Abstract
In recent years, there is a growing interest in educational approaches that include the integration of STEAM disciplines. However, to contribute to increase students' interest in these subjects from an early age, it is crucial to prepare primary teachers to carry out an integrated STEAM approach in schools. This study is aimed to demonstrate the potential of engaging primary pre-service teachers in a STEAM program within a science and a mathematics course. The results of the study emerged from the analysis of the participants' responses to a pre-post questionnaire, STEAM lesson plans they have developed, and reflective writing assignments they carried out at the end of the STEAM program. Findings show that primary pre-service teachers' attitudes toward a STEAM-integrated approach evolved positively through developing lesson plans. The results revealed benefits and challenges of planning STEAM activities according to the participants and their confidence to implement a STEAM-integrated approach in the context of practice. This work was supported by Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P., Grant/Award Number UIDP/04748/2020.
TopTheoretical Background
Kelley and Knowles (2016) argue that the need to train more people in STEM areas comes from the social and environmental impacts of our century that jeopardize global security and economic stability. Such challenges imply the development of STEM literacy, which Mohr-Schroeder et al. (2015) define as the ability to apply concepts from science, technology, engineering, and mathematics in solving problems that cannot be solved by using a single area.
However, multiple definitions of STEM education coexist in the literature, which has led to ambiguity in the interpretation of the term (English, 2016; Perales-Palacios, 2020) and its transposition to the classroom (Martín-Páez et al., 2019). According to Hsu and Fang (2019), STEM education can be viewed as a set of STEM areas – a multidisciplinary or an integrated perspective – an inter and transdisciplinary perspective. According to Breiner et al. (2012), the latter foresees teaching these disciplines as a single and cohesive entity. Also sharing this integrated view of STEM education, Brown and Bogiages (2019) and Sanders (2009) support a model that integrates two or more STEM disciplines. Aguilera et al. (2021) assert that adding the term “integrated” to STEM education is redundant, as the acronym already alludes to disciplinary integration. Nevertheless, Wang et al. (2012) define STEM integration as an interdisciplinary pedagogical approach that removes barriers between disciplines to 1) deepen students’ knowledge of each STEM area, 2) expand students’ understanding of STEM areas through contact with relevant social and cultural contexts, and 3) increase students’ interest in STEM areas. According to Roehrig et al. (2012), the way to operationalize STEM integration can be understood in two ways – content or context integration. The first model starts with the fusion of contents from different areas in a single activity or didactic sequence, allowing the teacher to explore contents from different areas and demonstrate how they are necessary to solve a given problem. The second type of integration focuses primarily on the content of one STEM area and uses the context of others to make the content more relevant.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Project-Based Learning: Students are engaged on a project for an extended time – from a week to a semester – that involves solving a real-world problem or answering a complex question. They demonstrate the knowledge and skills developed by creating a public product or a presentation for a real audience.
Inquiry-Based Learning: Students act as scientists by planning and designing experiments, making predictions, carrying out experiments, collecting and critically analyzing data, discussing with their peers and devising evidence-based explanations to answer the questions initially posed. Although it is a methodology used in the teaching of physical and natural sciences, it is not limited to this field.
21st-Century Skills: Skills that are deemed necessary to effectively function as citizens in the 21st-century workplace, that include: creativity and innovation; critical thinking and problem solving; communication and collaboration; information, media and technology skills.
Cooperative Learning: Teamwork and collaboration with others strongly guided by the teacher, who guides moves from team to team, observes the interactions, and intervenes whenever it is appropriate. Moreover, teacher promotes shared responsibility, so that students assume different roles and learn to share knowledge, tasks, and strategies.
Social Constructivism: Learning is socially situated, and knowledge is constructed based on previous experiences through interaction with others.
STEM: Science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
STEAM: Science, technology, engineering, arts (English language, arts, social studies, etc.), and mathematics.
Problem-Based Learning: Starting from a real open problem or from a context provided by the teacher, which implies that students work collaboratively and present a solution to the problem. Unlike project-based learning, this approach focuses on the process and not achieving a predetermined product.
Design-Based Learning: Implies engineering design processes and engineering practices to develop a model, a product or a prototype to solve a real-life problem, but also deepen their knowledge of related content.