enactment, are extensively discussed. This study supports that STEM education is a universally crucial tool which effectively prepares students from various national and cultural backgrounds, across Asia, toward improved learning outcomes.

This study, first of all, aimed to develop a new survey to assess Taiwanese teachers' perceived self-efficacy in STEM knowledge. Second, it aimed to probe any differences in teachers' perceived self-efficacy in STEM knowledge regarding their gender and teaching subjects. Last, we examined the structural relations among teachers' perceived self-efficacy in STEM knowledge and their attitudes toward STEM education. The participants were 220 high school teachers in Taiwan. The 30-item instrument consisted of six factors: scientific inquiry, technology use, engineering design, mathematical thinking, and synthesized knowledge of STEM, as well as attitudes toward STEM education. The results showed that the proposed instrument was valid and reliable. In addition, male teachers outperformed female teachers in each dimension of the survey. Last, teachers' self-efficacy in synthesized knowledge of STEM had two mediating effects. One was in the relationship between self-efficacy in engineering design and attitudes toward STEM education. The other was in the relationship between self-efficacy in Mathematical Thinking and Attitudes toward STEM education.

The aim of this exploratory study was to examine the impact of five personality traits ("extraversion," "agreeableness," "conscientiousness," "neuroticism," and "intellect/imagination") on the perception of students towards online learning. A total of 208 students from Taiwan (male = 96 and female = 112) with previous online course experience participated in an online survey using a bulletin board system. To measure personality traits and students' perceptions, the Mini-International Personality Item Pool and the Perception of Students towards Online Learning instruments were used respectively. The researchers employed hierarchical regression analysis to analyse the data obtained. The results showed that two personality traits (conscientiousness and intellect/imagination) had a larger positive impact on students' perceptions towards online learning, whereas neuroticism had significantly negative effects on participants of online courses. These results provide evidence that students with different personality traits have different preferences for and experiences in online courses.

Augmented reality (AR) is growing in popularity in teaching and learning due in part to powerful new technologies. What has yet to be well established is when and with which learners and learning tasks AR is an effective approach. Therefore, the aim of this study was to examine the effectiveness of using AR-based formative assessment for improving elementary students' learning achievement and motivation in a unit of instruction involving butterflies. A total of 70 students of Grade 4 were selected from an elementary school in Taiwan. The experimental group (35) underwent an AR-based intervention that involved formative assessment using iPads whereas the control group (35) followed the traditional teaching method and formative assessment. One-way Analysis of Co-variance (ANCOVA) and multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) were employed to analyze the data obtained. The results indicated that using the AR-based formative assessment improved not only students' learning performance but also learning motivation effectively compared with a traditional formative assessment approach. Therefore, it is recommended to conduct further studies and to consider integrating AR in formative assessments and feedback to improve learning.

Designers rely on sketching to visualize and refine their initial ideas, and virtual reality (VR) tools now facilitate sketching in immersive 3D environments. However, little research has been conducted on the differences in the visual and spatial processes involved in 3D versus 2D sketching and their effects on cognition. This study investigated potential differences in spatial and visual functions related to the use of 3D versus 2D sketching media by analyzing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data. We recruited 20 healthy, right-handed students from the Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture with at least three years of experience in freehand landscape drawing. Using an Oculus Quest VR headset controller and a 12.9-inch iPad Pro with an Apple Pencil, we tested participants individually with 3D and 2D sketching, respectively. When comparing 2D and 3D sketches, our fMRI results revealed significant differences in the activation of several brain regions, including the right middle temporal gyrus, both sides of the parietal lobe, and the left middle occipital gyrus. We also compared different sketching conditions, such as lines, geometrical objects (cube), and naturalistic objects (perspective view of a tree), and found significant differences in the spatial and visual recognition of brain areas that support visual recognition, composition, and spatial perception. This finding suggests that 3D sketching environments, such as VR, may activate more visual–spatial functions during sketching compared to 2D environments. The result highlights the potential of immersive sketching environments for design-related processes and spatial thinking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we aimed to characterize students' inquiry skill profiles and investigate whether students' gender, major, school location and type, and household registration are related to their inquiry skill profiles. By providing an animation‐based activity, we engaged students in a scientific inquiry on the atmospheric chemistry of climate change. Students performed data analytics, control of variables, and scientific reasoning tasks, which represented essential skills in the inquiry process. After removing the invalid data and conducting the two‐stage stratified sampling, we analyzed 724 11th‐grade Chinese students' multiple‐choice and open‐ended responses. A latent profile analysis (LPA) was used to identify if there were subgroups of students' inquiry skills. χ2 tests were conducted to examine whether the profiles' distribution differed in gender, major, school location, school type, and household registration. We identified four types of inquiry skill profiles among students: sophisticated, experimental, moderate, and basic, based on their skills in data analytics, scientific reasoning, and control of variables. The findings showed that school location significantly affected students' inquiry profiles, while school type, student major, and hukou had a mildly favorable impact. To sum up, the marriage of the LPA approach and the animation‐based activity has illuminated not just students' different inquiry skill profiles but also the relationships these profiles have with certain demographic factors. We discussed that it is imperative to recognize these varied inquiry skill profiles and work to bridge the disparities stemming from demographic differences for a more equitable science education environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]