Abstract
Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) schools and districts continue to emerge, and while some research highlights critical components to be included in STEM schools, there is a need to learn more about the process of becoming a STEM school or district. In this study, we investigated a rural United States school district’s development and expansion of its STEM education focus, which started in the years leading up to the district’s first STEM school opening in 2012. We addressed the research question: How is a district-wide STEM education vision developed, enacted, and sustained by various administrative stakeholders? We interviewed 11 participants, all of whom had some level of administrative responsibility related to the district’s STEM mission, coded interviews based on the critical components of STEM schools, and used narrative inquiry methods to describe the district’s STEM transition from these administrators’ perspectives. Our analysis revealed that several key critical components were central to this district’s STEM mission. These components included elements related to leadership, reform-based instructional strategies, and teachers’ professional learning. By focusing on different elements at different times and prioritizing several key components throughout, this district was able to achieve its goal of providing STEM instruction to all of the elementary and middle school students.
Highlights
Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education continues to receive educational emphasis in the United States and in many countries around the world
We use a chronological narrative to describe the events happening in the school district, as well as the critical components (CCs) that featured most prominently in each time period
We look at STEM education and we say, “Well, if STEM education is great for this building and it’s good enough for that other building, why isn’t it in every building?” Because we ought not be having kids kind of shop around town, thinking they’re going to get a different education because that’s not what public school ought to be
Summary
Technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education continues to receive educational emphasis in the United States and in many countries around the world. Within the United States, the Generation Science Standards (NGSS) [1] provide policy guidelines for STEM education through the inclusion of engineering practices and the promotion of the integration of mathematics and computational thinking within K-12 science learning contexts At this time, 44 states have either adopted the NGSS or developed their own educational standards based on A Framework for K-12 Science Education [2], which was the foundation for NGSS development. Some STEM schools focus on providing strong instruction in each of the separate STEM disciplines, while others focus on STEM integration, merging the disciplines This lack of consensus extends to the conceptualization or definition of integrated STEM education [6,7,8,9,10,11,12], with researchers questioning the relative emphasis placed on mathematics and technology compared to science and engineering [13,14,15]
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