New developments of science and technology (S&T) communication and popularization in China in recent years are summarized systematically in this article. Research achievements are also analyzed in terms of science communication ideas, policies, practices, theories, discipline constructions and civic scientific literacy construction. The future development of science popularization undertaking and important issues to be studied in China is also predicted below. The authors believe that a series of important breakthroughs have been made in science popularization research and practice in China in recent years, the science popularization undertaking has entered a whole new stage, important accomplishments have been achieved and better development will be made in science popularization research.

As China advances rapidly towards urbanization, the significance of science popularization in urban community becomes obvious. Based on a nationwide survey and analysis on the needs and satisfaction of the residents in the urban communities, this paper tries to illustrate the citizen’s perception of the contents, channels as well as approaches of the science popularization. The analysis helps to construct an understanding of the priorities and strategies for future engagement in this area, which would be beneficial for the improvement of the urban residents’ scientific literacy.

In cultural anthropology, Clifford Geertz proposes the concept of local knowledge, which emphasizes the kno- wledge of cultural traits form in a particular environment. In the “scientific literacy” concept to understand diversified background, introducing issues of the local knowledge into public scientific literacy survey increasingly becomes the focus of attention. This paper discusses the rationality of local knowledge into scientific literacy survey, and selects the public with local characteristics in the Inner Mongolia, making surveys using national survey questionnaire and local knowledge questionnaire respectively and analysis of the survey results, which provides support for diversified measurement for scientific literacy.

It analyzes the characteristics and the application of correspondence analysis and the data of the Tianjin citizen’s scientific literacy survey 2010, for the purpose of understanding the relationship between education background and having no access to science venues.

This article outlines a different view of the changing nature of adult learning in the Internet Era. The old model of learning the warehouse is being replaced by a just-in-time system of information acquisition. The NRC report focuses too heavily on finding missions for existing institutions and pays too little attention to the pervasive changes in information acquisition and adult learning in all areas. An analysis of existing data demonstrates the relative impact of formal and informal learning and points to opportunities for enhanced adult science learning in the future.

From the perspective of the STS education, creativity is the innovation ability of absorbing the humanities and social science knowledge, the introspection or evaluation ability which can be rectified from research and the results, and the ability of determining the research topic from the view of the relation between science, technology and society. The STS education could be helpful to the cultivation of science and engineering postgraduates’ creativity. It could be cultivated by implementing the STS education, while learning the experience of Japan.

CASTIC, the national science fair in China, with twenty years history has great impact on changing the way students study and selecting science talents. The questionnaires and outlines of interview are designed by analyzing the domestic and foreign literature on the independent research project fairs. The results showed that engineering projects accounted for 27% of the total. Most of CASTIC participants selected their research design through a variety of ways such as according to their interests. The results also showed that time, help from researchers and participating in science club influenced the projects success in the CASTIC. Based on the results, this study also proposed some advices for improving the quality of projects.

The paper discussed the science education modeling for the youngsters in the earthquake-stricken area by analyzing the activities of science and technology education, and further suggested the effective science education methods. It proposed a new model of science and technology education for the earthquake-stricken area: mental health—mental health improving—science process experience—thinking elicitation—leading youngsters growing up.

Based on the analysis of exhibits and education resources and education in the science center, this paper puts forward that the permanent exhibits are the primarily developed science resources for public communication of science and technology in science center, which are suitable for informal education. Children and adolescents are the main groups learning in the science center, so the science center should strengthen their informal education in order to constantly improve its scientific and technological innovation capacity. To develop science education resources and organize various, flexible and opening science education activities for children and adolescents, it is important to implement informal education in science center. Taking Guangdong Science Center as a case study, the authors discuss a Ten Step Process to develop and utilize the children and adolescents-oriented and permanent-exhibition-based secondary education resources together with the cooperation of formal education department.

The science and technology museums exert a positive effect on promoting the technological development, which assume a position to disseminate science and enhance the scientific quality of public. Based on the analysis of specific exhibits, this paper proposes the composition of standardization system for exhibits in science and technology museums, describes the major contents of the standard.

This article analyzed program of Children Mural Festival held by Chinese National Children’s Center, and explored the ideas of how to design and implement the science education activities for children. The results showed that: the purpose of science activities is to promote children’s entertaining and learning in informal learning environment developing together, so the activities should focus on children’s psychological and physical developments and consider the informal learning; during the process of science activities, teachers should integrate science with other related disciplines, such as art, literature or history.

Since the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the CCP in 1976, the activities to popularize science of the Chinese Physical Society got very big development. All levels of organizations of the Chinese Physical Society have held some large scale science popularization activities on schedule. These activities which also went ahead with the continuous development of the Chinese Physical Society and became more and more fruitful in models are the great support to the national science popularization.