Contemporary Science Education Initiatives Undertaken in the Asia Pacific Region

Abstract

The theme issue on ‘contemporary science education initiatives undertaken in Asia Pacific region’ presents the compilation of efforts across primary to tertiary levels performed by science education researchers and practitioners across Asia Pacific countries, including Indonesia, India, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand. Large-scale studies such as PISA and TIMSS identified students lacking interest and negative attitudes towards science education (OECD, 2009). The organization further documented that one of the primary reasons for the problematic situation is due to the teaching and learning of science content that is irrelevant and uninteresting (Giamellaro, 2014). The didactic teaching prevalently embraced in science education often results in the development of “inert knowledge”, a knowledge which is decontextualized from the real world (Holbrook et al., 2022). Decontextualizing science education not only contributes to declining intrinsic motivation and attitude but is also problematic for understanding the current real-world problems, which are complex and interdisciplinary. Contextualization of science education is necessary for educating students to appreciate the importance of scientific knowledge to deal with challenges from the advent of digitalization and technological advancement, climate change, pandemic and many more. The theme issues on science education present the compilation of articles describing contextualization occurring in various forms in the Asia Pacific region.