Co-designing cross-setting activities in a large-scale STEM partnership program – Teachers’ and students’ experiences

Abstract

STEM partnerships are popular initiatives but can be challenging to implement in practice. Accordingly, within the context of a nationwide, cross-setting STEM partnership program in Norway – Lektor2 – a co-design tool was introduced to support teachers to collaborate with STEM professionals in developing curriculum units involving authentic STEM problems and practices. Thus, the purpose of this study was to describe the teachers’ and students’ experiences from the curriculum units based on the co-design tool and how the tool might help facilitate partnerships in STEM education. Teacher and student data were collected in 2015-2018 (N= 2479), and responses to open-ended questions were coded using a grounded theory approach. Findings indicate that the co-design tool, particularly “the commission” – where students are commissioned by STEM professionals to design solutions to authentic problems – enhanced teachers’ collaboration with STEM professionals, led to changes in pedagogical approaches, and enabled the teachers to differentiate in their teaching. Student experiences from participating in the co-designed curriculum units are characterised as more expansive views of STEM, STEM learning, and increased STEM engagement. We discuss how the co-design tool enabled teachers to overcome partnership challenges and what aspects of the commission appeared to be important for the students’ experiences. This study provides a specific example of a co-design tool that can enhance pedagogical designs developed through STEM partnerships.

A qualitative study of teachers’ and students’ experiences with a context-based curriculum unit designed in collaboration with STEM professionals and science educators

“…The context was realistic -the transport company's transition to renewable transport technologies, but the commission -or the problem -was a fictive situation: the transport company did not really need the students' help. This aligns with our earlier study involving a much higher number of participants (Kostøl et al, 2021), in which we argue that the extent to which the commission is genuine -and not fictive -is important for the students' motivation and engagement in context-based curriculum units within Lektor2. Despite the slight difference in the authenticity between the context and commission, the category comparing with normal teaching (comprising of the codes context-based curriculum as a different approach and student outcomes from curriculum unit), reveals that both the teachers and students reported an increased effort among the students compared to normal teaching, and that the students were better at thinking and reflecting.…”

“…Current research concludes that context-based approaches can have a positive influence on students' attitudes to science and that students learn the same amount of science in context-based teaching as in traditional science teaching (Bennett, 2016;Bennett et al, 2007). Studies have shown that context-based curriculums involving collaboration with external STEM professionals also inform students about the relevance of science outside school and possible careers (Houseal et al, 2014;Kostøl et al, 2021;Parker et al, 2020;Tsybulsky, 2019). However, studies have also identified challenges with context-based science education.…”

“…The context for the present study is Lektor2, a national partnership programme in Norway offering professional development for teachers and financial support for schools that aim to involve STEM professionals from the local community in their teaching. The teachers enrolled in the programme are required to collaborate in designing an authentic context-based task for students called a commission, in which the students are commissioned by STEM professionals to carry out a job requiring authentic, complex problem-solving (Kostøl et al, 2021).…”

“…In these partnerships, STEM professionals provide the context for applying scientific knowledge and practices. (Hellgren & Lindberg, 2017;Houseal et al, 2014;Kostøl et al, 2021;Tytler et al, 2018).…”