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.…

Research Findings: This study explores how Chinese preschool teachers' enactment of Concept Development (CD) strategies, as measured by the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS), might effectively elicit children's higher-order thinking during whole-group science teaching. Participants included 25 Chinese preschool teachers and 800 young…

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…

Research Findings: The present study analyzes whether child factors are linked to variations in teacher cognitive activation (CA) among individual children in math-related activities within Chinese kindergarten classrooms. The findings show that teachers tend to provide direct CA with high concreteness and that child engagement with tasks is…

The primary goals of this study are to investigate if cognitive activation increases mathematics self-efficacy, which in turn alleviates anxiety and to examine the moderating role of internal migrant status. Hierarchical linear models and multilevel structural equation models were employed to datasets of 3088 fourth graders from 57 classrooms in…

The rapid development of large language models (LLMs) presented opportunities for the transformation of science and STEM education. Research on LLMs was in the exploratory phase, characterized by discussions and observations rather than empirical investigations. This study presented a framework for incorporating LLMs into Science and Engineering…

Augmented reality (AR) can represent a contextualised scientific inquiry environment in which students may explore the real world and develop science process skills via interacting with rich information from virtual systems. However, it remains a challenge for most students to complete scientific inquiry tasks without proper support. Research…

Causal reasoning is a fundamental cognitive process that supports a wide range of learning activities such as making predictions and inferences, explaining phenomena, and drawing conclusions. In physics learning, causal reasoning plays an important role in developing conceptual understanding and problem-solving skills. This study builds off the…

Research Findings: This study investigated teachers' Concept development (CD) strategy use in whole-group math teaching and its associations with children's higher-order thinking processes in 25 Chinese preschool math lessons. We utilized the CD dimension within the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS) to guide our exploration. CD…

This study examines how sampled Chinese and U.S. third and fourth grade students (N[subscript China] = 167, N[subscript US] = 97) understand the commutative, associative, and distributive properties. These students took both pre- and post-tests conducted at the beginning and end of a school year. Comparisons between students' pre- and post-tests…

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…

In this study, we explore how cross-linguistic differences can contribute to children's scientific thinking. We compared first and third grade Chinese students' pre-instructional ideas of the earth expressed in clinical interviews with that of their English-speaking and Greek-speaking counterparts (as recorded in the literature). Inspired by a…

The journal issue contains articles in either Chinese or English, each with abstracts in both languages. They include: "'Every Person Is a Creative Being': Teaching Method Designed To Cultivate Creativity from the Perspective of Educational Psychology" (Wai Man Lee); "Sex Differences in Problem Behaviour and the Self-Concept: An…