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Russell Tytler
Deakin University
New directions in STEM
Education
Marginson, S., Tytler, R., Freeman, B., & Roberts, K. (2013). STEM:
Country comparisons. Melbourne:
The Australian Council of Learned Academies. www.acola.org.au.
The importance of STEM
• There is a link between PISA performance, strength of Science R&D, and economic performance
• STEM is important at 3 levels –
1. Demand for STEM professionals, 2. STEM skills across the workforce, and 3. A STEM-literate population
In Australia there are concerns:
q With declining participation in STEM pathways.
q Over declining science and mathematics performance, as measured on international test regimes.
q About the directions of school STEM: politicians, industry representatives and the media have increasingly called for a greater focus on preparing students to become critical, creative, digitally enabled thinkers, to equip them for a future characterized by fast changing knowledge and flexible career trajectories.
The (STEM) fields and those who work in them are critical engines of innovation and growth: according to one recent estimate, while only about five percent of the U.S. workforce is employed in STEM fields, the STEM workforce
accounts for more than fifty percent of the nation’s sustained economic growth (Australia’s Chief Scientist)
STEM Education attainment
Economic productivity
STEM R&D
In curriculum policy and schooling practice the term has taken on a variety of meanings:
• An emphasis on attracting more students into mathematics and science, as these subjects are seen as important for national workforce futures;
• Increasing emphasis on ‘STEM skills’ important in the fast changing world of work of the 21st century;
• An emphasis on creativity and critical thinking and problem solving, leading in a number of countries to advocacy of ‘STEAM’ curricula incorporating the creative arts and design;
• Promotion of digital technologies as a stand alone subject or promoted across the curriculum;
• Inclusion of engineering activities including problem solving, project-based design activities, such as in the cross cutting concepts in the US Science Standards;
• Increasing emphasis on the world of STEM professional work, often including advocacy of school-industry-research partnerships;
• Interdisciplinary project work combining two or more of the STEM subjects, focused on problem solving in meaningful, ‘authentic’ contexts;
Meanings of STEM for curriculum
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The current education system teaches people to be effective in a highly structured system, but Australia’s future workforce is likely to encounter much ambiguity and openness. For this reason, commentators argue that our future educational system will need to do more to encourage
innovative, entrepreneurial and flexible mindsets.
"We have an economy in transition and we need to upskill our current workforce to they can anticipate the jobs of the future,” The report found there would be more demand for people with science,
technology, engineering and mathematics knowledge in future.
They are the sectors with the biggest increases in job numbers and wages.
New skills and mindsets are needed for the future
Education and training is becoming ever more important
New capabilities are needed for new jobs of the future
Digital literacy is needed alongside numeracy and literacy
The changing importance of STEM (whilst participation rates are in decline)
…
CSIRO: The future of work
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Drivers for change: ‘globalisation, technological progress and
demographic change’ (OECD 2017, p.2).
Technological change: ‘Big Data, artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things and ever-increasing computing power’ (OECD p.4).
Substantial natural world and social disruptions: climate change,
urbanization, globalization,
demographic changes, and population pressures.
The 4th industrial revolution (Schwab, 2016)
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A 15-year-old today will experience a
portfolio career, potentially having 17
different jobs over five careers in their
lifetime” (FYA, 2017b, p.3)
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‘STEM skills’ – What are they?
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STEM skills in the workforce:
Office of the Australian Chief Scientist
“We are heading towards a perfect storm for STEM businesses in the UK – a very real skills crisis at a time of uncertainty for the economy and as schools are facing unprecedented challenges,” said Yvonne Baker, chief executive of STEM Learning.
