Teachers’ Conceptions of STEM Education

Author(s):

Esra Ufuktepe(submitting)Fulden Guler(presenting)Jale Cakıroglu

Conference:

ECER 2017

Network:

Emerging Researchers' Group (for presentation at Emerging Researchers' Conference)

Format:

Paper

Session Information

ERG SES H 04, Pre-service Teachers and Education

Paper Session

Time:

2017-08-22

11:00-12:30

Room:

W2.05

Chair:

Elsa Lee

Contribution

The impact of technological innovations brought about by developments in the fields of science and technology, and it was important to adapt of these developments into education (International Technology Education Association [ITEA], 2007). In recent years, it was highlighted that integration of science, technology, engineering and mathematics disciplines (STEM) at K-12 level is important while restructuring of the educational programs (Bozkurt-Altan & Ercan, 2016). Given the importance of science and engineering in the 21st century, students will have a contextual understanding of scientific knowledge, how to acquire and apply it, and how we want to connect with science through a set of concepts that will help us understand the world (NRC, 2013). Teachers aim to educate their students according to 21st century skills such as thinking critically, making judgments, communicating and collaborating, making innovative use of knowledge etc. (Partnership for 21th Century skills, education and competitiveness (P21), 2008). To succeed in this new information-based and highly technological society, students need to develop their capabilities. In order to enhance student learning and capabilities, STEM education provides a multidisciplinary approach by integrating subjects from two or more disciplines which focus on a common theme. STEM education helps students better connect academic subjects to real-life applications by integrating these four disciplines through active teaching approaches. It provides inquiry-based and real world problem-based learning by connecting all four disciplines (Hom, 2014). It provides opportunities for students to use their problem-solving skills by creating more rigorous and engaging learning environments.

It is necessary that teachers should be prepared to promote the STEM education based upon needs of their students (Lynch et al. 2014; Outlier Research & Evaluation 2014). Additionally, the literature suggested that teachers should be supported with professional development programs to make them apply STEM in the classroom (Akgündüz et al., 2015; Nadelson et. al, 2013). However, as a starting point we need to understand how teachers currently conceptualize STEM to promote their implementation. Examining teachers’ conceptualization of STEM education both visually and textually could provide valuable information in relation to their understanding of STEM. Bybee (2013) proposed nine possible visualizations for STEM education and his theoretical framework for STEM visualization was used in the present study. According to Bybee (2013), while some participants think that ‘‘STEM’’ is a single subject or discipline, others can view STEM as completely transdisciplinary, or more associated with its real-world application. The purpose of the study is to examine teachers’ conceptions of STEM education and the following research question was investigated in the present study: “How teachers conceptualize STEM education visually?”. This study provides insights about how teachers are currently understand STEM education and has implications for how to support them to increase their implementation of STEM in the classroom based upon the findings of the study. Moreover, the present study is considered as valuable to provide initial point for how to design effective teacher professional development programs to make teachers apply STEM.

Method

The survey design was used in the current study. A total of 28 teachers were selected for this study from a large private school in Turkey. Of the teachers, 18 of them were science teachers, 8 were mathematics teachers, and 2 were technology teachers. Moreover, 22 of them were female and six of them were male. While 12 respondents had never participated in a STEM workshop before, 16 respondents were involved in a STEM workshop. The instrument used in the study is comprised of 17 questions and originally developed by Radloff and Guzey (2016). The first six questions were used to gather demographic information of participants (sex, age, experiment, branch, public/private school, participating STEM workshops or not). The next questions included five multiple-choice type questions, three open-ended questions, and one question utilizing a Likert scale. The purpose of these questions was to collect information regarding how teachers were interested in STEM teaching, how confident they felt in their ability to design STEM integrated lessons, and also how confident they felt in their ability to implement STEM lesson in the classroom to support the analysis of diagrams. The last two questions in the survey asked participants to draw a diagram of how they visualize ‘‘STEM’’ by using the letters S, T, E and M and why they drew their diagram the way they did. The drawings were analyzed according to the theoretical STEM visualizations suggested by Bybee (2013).

Expected Outcomes

All participants responded that they were interested in STEM education. About 39% of the teachers felt high level of confidence in their ability to implement STEM lessons in the classroom. All teachers believed that all four disciplines have strong connections with each other. About 68% of the teachers selected “9” or greater out of 10 for the connectedness of STEM disciplines in the survey. All participants approached very positively to STEM education. They stated that students could gain more and more skills such as active learning and concrete learning through STEM education. They also believed that STEM education help students to adapt their knowledge when facing and solving real-world problems. For the analysis of diagrams, it was found that 35% of the participants drew nested visualizations. One of the four STEM disciplines, mostly science, is presented as an embracing discipline, and three of these disciplines were nested inside the remaining other discipline in this visualization. 29% of the participants preferred to draw interconnected visualizations. In this visualization, all the STEM disciplines are connected using double-arrows. Therefore, this view emphasizes the coordination across disciplines. Moreover, only 4% of the participants preferred to draw sequential visualizations. Sequential visualizations present STEM as integrated disciplines through sequencing them in linear or circular way. Overlapping visualizations showed that most participants preferred S and M as dominant disciplines and other disciplines as connective. Lastly, it was found that 18% of the participants preferred to draw siloed visualizations in which STEM is depicted as four distinct disciplines. Results indicated that there are differences in both textual and visual conceptions of STEM education among teachers and these findings could provide feedback for how to support teachers to implement STEM.

References

Akgündüz, D., Aydeniz, M., Çakmakçı, G., Çavaş , B., Corlu, M. S., Öner, T., & Özdemir, S. (2015). STEM eğitimi Türkiye raporu: Günün modası mı yoksa gereksinim mi?[A report on STEM Education in Turkey: A provisional agenda or a necessity? İ stanbul, Turkey: Aydın Üniversitesi. İstanbul Aydın Üniversitesi STEM Merkezi ve Eğitim Fakültesi. Bozkurt-Altan, E. & Ercan, S. (2016). STEM education program for science teachers: Perceptions and competencies.Journal of Turkish Science Education. 13, 103-117 Bybee, R. (2013). The case of STEM education: Challenges and opportunities. NSTA Press, Arlington Hom, E. J. (2014). What is STEM Education? Retrieved from http://www.livescience.com/43296-what-is-stem-education.html International Technology Education Association. (2007). Standards for technological literacy: Content for the study of technology. Reston, VA: Author. Lynch, S.J., Peters-Burton, E. & Ford, M. (2014). Building STEM opportunities for all. Educational. Leadership, 72, 54-60. Nadelson, L. S., Callahan, J., Pyke, P., Hay, A., Dance, M., & Pfiester, J. (2013). Teacher STEM perception and preparation: Inquiry-based STEM professional development for elementary teachers. The Journal of Educational Research, 106(2), 157-168. National Research Council (NRC). (2013). The Next Generation Science Standards. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. http://www.nextgenscience.org/ Radloff, J., & Guzey, S. (2016). Investigating preservice STEM teacher conceptions of STEM education. Journal of Science Education and Technology, 25(5), 759-774. Partnership for 21th century skills, education and competitiveness. (2008). Retrieved from http://www.p21.org/storage/documents/21st_century_skills_education_and_competitiveness_guide.pdf

Author Information

Esra Ufuktepe (submitting)

Middle East Technical University

Secondary Science and Mathematics Education

Ankara

Fulden Guler (presenting)

Ege University,Turkey

Jale Cakıroglu

Middle East Technical University, Turkey

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