Engaging High School Girls in Interdisciplinary STEAM

Abstract

Research into Australian students' science, technology, engineering, and maths (STEM) engagement has highlighted that there are comparably fewer women enrolling in STEM programs and working in STEM industries. In Australia, males make up 84% of the total population with STEM qualifications, for example, a report in 2015 found only 13% of all engineers in Australia were women. Science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics (STEAM), an approach to STEM education that encourages interdisciplinarity, creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship, is a strategy that has the potential to increase girls' engagement with STEM. This research investigated the impact of the STEAMpunk Girls Program, funded by the Australian Government, on high school girls' learning and their teachers' teaching experiences. The program uses project-learning and design thinking strategies to enable the girls to gain confidence in themselves as change-makers with the capacity to generate solutions to real-world problems. Using a mixed method approach, the findings indicated that teachers and students were positive about the STEAMpunk Girls' experience, with significant increases in confidence and motivation in the girls at the end of the program.

Steam-PBL Pada Materi Hidrolisis Garam Untuk Membangun Keterampilan Berpikir Kreatif Siswa

“…Lebih lanjut dijelaskan bahwa STEAM memberi kesempatan baru kepada siswa. Dengan adanya STEAM siswa secara langsung dan kontekstual menerapkan proses pembelajaran yang dapat menghasilkan produk atau program yang mengintegrasikan konsep dari seluruh disiplin ilmu dengan kreativitas dan kemampuan pemecahan masalah yang baik (Arsy & Syamsulrizal, 2021;Ng & Fergusson, 2020;Suganda, 2021). Secara umum, sifat transdisipliner pengajaran STEAM sejalan dengan pemecahan masalah non linier dan keterbukaan pemikiran kreatif (Mishra et al dalam Quigley & Herro, 2016).…”

Engaging Girls in Computer Science: Do Single-Gender Interdisciplinary Classes Help?

“…CS in an interdisciplinary context makes girls believe they can bring more to the table [16], [18], [20], [23]. Girls often experience CS education as dull and purposeless, as well as state their desire to do something that is relevant and makes positive differences in the world [16], [24].…”

Validation and adaptation of the questionnaire on science motivation in the Russian context

“…For many, the scientific practices, tools, and thought processes they were taught have little to do with contemporary research's interactive and dynamically expanded activities (Glaze, 2018). It is suggested that integrating the arts with STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) will make science topics in school more interesting to a wider range of students, including those who are not interested in STEM (Henriksen, 2014;Ng & Fergusson, 2020;Sen, 2022). Reports emphasize the need to improve student engagement and subject matter achievement in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) (Dixon & Wendt, 2021).…”