The study aimed to investigate the effect of an interdisciplinary STEM course on children's attitudes of learning and engineering design skills. A total of 449 elementary school children in China were recruited from three different grade levels (i.e., second, fourth and sixth grade) to participate in this study. All participants attended a weekly…

Inspired by complex system theory, this study adopts a multilevel piecewise regression model to examine the relationship between homework time and the development of students in different grades using a large-scale testing database in China. The results indicate that the relationship between homework time and students' performance is positive when…

Students' understanding of the meaning of the equal sign develops slowly over the primary grades. In addition to updating their representations of equations to recognize that the equal sign represents an equivalence relation rather than signaling an operation, students need to move beyond full computation to efficiently solve equivalence problems.…

The effect of technology on primary students' self-regulated vocabulary learning (SRVL) over time and its dynamic relationship with vocabulary outcomes have been scarcely studied. This quasi-experimental study reports a longitudinal inquiry into the effect of a mobile-assisted self-regulation scheme on primary students' SRVL and the relationship…

Computational Thinking (CT) is regarded as a crucial competency for all children in the 21st century. There are misconceptions about CT which confounds CT skills with programming skills. However, CT skills and programming skills are not the same. CT is a broader skillset of cognitive thinking that is integral to complex problem solving. Teaching…

Computational thinking (CT) plays a vital role in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). However, whether students' learning attitude towards STEM is related to their CT skills remains unknown. Two studies were conducted to address this knowledge gap. In Study 1, we validated a newly developed STEM learning attitude…

We examined the developmental trajectories and cognitive predictors of first language Chinese reading, second language English reading, and mathematics skills in Hong Kong children in Grades 1-5. We used longitudinal data of 1,000 children (M[subscript age] = 7.59 years) assessed on phonological awareness, rapid naming, and morphological awareness…

Deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) students face great challenges in becoming proficient readers. Vocabulary knowledge is consistently considered to be an important factor affecting DHH students' reading ability. However, the mechanism that underlies the relationship between vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension in DHH students remains…

As a result of COVID-19, various forms of education and teaching are moving online. However, the notion of an online STEM camp is still in its beginnings, and there is little relevant research and experience in this context. At the beginning of April 2021, the research team launched an online STEM charity camp with the theme of "Shen Nong…

The purpose of this pilot study is to identify how Waldorf-inspired imaginative teaching methods, and low-technology prototyping promote New Media Literacies (NMLs) development at upper elementary school students. Particularly, the aim is twofold: firstly, to test the feasibility of the research design and validate the research instruments;…

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…

This paper examined to what extent causal explanation speaking tasks (CESTs) are cognitively appropriate for assessing young language learners' (YLLs) L2 speaking. Ninety-six YLLs (48 from Grade 4 and 6 each) in China performed two CESTs in both L1 (Chinese) and L2 (English). They also completed receptive and productive L2 vocabulary size tests.…

The Social Emotional Health Survey-Primary (SEHS-P) was originally developed to assess U.S. elementary students' positive psychological traits: gratitude, zest, optimism, and persistence, and the higher-order latent construct of covitality. The present study evaluated the validity of a Chinese version of SEHS-P with a sample of 653 Chinese…

An increasing amount of research has indicated that the effectiveness of growth mindset (GM) intervention is sensitive to population characteristics. However, few studies have investigated whether GM interventions can be leveraged to promote academic performance among non-westerners such as Chinese students. Attuning to the Chinese background, we…

While recent studies find that contextual diversity (CD) is a better determinant of visual word recognition than token frequency, there is a dearth of work comparing contextual diversity and token frequency in developing readers. In two sets of character and lexical decision experiments we examined token frequency and contextual diversity effects…