This study is specifically designed to measure the effectiveness of Contextual Teaching and Learning (CTL) on the students’ scientific attitude and achievement in Natural Science among Junior school students in Pekanbaru, Indonesia. This quasi experiment involved some 215 Form VII students from...

Studies have shown that various factors (the role of formal education, informal education, and community) contribute to the lack of participation in STEM and STEM careers. This research aimed to understand the multi pathways of factors contributing to the interest in STEM careers (STEM careers in physical sciences and STEM careers in life sciences). This research was a survey research which administered a questionnaire randomly to 1485 secondary school students (14 years of age). Data analysis was based on the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) approach using Analysis of Moment Structures (AMOS) to test the hypothesized model. A model containing five constructs, namely environmental factors (learning experiences, media, social influences), self-efficacy in science, technology, engineering and mathematics respectively, perceptions of STEM careers and interest in physical sciences and life sciences STEM careers was proposed in this research. The results show that students’ interest in life sciences based careers is influence by their self-efficacy and perceptions of the career. Meanwhile, students’ interest in physical sciences based careers is influence only by their self-efficacy and not influence by their perceptions of the career. The need to improve students’ self-efficacy through STEM learning experiences is imperative to ensure continued interest in STEM careers. Key words: environmental factors, life sciences STEM careers, perceptions of STEM careers, physical sciences STEM careers, self-efficacy, social cognitive career theory.

Computational thinking (CT) is a method for solving complex problems, but also gives people an inventive inspiration to adapt to our smart and changing society. Globally it has been considered as vital abilities for solving genuine issues successfully and efficiently in the 21st century. Recent studies have revealed that the nurture of CT mainly centered on measuring the technical skill. There is a lack of conceptualization and instruments that cogitate on CT disposition and attitudes. This study attends to these limitations by developing an instrument to measure CT concerning dispositions and attitudes. The instruments' validity and reliability testing were performed with the participation from secondary school students in Malaysia. The internal consistency reliability, standardized residual variance, construct validity and composite reliability were examined. The result revealed that the instrument validity was confirmed after removing items. The reliability and validity of the instrument have been verified. The findings established that all constructs are useful for assessing the disposition of computer science students. The implications for psychometric assessment were evident in terms of giving empirical evidence to corroborate theory-based constructs and also validating items' quality to appropriately represent the measurement.

Education digitization highly enthuses learners for deeper learning and developing thought processes in formulating problems and their solutions effectively in their real-life circumstances. Implementing computational thinking skills through programming in Malaysian primary and secondary school STEM curriculum create huge challenges, especially among STEM educators. This study highlights the integration of four major theories in developing the Metacognitive Empowerment by Computational Thinking (ME-CoT) learning module by cultivating computational thinking through programming skills to promote metacognitive awareness in Biology students. Pilot research was conducted to investigate the reliability of the ME-CoT learning module. Since the study sample was less than 30 students then, the consistency of the measurements, Pearson’s r was calculated to identify stability reliability. Findings revealed that the ME-CoT learning module has very strong stability reliability with a value of r = 0.974 and provides advantages such as assisting students to understand the content of the lesson more actively and in a fun way.

Today’s educational challenges necessitate the creative use of digital technology to adapt an effective pedagogical approach in chemistry teaching. While various visualization tools have been developed to improve visual-spatial skills, previous studies on digital technology interventions provide limited findings and show moderate effects on students’ learning. Moreover, students still have misconceptions even after using three-dimensional models physically or virtually while learning chemical bonding. Therefore, this study investigates the effectiveness of the CHEMBOND3D e-module that integrates the web-based visualization tool, Molview, on the chemical bonding concept knowledge and visual-spatial skills between treatment groups and control groups. A pretest-posttest non-equivalent control group with a quasi-experimental quantitative design is used in the research. Pilot studies were conducted to verify the validity and reliability of the CHEMBOND3D Chemical Bonding Knowledge Test and Revised Purdue Visualization Test of Rotations. A total of 112 pre-university students from 10 schools in Sabah were selected based on the sampling method. The findings showed significant improvement in the chemical bonding concept knowledge and visual-spatial skills for treatment group students using CHEMBOND3D e-module compared to control group students using conventional methods. This provides new evidence of the potential of web-based application in learning microscopic chemistry concept in chemical bonding. These findings can facilitate further studies of other digital visualization tools such as virtual reality and augmented reality in support of learning complex chemistry concepts in reaction mechanisms and chemical equilibrium.

Encouraging students’ higher-order thinking skills (HOTs) has become an ultimate objective for several education programmes. Being a significant domain of scaffolding strategies, HOTs has been considered as a concern that should persistently be at the vanguard of reform agenda of science. The present research aims to examine the effect of scaffolding strategies on HOTs of middle school science students in the context of Saudi Arabia. To carry out the research aim, quasi-experimental design has been applied based on multiple-choice questions comprising 20 questions all distributed on four skills, namely, application, analysis, evaluation and creation. The total population of the research was 84 grade 9 students who all sat for both pre-test and post-test. Convenient sampling was chosen as a sampling method that typically suits both the experimental group (42 students) and the control group (42 students). After collection, data were analysed using both descriptive analysis, mean and standard deviation, and inferential statistics including t-test, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and multivariate ANOVA. The effect of scaffolding strategies on the four skills was found to be significant (p <.01). The present research can contribute to the enhancement of students’ HOTs, provided that scaffolding strategies are applied in science classes and, from a research perspective, will be a reference for researchers who are interested in scaffolding strategies in the context of either Saudi Arabia or other countries. Keywords: higher-order thinking skills, Saudi Arabia, scaffolding strategies, science education