(Based on skills identified by Deloitte Access Economics, 2015)
https://www.oecd-forum.org/users/50593-oecd/posts/20442-21st-century-skills-learning-for-the-digital-age
… complex problem solving, technology design, and programming; and STEM abilities, including deductive and inductive reasoning, mathematical reasoning, and facility with numbers. (p. 8) (US National Science Board, 2015)
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Knowledge
• Disciplinary knowledge Concepts such as energy, geometric relations, material and structural properties, ecosystem principles …
• Epistemic knowledge How knowledge is built in the STEM disciplines, social and personal settings of STEM knowledge building, nature of models in maths and science, design processes, algorithmic coding processes …
• Interdisciplinary knowledge Interdisciplinary processes, links between mathematics and science, technology, STEM and other knowledges- societal, humanities and arts …
• Procedural knowledge Investigative and problem solving approaches, design knowledge, coding knowledge …
Skills
• Cognitive / metacognitive Complex and creative problem solving, design thinking, critical thinking, systems analysis, computational skills, complex, model based reasoning …
• Social / emotional Interpersonal skills, cooperation/ collaboration, persistence and optimism …
• Physical / practical Technical skills, coding, manipulation …
Attitudes
Productive disposition, curiosity, aesthetic preferences, open mindedness, respect for evidence, commitment to learning ...Values
Care for animals, objectivity, cooperation, responsibility … (Personal-global)Framing STEM knowledge and skills
8 Many of these are specific to STEM. Each of these should be promoted within STEM.
A shift in the meaning of “STEM”
STEM as a curricular category has different meanings in different locations and policy documents. It is sometimes used as a catch-all term for scientific and technical disciplinary areas.
In the currrent Common Core State Standards in the United States, STEM has taken on the particular meaning of an integrated approach to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics that grounds educational
experiences in the problem-solving and design processes central to engineering disciplines.
In general, STEM might be taken as an opportunity to seriously consider the alignment of school experiences with the distinct and/or integrated
experiences with scientific and engineering practices in the “real world.”
Tytler, R., Swanson, D.M., & Appelbaum, P.
(2015). Subject matters of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
This interdisciplinary emphasis comes from a number of concerns:
• to enhance the profile of engineering design in school curricula as a stimulus for creative thinking;
• to focus educational purposes on flexible problem solving and digital fluency; and
• from a desire of teachers to engage students in project work that contextualizes mathematics and science and improves motivation through a focus on collaborative problem solving
.
Arguments for integration:
q STEM activities reflect how knowledge is built, and applied in the real world
q Evidence of learning gains from complementary disciplinary approaches to mathematics and science (Lehrer & Schauble, 2006)
q Evidence of engagement of students with ‘real life’
contextual projects
q Focus, in STEM activities, on 21stcentury skills – innovation, creativity, design, teamwork
q That engineering is a silence in the school curriculum and an integrated STEM subject or activities focused on design and problem solving can address this.
q There is a perceived need to break down disciplinary strangleholds, the teacher centred pedagogies that characterise them, and the focus on procedural, and abstracted conceptual knowledge.
Advocacy of inter-disciplinary STEM
Focus of STEM advocacy
q
Engagement
q
Developing agile problem solvers and inquirers
q
Authentic problems
q
Innovation and creativity
q
Design
q
Digital literacy
How should we think of STEM capability?
How do we build a developmental curriculum?
The challenges of inter-disciplinary STEM
q Theoretical problems around differences between the knowledge building practices of the different STEM subjects (”STEM could be the name for a fairly monumental category error”: Clarke, 2015)
q Concerns about disciplinary integrity and depth (STEM as an ‘epistemic stew: Lehrer, 2016) - in particular, mathematics is not well served by inter-disciplinary STEM (Honey et al. 2014)
q Concerns that not all aspects of disciplinary fields can be covered by applied project- based learning.
q History of problems for reform in science teaching (Fensham, 2016) - the difficulty of teacher knowledge and experience, and of coordinating school timetable arrangements
q What do we understand by the cross-over area? A meta discipline?
Mathematics
Science
Engineering Technology
Spatial metaphor for relations between subjects
Is this the best way of thinking about interdisciplinarity?
Problems with translating
interdisciplinarity in STEM practice, to the school situation
q
Interdisciplinary teams are composed of disciplinary experts – it is not necessary for each to develop interdisciplinary knowledge & skills.
q
Disciplines are not tightly prescribed – they are ways of thinking about the world that have historical roots in real world problem solving.
