Abstract
The paper identifies a possible cause of previous STEM education reform failures and suggests how repairing the link between evidence-based education research and teacher education practice may be a potential solution. The evidence-based STEM education research is described and placed in the general education research context to illustrate how research-based and STEM-focused teacher education can address some of the biggest challenges facing contemporary educators: the growing student disengagement, the paucity of successful active learning environments, the inadequate attention to educating and supporting teachers, the scarcity of evidence-based research on student STEM learning that can inform both teacher education practice and policy. The paper calls on placing research-based STEM teacher education in the centre of contemporary reform efforts and conducting evidence-based education research to study the effects of this process on the growth of teacher knowledge and consequently on student STEM learning. Specifically, using research-based evidence for the development of teachers’ knowledge for STEM teaching and their positive attitudes about learning (the growth mindset) are identified as possible key factors in successful STEM education reform efforts. However, more research needs to be done to examine this assertion. To do so, we suggest a four-step approach for incorporating evidence-based STEM education research into teacher education practice: Model-Reflect-Research-Practice. This approach emphasizes teacher-candidates’ active engagement with research-based pedagogies as students and as future teachers. It provides a structure for incorporating research-based pedagogies in STEM teacher education as described in the examples. The first example showcases Peer Instruction supported by PeerWise technology to engage teacher-candidates in designing STEM learning environments that promote active learning and conceptual understanding through peer learning. The second example focuses on supporting teacher-candidates’ growth by asking them to teach short mini-lessons, record and upload them onto the online collaborative platform (Collaborative Learning Annotation System) for peer feedback and reflection. Both examples incorporate collaborative educational technologies to promote the development of teacher-candidates’ knowledge and their growth mindset. The paper emphasizes how making evidence-based STEM education research a foundation of teacher education can help connect education research to teaching practice and break the vicious circle of STEM education reform failures.
Highlights
Churchill’s famous saying about human failure to learn from the past is still relevant today
The scarcity of the studies reporting negative, “politically incorrect” or “inconvenient” results (AERA, 2006) lowers the standards of educational research, making it suffer from what Richard (Feynman, 1974) dubbed the Cargo Cult Science syndrome: We really ought to look into theories that don’t work, and science that isn’t science
Evaluation of the Implementation of These Research-Based Pedagogies The two examples discussed above show how evidence-based education research can be incorporated into STEM teacher education
Summary
Churchill’s famous saying about human failure to learn from the past is still relevant today. As a result of the lack of universal understanding of STEM education as a research field, it is still rife with “research” studies that fall into the Cargo Cult Science category being used to inform educational policies and ongoing reform efforts (Davies, 1999; Matthews, 2015). At the K-12 level, we are yet to understand how to support teachers in incorporating evidence-based pedagogies and what is to be considered as evidence that can be used as a base for research-informed policies To solve these problems, we have to learn from history: the numerous STEM education reforms of the last 50 years have not brought the intended results, so we have to approach the problem differently (DeBoer, 1991; Dickson, 2001; BSCS, 2008; Let’s Talk Science, 2013). Since in North America a significant number of teachers who teach STEM are not educated in these fields and the majority of elementary teachers have rather limited mathematics and science knowledge, we have to think how to engage all teachers in STEM education (Lawrenz, 1986; Ma, 1999; Bursal and Paznokas, 2006; Tobias and Baffert, 2009)
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