The Nature of STEM Disciplines in the Science Education Standards Documents from the USA, Korea and Taiwan

Abstract

Understanding the nature of science (NOS) has emerged as a core curricular goal since at least the 1960s. While science education reforms around the world have shed light on various epistemic and social underpinnings of science, how science curriculum documents portray the nature of other related disciplines such as mathematics and engineering has drawn little attention. Such lack of attention is surprising, given the growing interest among educators in the integrated approach to science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education and the frequent emphasis on STEM in recent curriculum policy. The study reported in this paper aimed to understand how recent science education reform documents from the USA, Korea and Taiwan compare with regard to their representation of the nature of STEM disciplines. Using the framework of the family resemblance approach (FRA), we present a comparative analysis of three recent science education standards documents to examine their coverage of the epistemic underpinnings of STEM disciplines, particularly with regard to the disciplinary aims, values and practices. The results indicate that the features specific to science and shared by science and engineering were most frequently addressed in the standards documents, whereas mathematics-related features were rarely mentioned. Furthermore, there was variation in the coverage in terms of the nature of STEM disciplines. Based on the findings, we discuss the contributions of the FRA framework in analysing STEM curricula in an interdisciplinary manner and make suggestions for integrating the nature of STEM disciplines in science curriculum documents.

Investigating Scientists’ Views of the Family Resemblance Approach to Nature of Science in Science Education

“…The contributions of the FRA in science education have been documented in a recent review . For example, FRA has been applied to teacher education (Kaya et al, 2019), undergraduate teaching and learning (Akgun & Kaya, 2020;Petersen et al, 2020), curriculum analysis (Cheung, 2020;Kaya & Erduran, 2016;Yeh et al, 2019), textbook analysis (McDonald, 2017;Park, Wu, et al, 2020;Park, Yang, et al, 2020), and STEM education (Couso & Simmaro, 2020;Park et al, 2020b). Erduran, Kaya, and Avraamidou (2020) investigated how the FRA framework could be linked to broader curricular goals related to social justice, and the utility of FRA in the enculturation of university students in scientific cultures has been explored (Mohan & Kelly, 2020).…”

“…Following on from this discussion, closer attention is paid to FRA to frame the empirical study with scientists presented subsequently in the paper. Although the empirical base of research on FRA in science education has been growing (e.g., Cheung, 2020;Erduran & Kaya, 2018;Erduran et al, 2020;McDonald, 2017;Park et al, 2020a;Park et al, 2020b), there is limited understanding of the extent to which FRA coheres with scientists' own depictions about NOS. Hence, an empirical study was conducted with scientists to investigate their views about FRA.…”

The Effect of STEM-PjBL and Discovery Learning on Improving Students' Problem-Solving Skills of Impulse and Momentum Topic

“…The process of creating and analyzing rocket motion does not only require understanding the concepts of impulse and momentum but involves scientific skills. Practices that involve cognitive processes and hands-on activities such as modeling are essential for scientists and engineers (Park et al, 2020). STEM education needs to ensure that as students prepare to become scientists, they need to be involved in the practice of building and modifying learning tools (Dickerson et al, 2016).…”

Concepciones sobre la naturaleza de la ciencia en el profesorado en formación inicial

“…Otro aspecto susceptible de mejora es la elaboración de un cuestionario nuevo que aborde, de manera más específica, las concepciones sobre las relaciones entre ciencia, tecnología y sociedad en la línea de la tecnociencia contemporánea (Echeverría y Martínez, 2009;Park, Wu y Erduran, 2020).…”