Subjects in schools are less flexibly conceived and have tighter boundaries.
q
In school subjects, the requirement that expertise is built up over time is distinct from the purposes of interdisciplinary activity in the real world.
q
How the student experiences the disciplines is different to practical issues of curriculum/timetable arrangements.
q
These raise issues of how the subjects interact over different time scales
STEM Education in practice
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To examine the motivating forces behind schools engaging with interdisciplinary STEM
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To examine claimed outcomes for interdisciplinarity, for students and teachers
q
To raise questions about the relationship between, and implications for school science and mathematics, in interdisciplinary work.
Data comes from two Australian STEM PD projects
1.The STEM Academy, University of Sydney: 12 schools each year, with 2 each of technology, math, science teachers attending workshops, networking, mentoring, for one year.
2.The Deakin University ‘Successful Students: STEM’ project: 10 schools with 3-4 teachers each, workshops, mentoring, networking over 3 years
.
Case study 1: STEM Academy school
q Teacher interest drove the STEM Academy program to increasingly emphasize inter-disciplinarity. Teachers valued time for cross disciplinary discussion and planning, and networking with other schools.
q The schools’ STEM arrangements were of different types;
1. ‘Real-life’ context, cross-disciplinary activities within a single subject
2. A project based design task centred in one subject with related/contributing work, involving team teaching, taking place in the other subjects (STEM Ed at Acacia) 3. An inter-disciplinary project based task with teachers
from different subjects planning and teaching together 4. Special STEM project activities
5. A separate integrated STEM unit specifically designed to be cross-disciplinary, with teachers from different
subjects contributing.
Schools’ journeys were characterized by:
q An increasing focus on authentic, inter-
disciplinary activity
q Learning from other schools and from experience
q Growing confidence with student-centred
pedagogies
q Growing confidence with interactions within the cross-disciplinary school team
Even within any one model STEM shifts in the way the disciplines interrelate
‘STEM Ed’ at Acacia Valley
q
STEM Ed is a project based collaboration between technology, science and math teachers where technology design projects are supported by ‘just in time’ teaching in science and in mathematics. Projects have included space travel, go-cart construction … STEM Ed preceded the STEM Academy but has been developed further, through it.
q
The initial impetus:
• A concern with greater engagement of students with deeper learning in science and mathematics
• The need to develop student persistence and ability to think ‘outside the square’
• A concern to develop ‘soft skills’ of collaboration and teamwork
In my teaching career, I began to feel as though traditional approaches to maths teaching were progressively becoming less and less effective, that I was working hard at being excellent at the traditional model, but it was seeming increasingly disconnected from how students liked to learn. I was feeling a generational shift. … really I think the catalyst was hearing Ian Chubb speak about STEM and the need for a connected approach to science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and for students to be able to draw up links between those things. I started to think about what would that look like in a school setting (Vice Principal /Maths teacher)
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STEM Ed is a project based collaboration between technology, science and math teachers where technology design projects are supported by ‘just in time’ teaching in science and in mathematics. Projects have included space travel, go-cart construction.
The initial impetus:
– A concern with greater engagement of students with deeper learning in science and mathematics
– The need to develop student persistence and ability to think ‘outside the square’
– A concern to develop ‘soft skills’ of collaboration and teamwork
– Leadership perceptions that school arrangements no longer match how students like to learn
Acacia Valley school (STEM Academy)
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Teachers and students claimed increased depth of engagement with maths and science learning, enthusiasm in coming to class, and
interest in STEM futures When you're in STEM, you learn the information, then you
get to put it into a practical use in tech. Also in science we get to do field tests of what we've learned, and the same with maths. It's just very interesting. (Acacia student)
The perceived outcomes
:
Designing a Grandstand: Balance of Disciplines
Low SES boys school
Science TAS Maths
Material Records Gradient of Hill Financial – cost of material
Ecosystem CAD Drawing Area and Volume
Soil Testing Council Submission Gradients
Water run off Folio Possible Income
Shading/Shadow Report Animations Scale Drawing
Season Affects/Study Materials Research Graphs
Vegetation to reduce erosion Mechanics of Structure Angles and Trig
Site Survey Timeline
Impact to Primary School Dilapidation Report
Scale Drawing/Modelling
The project mentor claimed teachers needed help to identify aspects where maths could be productively drawn out and related to the curriculum.
