Daner Sun

The Education University of Hong Kong | ied · Department of Mathematics and Information Technology (MIT)

The impact of self-regulated learning (SRL) on students' performance in various subjects has been extensively studied. However, there has been limited research on how task-specific SRL skills and self-reported SRL skills affect students' learning outcomes in chemistry classes at senior secondary schools. To address this gap, we examined the task-sp...

Self-regulated learning (SRL) is proved to be an effective learning strategy both in a real classroom and in online environments while digital storytelling (DST) is an emerging strategy for teachers to guide their students to learn a language by integrating multimodal artefacts to develop language and communication skills. However, little research...

Motivated by the rapid development and application of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies in education and the needs of language learners during the COVID-19 pandemic, an AI-enabled English language learning (AIELL) system featuring authentic and ubiquitous learning for the acquisition of vocabulary and grammar in English as a second language...

Driven by the initiative of e-learning, mobile technologies such as tablets, with the merits of portability and accessibility, have become vital tools for creating ubiquitous learning and mobile learning (m-learning) environments in science education. The reconstruction of the science learning environment enabled by mobile technologies may influenc...

Helping pre-service teachers (PSTs) develop competencies in collaborative inquiry and knowledge building is crucial, but this subject remains largely unexplored in CSCL. This study examines the design and process of collaborative analytics-supported reflective assessment and its effects on promoting PSTs to develop their competencies in collaborati...

Although interdisciplinary STEM education is receiving increasing emphasis in many curriculum documents and policy reports, there appears inadequate practices or research to guide schools to distribute the leadership and responsibilities to promote quality curriculum and learning outcomes. This paper provides a critical literature review and discus...

Analogies and modelling have been developed and applied in learning and teaching science to facilitate students’ understanding of abstract concepts, such as atomic structure. Considering few studies focus on comparing the effects of two teaching strategies—analogy-based teaching (ABT) and modelling-based teaching (MBT)—this study aims to compare th...

This critical review responds to an international call for research review on the mechanism by which online peer feedback (OPF) optimises learning effectiveness. The review focuses on the studies in Chinese contexts, with which OPF may appear culturally incompatible. The review analyses 28 empirical studies from 2010 to 2020 and found that (a) a cl...

Few studies focused on exploring students’ scientific reasoning ability (SRA) using self-developed test based on large sample. The main purposes of this study were to evaluate and analyze the differences in SRA between genders, grade levels, and academic achievement levels (AAL) in science, and the interaction effects of the latter three variables....

Prior studies have highlighted the importance of General Education (GE) in reinvigorating higher education. In spite of the significant contribution of GE, students’ engagement in the course is also frequently negative. Formative e-assessment (FEA) is supposed to enhance undergraduates’ learning engagement due to the nature of formative assessment...

This study investigated the role and process of self‐directed reflective assessment (SDRA) enhanced by learning analytics to support pre‐service teachers' (PTs') collective empowerment in a knowledge‐building (KB) classroom. The participants were 43 second‐year PTs from a compulsory course taught by a teacher who had 2 years' teaching experience. A...

In many countries, integrating engineering into science education is regarded as the best means of improving science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. In Mainland China, some efforts have been made to integrate engineering into science, but problems regarding teacher factors hinder its effective implementation. To address...

This study explored how educational robotics (ER) was implemented in classrooms to foster creativity among elementary school students and identified challenges associated with its implementation. Twenty‐six teachers at different elementary schools were interviewed. In‐depth teacher interviews and grounded theory were used to collect and analyze the...

Scientific reasoning ability (SRA) is widely recognized as an essential goal for science education. There is much discussion on the design and development of assessment frameworks as viable tools to foster SRA. However, established assessments mostly focus on the level of students reasoning attainment. Student ability to use evidence to support rea...

The implementation of effective professional development courses for K-12 teachers on computational thinking (CT) in relation to programming remains a challenge. There is a lack of high-quality empirical research on teacher development in CT in relation to programming. This study addressed that situation by providing empirical evidence of the desig...

With the recognition of the value of learning in informal spaces, it has been proposed that learning in the informal spaces should be an integral part of the formal schooling. The ubiquitous use of mobile technology creates various opportunities for connecting learning in the formal and informal contexts. In seamless learning, different efforts hav...

