Abstract
This paper reports the findings from a cross-sector research project designed to question how the development of university-school partnerships can influence university academics’ pedagogic practice in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). Findings from this research are offered at time when, in parallel with countries around the world, universities and schools in England are being encouraged to review and reflect on the quality of teaching and professional development, in line with the Teaching Excellence Framework consultation (2016) and the Standards for Professional Development (Department for Education 2016b) (Bianchi 2017). This paper seeks to develop a coherent response to two major issues; the policy imperative to develop greater science expertise in schools and to improve the quality of teaching and learning of science in higher education institutions. The research seeks to advance the notion of critical reflection on the quality of cross-sector STEM teaching and learning, by moving to what the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) (2015, p.15) terms a “‘meso’ networked level” of professional development in STEM education. This paper highlights how interpreting the imperative of constant change in education reform as a relational, outward looking endeavour offers the potential to help both universities and schools to better address the global education challenges that lie ahead.
Highlights
The concept of the knowledge economy has informed education policy around the world
There is, a twofold issue that emerges from the current education landscape: the need to improve STEM teaching and learning and an increasing acknowledgement that our education systems need to adapt and change in order to respond to rapid global shifts in economic and technological development, moving from a landscape of distinctly different and clearly boundaried education institutions towards the creation of more flexible cross-sector ecosystems of teaching and learning
The current English education landscape is characterised by several major issues for policy makers and practitioners, including the need to improve STEM teaching and learning and an increasing acknowledgement that our education systems need to adapt and change in order to respond to rapid global shifts in economic and technological development
Summary
The concept of the knowledge economy has informed education policy around the world. Education, and STEM subjects in particular, are viewed as Bthe new currency by which nations maintain economic competitiveness and global prosperity^ (Duncan 2010). There are increasing calls for education policy makers and practitioners to look beyond the focus on improved standards in the teaching and learning of STEM subjects. Research conducted by the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) (2015) suggests that in considering how best to reform education to meet the needs of a knowledge economy, education institutions need to rethink traditional, formal models of separate institutional learning environments and move instead towards ‘learning eco-systems’ in education, described as: interdependent combinations of different species of providers and organisations playing different roles with learners in differing relationships to them over time and in varying mixes...not a Bsystem level^ but a complex series of interlocking systems (OECD 2015, p.17). This paper illuminates the process of developing professional learning relationships that aim to do just that
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