• Work out the length of wooden balustrade needed around an arc
• Consult standards and work out thickness, shape, volume of concrete for flooring
• Work out run off from roof and design of downpipes to take flow, and size of tanks to cope, and to water oval
Key questions: Will the maths be approached procedurally, or conceptually?
How will it be related to the curriculum sequencing?
Planet 51
q
Technology: Rocket design
q
Science: Experiments with heat resistance of nose cone material, parachute design
q
Mathematics: Design of a calendar for a Mars space station, ‘think bigger’.
For here the concept of, in the not too distant future in their lifetimes, a Martian colony, gives them the freedom to answer the question, “What will we set up?” and to think about how time works as a
mixture of representing physical events in space and to do with the nature of the planet you're on
Outcomes – engagement with STEM learning and teaching
q Teachers claimed increased depth of engagement with maths and science learning, enthusiasm in coming to class, and interest in STEM futures
q Teachers talked about the
difficulty of selecting appropriate topics and coordinating the
different content areas. Adapting their pedagogies was also a
significant process but they claimed it had changed their teaching for the good.
q Students interviewed (not a representative sample) were enthusiastic about the STEM Ed being meaningful and
encouraging them to think about engineering as a career.
I can see that passion is actually growing within students and they're actually understanding that this works. They're engaging in what they're learning
They just seem to be getting better at group work, they seem to be better at planning investigations, that side of things, and wanting to be collaborating in a group.
And some of the year nines that were in it last year, it really changed their thinking in a way that we've never really seen here in our school before.
Trying to get across to kids what's the difference between a column graph and a histogram can be really hard, but when they've got their own data that they need to interpret, they need to make the choice and it just seems that being forced to make the choice is kind of working for them .
I'm always looking out for where the maths is and then trying to tie it all back in, which is a challenge for myself. It's always hard when you're teaching indices or something where you go here's the rule, just do it, versus can we actually apply this to something that we're doing
q Teachers claimed increased depth of engagement with maths and science learning, enthusiasm in coming to class, and interest in STEM futures
q Teachers talked about the
difficulty of selecting appropriate topics and coordinating the
different content areas. Adapting their pedagogies was also a
significant process but they claimed it had changed their teaching for the good.
q Students interviewed (not a representative sample) were enthusiastic about the STEM Ed being meaningful and
encouraging them to think about engineering as a career.
In science in primary, it was like you need to learn this, if it's not that, you're wrong, but now it's more like you get to choose, you have more freedom and creativity When you're in STEM, you learn the information, then you get to put it into a practical use in tech. Also in Science we get to do field tests of what we've learned, and the same with maths. It's just very interesting.
I wasn't really thinking about being an engineer in primary school, but then when we had the STEM Ed camp and we got to go and visit the university and we got to see
different kinds of engineers and what projects they do, it really inspired me, because it showed me we don't just learn this stuff in school and then not use it again in real life, but you can use the information that we've learned in primary school to make a difference in the world.
There was a lot more rethinking and like thinking outside the square. You just give him a little prompt and his mind would be off thinking we could do this, this and this in this whatever project he was doing at the time (Parent / teacher)
Outcomes – engagement with STEM
learning and teaching
Case 2: Successful Students—STEM:
Marcus College
Phase Year 7 Wheelchair Ramp activity
Immersion
Understanding the problem Investigate different disabled ramps in the broader community by walking around town, including a local hospital and the school itself.
Are all ramps the same?
Guiding tasks Measure various ramps, and produce scale drawings of ramps.
Investigate different ramps using the dynamic trolleys in the Science- inclination affected effort.
Test how the ramp elevation affected speed of descent.
Mini-inquiries
Asking questions Students undertake a series of mini-inquiries:
-Compare different ramp lengths in the garden and then rank the effort needed to get a wheelbarrow up each ramp.
-Hands-on activities give students a physical sense of elevation versus effort.
-Explore the ramps around the school using a wheel chair, to investigate ease of being pushed up or down, and the difficulty of wheeling oneself up or down.
The Big question
Analysis and conclusion The Big Question is introduced – “What would be the best ramp for wheelchair access to the deck in our Garden?” Students design a ramp to scale.
