Abstract
The integration of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) programs is a national trend. The goal of implementing STEM in schools is to prepare students for the demands of the 21st century, while addressing future workforce needs. The Real STEM project focused on the development of interdisciplinary STEM experiences for students. The project was characterized by sustained professional development which was job-embedded, competency-based, and focused on the development of five STEM reasoning abilities within real-world contexts. The project promoted inclusion of tasks that drew on multiple STEM disciplines, embraced the use of authentic teaching strategies, and supported development of collaboration through interdisciplinary STEM professional learning communities and engaging STEM experts from the community. The four tenets of the project are presented and research on developing and characterizing measures of student impact are provided. Key outcomes include the construction and evaluation of measures supporting interdisciplinary STEM to assess both the impact of intervention on student attitudes toward STEM and students’ STEM reasoning abilities. Findings include reliability and validity evidence supporting attitude measurement and reasoning measurement as well as exploratory results that highlight a disconnection between STEM attitudes and STEM reasoning with the interdisciplinary STEM intervention examined.
Highlights
The integration of interdisciplinary Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics into schools is a national trend in the United States, apparent in the call to establish STEM designated middle and high schools (Executive Office of the President, 2010; President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, 2010; Tanenbaum, 2016), as well as in the creation of STEM academic/career pathways for future workforce development (National Research Council, 2013)
A collaborative known as the Real STEM project has endorsed the increased push for STEM integration at the interdisciplinary (2 or more disciplines closely linked concepts/skills studied to deepen understanding) and transdisciplinary (2 or more disciplines applied to real-world problem) levels (Honey et al, 2014; Johnson et al, 2015)
In this paper we focus on the measurement of student attitudes and student reasoning
Summary
The integration of interdisciplinary Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (iSTEM) into schools is a national trend in the United States, apparent in the call to establish STEM designated middle and high schools (Executive Office of the President, 2010; President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, 2010; Tanenbaum, 2016), as well as in the creation of STEM academic/career pathways for future workforce development (National Research Council, 2013). The Generation Science Standards ( Generation Science Standards Lead States, 2013) and the Common Core State Standards for Mathematical Practice (National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and the Council of Chief State School Officers, 2010; Bennett and Ruchti, 2014) provide science and engineering practices and mathematical practices that support the inclusion of STEM in schools. These practices include modeling, integrating mathematics and computational thinking into science, planning and carrying out investigations of real-world problems, analyzing and interpreting data, and designing solutions. Prior to specifying these steps some further background on the project will provide needed context
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