“We do STEM”: Unsettled conceptions of STEM education in middle school S.T.E.M. classrooms

Abstract

STEM education has received attention both as a reform pedagogy and as a public means for economic growth and national security. Yet, despite this attention, clarity about what "counts" as STEM and how the individual disciplines relate to an integrated approach remains ambiguous. This article elicits the conceptions about what constitutes STEM education from middle grade teachers across the United States who teach a STEM discipline. Based on coded interviews and drawn conceptual models, participating teachers were more likely to describe essential aspects of integrated STEM found in the literature, but when asked to draw their conception of STEM education in their context, they often represented less ambitious conceptions.Furthermore, nontraditional subjects like engineering and technology were sometimes represented in subordinate ways to traditional subjects like science and mathematics. These findings have implications for preparing teachers to engage students in integrated STEM learning experiences as well as policy implications for what requirements must be in place to fund new STEM learning opportunities. K E Y W O R D Sinquiry/discovery, learning processes, professional development, science/science education, teachers and teaching A Research to Practice article based on this article can be found alongside the electronic version at

Perspectives of STEM Education from Physics Teachers' Points of View: A Quantitative Study

“…Significantly lower values of mean for these two perspectives, A and D, compared to those that are multi/inter/transdisciplinary perspectives of STEM indicate that the physics teachers have started to consider in their mind on integration of STEM rather than single-disciplinary. This finding is different from the past study by Breiner et al (2012) where they found that single-disciplinary or segregated STEM was dominant, while recent studies (Kloser et al, 2018;Srikoom et al, 2017) have indicated either a fair acceptance to integrated STEM education.…”

Beyond the basics: a detailed conceptual framework of integrated STEM

“…• contextualize learning (Kelley & Knowles, 2016;Kloser et al, 2018) • should foster multiple solutions (Lachapelle & Cunningham, 2014) • engage learners in applying and expanding their STEM knowledge (Monson & Besser, 2015) • should be motivating and relevant to students (Diekman et al, 2010;Leammukda & Roehrig, 2020) • should, when possible, position students as agents of change (Billington et al, 2013;Gunckel & Tolbert, 2018).…”

“…If learning is not centered on developing solutions to a real-world problem (Characteristic 1), a lesson cannot be considered to be representative of integrated STEM education. Indeed, as noted earlier, the most common feature included in definitions of integrated STEM in the literature is that STEM integration should be centered around a real-world problem or context (e.g., Kelley & Knowles, 2016;Kloser et al, 2018;Moore et al, 2020). Indeed, many students find it difficult to relate to STEM content presented using traditional, disciplinary approaches (Kelley & Knowles, 2016).…”

“…Similarly, Kelley and Knowles (2016) defined integrated STEM as "the approach to teaching the STEM content of two or more STEM domains, bound by STEM practices within an authentic context for the purpose of connecting these subjects to enhance student learning" (p. 3). Common across almost all definitions is the use of real-world contexts to both contextualize learning and motivate student engagement (e.g., Kelley & Knowles, 2016;Kloser et al, 2018; National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and NRC, 2014). While some researchers argue for integration across all four of the STEM disciplines (e.g., Burrows et al, 2018;Chandan et al, 2019), others call for the integration of at least two of the STEM disciplines (e.g., Moore et al, 2020).…”

Building Improvised Microbial Fuel Cells: A Model Integrated STEM Curriculum for Middle-School Learners in Singapore

“…"STEM education" here refers to the general pedagogical approach where there is a conscious attempt to integrate teaching and learning across two or more STEM disciplines, as opposed to a traditional approach, where the focus is almost exclusively on learning in only one of the disciplines during instruction. What remains unresolved are, however, not to be underestimated, including questions regarding what might be the legitimate disciplines that make up STEM, how they are related, and what it means to achieve integration in STEM, among other issues see [1][2][3]. As science teacher educators from Singapore, what is perhaps more disconcerting to us is that STEM education is a relative latecomer to the local system; it does not appear within the official curriculum and has only recently been offered as part of voluntary, school-based after-school programs for primary and secondary levels [4,5].…”