Background and purpose: To date, there has been little research on the Teacher Professional Development (TPD) for delivering a mobile technology-supported science curriculum. To address this, a TPD model for a science curriculum supported by mobile technology was developed and evaluated in this paper. The study reported focuses on the establishment...

This paper explores the crossover between formal learning and learning in informal spaces supported by mobile technology, and proposes design principles for educators to carry out a science curriculum, namely Boundary Activity-based Science Curriculum (BAbSC). The conceptualization of the boundary object, and the principles of boundary activity as...

When inquiry-based learning is designed for a collaborative context, the interactions that arise in the learning environment can become fairly complex. While the learning effectiveness of such learning environments has been reported in the literature, there have been fewer studies on the students’ learning processes. To address this, the article pr...

The research on mobile learning in science lacks in-depth investigation of the learning process. In this paper, we describe the implementation of a mobile technology-supported science curriculum developed by design-based approach. The long-term data collection and trace of learning process enable the exploration of students’ participation and ident...

Bridging formal and informal learning to enable students’ engaged learning is a core tenet of seamless learning. Addressing the limitations of the current studies on the innovative design and implementation of seamless learning scenarios, this chapter presents one well-designed and implemented curricular initiative at the primary school level, name...

While learning in informal contexts has been discussed for decades, there has been limited attention paid to the influence of informal learning on students’ learning in the formal spaces. Studies of students’ thinking and doing in the informal context that relate to their learning in the formal context have not often been conducted. Toward the aim...

With advancements made in mobile technology, increasing emphasis has been paid to how to leverage the affordances of mobile technology to improve science learning and instruction. This paper reports on a science curriculum supported by an inquiry-based framework and mobile technologies. It was developed by teachers and researchers in a multiyear pr...

The research literature reports on designs of ubiquitous and seamless learning environments enabled by the integration of mobile technology into learning. However, the lack of good pedagogical designs that provide for sustainability and the inadequate investigation of learning outcomes remain major gaps in the current studies on mobile learning. Th...

Scaling up curricular innovations is inherently complex. The scaling complexity comes from not only the influences arising from policy imperatives, government, or other top-level support but also the uptake of the practitioners. In the literature, factors that affect the degree of uptake and scale-up of innovations have been frequently discussed. H...

Though discussion of the teacher factor in ICT-enabled science learning abounds in the literature, the investigation of Teacher Enactments (TEs) of ICT-facilitated lessons through exploring teaching practices is still under-explored and under-recognized. Current studies are still lacking in evidence-based findings of TEs based on the investigation...

The last two decades have witnessed the gradual implementation of integrated science curriculum at the junior secondary level in China. However, in most provinces of China, the implementation is not as successful as expected. Challenges were reported, yet without fine-grained investigation, with respect to science teachers' instruction on integrate...

WiMVT (Web-based inquirer with Modeling and Visualization Technology) is designed as a learning system combining guided inquiry, modeling and visualization with the social interaction. In the paper, we first present the design rationale of the system, briefly describe the main functions, then discuss the features supporting model progression in sci...

There is abundant research reporting the designs of ubiquitous and seamless learning environments which are enabled by the integration of mobile technology. However, the lack of pedagogical designs that provide for sustainability, and the inadequate investigations of learning outcomes are some of the major gaps in current studies. Towards addressin...

The paper traces a research process in the design and development of a science learning environment called WiMVT (web-based inquirer with modeling and visualization technology). The WiMVT system is designed to help secondary school students build a sophisticated understanding of scientific conceptions, and the science inquiry process, as well as de...

The CSI (Collaborative Science Inquiry) learning environment is designed to help secondary school students understand scientific concepts, and develop scientific inquiry knowledge and skills through collaborative inquiry-based learning activities. This paper presents the design rationale and architecture of the system to support the shape of CSI le...

In our work on scaling a mobile technology-facilitated science curriculum called Mobilized 5E Science Curriculum (M5ESC) in a Singapore primary school, great efforts have been devoted to developing a teacher professional development (TPD) model of this curriculum innovation to facilitate teacher enactment of M5ESC in primary schools. In the study,...

Considering that limited studies have investigated the teacher enactment (TE) of complex ICT-facilitated lessons, a study on exploring the TEs of lessons supported by a science inquiry and collaborative learning environment (Collaborative Science Inquiry, CSI) was conducted. In the study, the topic was "diffusion and osmosis", and the participants...