Examine pre-service science teachers’ existing ideas about STEM education in school setting

Abstract

Thailand Office of Basic Education Commission (OBEC) has pushed in-service teachers to develop his or her competence of organizing STEM education instruction. Another solution of increasing STEM in-service teacher is provide pre-service science teachers to generate their ideas of organizing learning activities and carried out research about STEM education during their teaching practice. This study aimed to examine pre-service science teachers’ conceptions of STEM education. The participants included 10 pre-service science teachers who enrolled school internship course of Khon Kaen University for teaching practice in schools. These participants will be supervised by the author. On the way of supervising, participants have meeting to generate the ideas of STEM education learning activities and research about STEM education on Friday afternoon for every week. Methodology regarded interpretive paradigm. Pre-service teachers’ conceptions of STEM education will be interpreted participant observation, interview, STEM education lesson plan, teaching performance, and other tasks. Data collection was carried out for 4 months. The data will be interpreted to examine the categories of pre-service teachers’ conceptions of STEM education. The findings will clarify what their perception on STEM education, and what and how they generate ideas for developing lesson plan; to integrate science, mathematics, and others for practicing in context; and to provide engineering practices and engineering design of technologies as the context. Their ideas of research about STEM education also reflect what they emphasize to develop students’ 21st century skills, and provide instruction requiring the context of problem solving in the real world or task through teamwork. The paper may have implication for developing pre-service STEM teachers.