We are very glad to make a formal announcement in this Preface that the following 11 distinguished science educators in 7 different countries or regions have kindly agreed to serve in our Editorial Review Board:

• Dr. Shu-Nu CHANG (Aletheia University, TAIWAN)
• Dr. Bayram COSTU (Karadeniz Technical University, TURKEY)
• Dr. Ning DING (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, THE NETHERLANDS)
• Dr. Leo Sun-Wai FUNG (Education Bureau, HKSAR Government, HONG KONG)
• Dr. Murat GÖKDERE (University of Amasya University, TURKEY)
• Prof. Sheau-Wen LIN (National Pingtung University of Education, TAIWAN)
• Dr. Shu-Chiu LIU (University of Oldenburg, GERMANY)
• Dr. Lutfullah TURKMEN (Usak University, TURKEY)
• Dr. Kevin WATSON (University of Western Sydney, AUSTRALIA)
• Prof. Xianqiu WU (South China Normal University, CHINA)
• Prof. Xishun XIE (University of South East, CHINA)

Together with the 20 existing members, there are now 31 experts in a wide spectrum of areas helping us and the authors to ensure and improve the quality of articles to be accepted for publication in our journal. Despite of this, we still need to invite additional referees to review some articles for us because we have been facing with a large increase in the number of submission and re-submission.

In this June or First Issue of Volume 9, there are 19 articles contributed by 40 authors in 26 different universities or education-related organisations. It is our great pleasure to have a Foreword article on "The implementation of the educational achievement study of the science curriculum" as contributed by Prof. YANG Baoshan who is a very experienced researcher on science education in the top-ranked China National Institute for Educational Research. He also serves as Special Editor for this issue to edit a Special Section called "Review on Science Assessment" which consists of six review articles and one preface for summarising the methods and key findings on the assessment of students' science learning outcomes around the world. This special section will become a very useful and important source of references for those science education researchers in mainland China to develop their own national assessment instrument for assessing Chinese students' science achievement in the next few years. Apart from those 6 review articles on science assessment, we have another 4 in the Academic Articles section which cover topics on nature of science, teachers' attitudes towards assessment, constructivist teaching in physics and science process skills and 8 in the General Articles section which are professional articles on effective teaching methods or interesting findings on various aspects of science education and science teacher education.

For all articles published in the aforementioned 3 sections, their corresponding pdf files are freely available for access in our Download section.

Finally, we would like to express our sincere thanks to the 27 external referees and all members of our Editorial Board who have carefully and critically reviewed those manuscripts which are being considered for publication in this issue. Thanks are also due to all persons who have contributed articles in this issue and to all research assistants, student helpers and colleagues in the HKIEd who offered their kind assistance in developing and promoting this online periodical. Besides, we must express our special thanks to the Student Affairs Office of The Hong Kong Institute of Education for providing two student helpers to us through the On-Campus Work Exposure Scheme 2007-08.