As announced in the Preface of the last issue, our Editorial Review Board was enlarged with the incorporation of 11 distinguished science educators from different countries or regions around the world. We are very glad to report that our online has just come into an agreement with the EBSCO Publishing, Inc. that the content of this journal will be included in various EBSCO information products. The major implication is that our journal is being more highly recognised in the academic community. This journal is also included in the catalogue or database of many university libraries or prestigious database, e.g.

• Directory of Open Access Journals (which requires a quality control mechanism like editorial board and peer-review system incorporated in the process for the publication of research or review articles in full text and the target readers are primarily researchers) http://www.doaj.org/
• Academic Journals Database (as one of the 800 internationally respected journals indexed in it) http://www.journaldatabase.org/journals/44/AsiaPacific_Forum_on_Scie.html
• Open Directory Project (as one of the 60 journals in education) http://www.dmoz.org/Reference/Education/Journals/
• Google Directory (as one of their 56 listed educational journals) http://www.google.com/Top/Reference/Education/Journals/

In this December or Second Issue of Volume 9, it is our great pleasure to have a Foreword article on "Taking scientific literacy seriously as a curriculum aim" as written by Prof. Robin MILLAR who is Salters’ Professor of Science Education, University of York. Prof. Millar is a well-renown science educator for his pioneer work to improve science education and to promote a science curriculum for public understanding. Apart from this foreword article, there are 12 research or professional papers contributed by 23 authors from 13 different universities or education-related organisations and they are placed under 3 main sections of this journal, namely Academic Articles Section, General Articles Section and Exemplary Teaching Methods Section to reflect the nature of those contributed papers.

For all articles published in the aforementioned 4 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 25 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 and the East China Normal University who offered their kind assistance in developing and promoting this online periodical. Besides, we are thankful for the editorial work provided by Ms. Xiao HUANG who is sponsored by the Croucher Foundation for her visit at HKIEd in 2008-2009. Finally, we must express our special thanks to the Student Affairs Office of The Hong Kong Institute of Education for providing a student helper to us through the On-Campus Work Exposure Scheme 2008-09.