Teacher comments
Outcomes for students:
q Engagement with social dimensions of STEM:
empathy (the realization of disability and needs)
q Engagement with science: gravity, slopes
q Engagement with thinking and working mathematically
“Even the recording of effort made the girls think deeper, they started to inquire and solve how to best represent it graphically.”
“There was even powerful learning occurring through the students having to make decisions about how to record information, how to describe differences between ramps, and even how to represent the different ramps they investigated on paper.”
“One girl came up to me and asked – if she knew the angle and the length, is there a formula to work out the height? This and journal evidence indicates that many girls had started to make deep connections between the key maths ideas.”
One teacher reported that as the
investigations become more entrenched into the normal practices of the teachers, they have allowed the staff and students to see learning maths in a new light, not so routine or abstract. They are trying to bring in real world maths where students can see the application of maths
concepts. The teachers have found that students are more engaged, as the
investigations relate to questions that are relevant to students’ lives.
“This is how we’ve come up with the questions. We look at what we teach across the whole year. For example, for the ramp investigation, “we decided we didn’t do enough geometry, didn’t cover triangles that well, so look at things that we normally skim over and try to make that more in depth”
Staff were said to apply these teaching practices when they walk into the classroom more generally. ‘They become your
‘default’ position, that you don’t always just have that really structured or skill based teaching of maths.”
Maths within an interdisciplinary activity
(Tytler, Williams, Hobbs, & Anderson, in press)
q
We argue that there are a number of principles that underpin productive mathematics learning within inter-disciplinary activity:
q
Tasks should have an affective payoff – students need to want to do it;
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Tasks are open and emphasise problem solving that involves creative use of mathematics rather than external control of student thinking;
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Tasks encourage / entice students into using mathematics in unfamiliar ways, involving new representational moves, transformations, sequencing and combining of mathematical ideas, and synthesising ideas so there are opportunities for something mathematically profound to emerge; and that
q
Where tasks do not fit with the above principles, but primarily involve using previously known mathematics as a tool for exploring authentic problems, the relevance of mathematics can be increased if it is seen to lead to fresh insights into the problem.
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The disciplines within inter-disciplinary settings
Math
Technology/
Engineering
Science
In what sense might STEM represent a form of meta-disciplinary knowledge?
How do we think about what is in here?
Temporal issues
q
Issues of developmental trajectory make this different in school,
compared to inter-disciplinary STEM teams.
q
Three time scales:
• The order/interactions in
knowledge use over short time scales.
• How/when to introduce
appropriate knowledge (just in time? – otherwise the relevance point can be lost) – scale of weeks
• How is the learning (e.g. in
mathematics) orchestrated to be part of a coherent developmental plan? – scale of months and years.
Math
Technology/
Engineering
Science
Is there a meta knowledge associated with interdisciplinary STEM?
Engineering/
Tech Design
Mathematics Science
Mathematical modeling processes, Measurement, Data variation
Processes of mathematizing the natural and social worlds Contribution to design processes,
social/aesthetic/economic constraints
S
OCIAL ANDPERSONAL PURPOSES
, S
OFT SKILLSThe interactions between disciplines in authentic problems raises issues for teachers concerning their foundational assumptions and purposes.
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1. The STEM focus is being driven by concerns about national wealth creation agendas and an increasing sense of global economic competition.
2. A growing focus on work futures raises questions about the contribution of the STEM subjects, particularly mathematics and science, to skills and
competencies for students’ future well being.
3. Advocacy of interdisciplinary STEM in schools has spawned a range of types of initiative with evidence of success for student engagement but questions
raised about disciplinary learning. There is a need to develop models of
interdisciplinarity that do justice to the development of disciplinary capabilities in authentic settings.
4. STEM curricula need to be framed to promote:
• Engagement of students in authentic and meaningful activities that develop disciplinary concepts in the context of contemporary STEM practices,
particularly the incorporation of design, and digital technologies.
• Key competencies associated with STEM, particularly critical and creative thinking and problem solving, and attitudes and values, that will prepare students for rich and productive lives.
Conclusion
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Russell Tytler
Professor of Science Education Deakin University
Thank you
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