The ability to use technology within the context of science is important for science students; however, the integration of technology within science is not implemented consistently across the curriculum, nor across grade and age levels. More insight is needed as to how science and technology are integrated in the classroom. Technology usage takes many forms in the classroom, including educational and instructional technology, programming and computational thinking, mathematics modeling, science-specific tools, and dataset usage. This chapter consists of three main sections: a meta study of forms of technology used in science education, a series of vignettes of actual use of technology in the classroom, and guidance on thoughtful adoption of technology.
TopIntroduction
The combination of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) into a common integrated STEM (or iSTEM) curriculum is an educational goal within many countries, such as Canada (Achieve, 2010a), China (Hong Kong: Achieve, 2010a; Inner Mongolia: Gao et al., 2018), England (Achieve, 2010a), Korea (Song, 2017), Malaysia (Bunyamin, 2020; Khairani, 2017), the United States or USA, (National Research Council [NRC], 2010, 2013), Vietnam (Thuy et al., 2020), and more (Gao et al., 2020; Moore et al., 2020). Research has shown that iSTEM increases student engagement (Struyf et al., 2019). Students who are members of underrepresented groups can also be helped by iSTEM (Guzey et al., 2020; Moore et al., 2020). In addition, iSTEM has the potential to improve students’ “interest, engagement, attitude, and motivation” (Gao et al., 2020, p. 3). Integrated STEM may, therefore, be the frontier in STEM education (see also Jackson et al. 2020). While iSTEM may help students, instructors often receive insufficient training in how to integrate STEM content in the classroom (Thuy et al., 2020), and research is limited into how instructor professional development (PD) programs prepare teachers to integrate STEM (Burrows et al., 2021). Many instructors don’t even consider integrating STEM to be an important aspect of being a STEM teacher (Holincheck & Galanti, 2022).
When examining the integration of technology specifically within STEM, this is most often addressed by using the technology as a tool within science education, rather than making the technology the content, much the way that mathematics is used as a tool within science education (Wofford, 2009).
Another motivator for integrating STEM is the role of authentic STEM. Since technology usage is part of the authentic activities undertaken by STEM researchers, the role of authentic STEM within iSTEM education needs to be understood (Schwortz, 2021; Resnick et al., 2018). Providing students with classroom activities that teach them the skills used in actual scientific practice is seen as a route to engage them in their learning (Achieve, 2010a, 2010b; National Governors Association Center for Best Practices & Council of Chief State School Officers, 2010; Microsoft, 2017; NRC, 2013). Authentic STEM is a term used when students are scaffolded through using the same skills used by actual scientists in their careers (Burrows et al., 2021).