This study examines how science teachers experience integrating science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) approaches into their teaching. In addition, it further examines the encountered challenges in this regard to shed light on STEM current practices within the context of United Arab Emirates (UAE). This study consists of two stages; the first involved collecting qualitative data using semi-structured interviews to explore three science teachers’ perceptions and lived experiences having infused STEM into their regular teaching in cycle 2 for more than two years. Quantitative data were collected and analyzed in the second phase via the developed closed-ended questionnaire to examine teachers’ perceptions across a larger sample regarding “challenges encountered by teachers when implementing STEM teaching”. Research findings showed that science teachers generally have a positive attitude towards using STEM-based activities. In addition, data revealed that participants implement integrated STEM into their teaching frequently and regularly. Results also indicated teachers encounter challenges while implementing STEM: documentation, the vast curriculum content, and lack of time. Moreover, external challenges (i.e., the lack of supportive guidelines) rather than teachers’ competency (i.e., having sufficient knowledge and skills for implementing STEM teaching) appeared to have the highest impending impact. Finally, we discuss findings and presented implications for teachers, educators, and policymakers.

Studies on student learning of scientific concepts have shown that students often experience various difficulties in understanding basic physics concepts such as vector quantities, as a result of formal and informal learning. The purpose of the present study is to document Grade 11 students’ difficulties in understanding vectors and their associated concepts. Specifically, the study tried to find answers to questions about the overall level of difficulty experienced by Grade 11 students about vectors, the nature of these difficulties, and their association with operations, such as scalars, adding vectors graphically, determining vector magnitude and direction, and multiplying vectors by numbers. Altogether, 58 Grade 11 students participated in this study. The study employed a specifically adapted test to assess participants’ understanding of vectors in relation to: (1) identifying whether students can distinguish between vectors and scalars, (2) adding vectors graphically, (3) determining the vector magnitude and direction, and (4) multiplying vectors by numbers. The findings suggested that, although most students were able to distinguish between vectors and scalars, they had experienced various difficulties in understanding operations in relation to adding vectors, graphically and mathematically, determining vector magnitudes and directions, and multiplying vectors by numbers. The findings were discussed within the recent UAE educational reform policy.

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Although the critical importance of feedback in the context of formative assessment is self-evident, controversial conceptions concerning teachers’ and students’ roles in the overall feedback practice are still ongoing. To address this dilemma, seeking to uncover the complexity of engagement with feedback, in its entirely, is fundamental. This conceptual article, therefore, aims to illustrate a set of provisions under which having a shared awareness of feedback is believed would support the coordination between teachers’ and students’ efforts toward engagement with feedback, with reference to the notion of feedback literacy. Specifically, the current argument has been framed within the socio-constructivist paradigm which conceptualizes the multifaceted feedback construct as a dynamic social process of communication, with a specific focus on its cyclic and interactive nature. Overall, the outcomes stress the interdepended responsibility of teachers and students in which both contribute to the effectiveness and sustainability of the overall practice of giving and receiving feedback. A key message from the article is that the successful identification of the performance gap and “what’s next” via feedback is never sufficient to evoke and sustain student’s engagement with feedback unless this is meaningfully connected with long-term purposes and informed by the need to fulfill self-actualization potential. Accordingly, attention needs to be redirected more to the individual factors that may significantly influence student’s dispositions toward feedback. Finally, we call for new pathways that support these endeavors while bringing teachers and students into a common ground to better coordinate efforts in between.

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