Teachers’ attitudes and practices in integrated STEM education

Integrated STEM education has the potential to improve students’ achievement in, attitudes toward and motivation for STEM domains (Stohlmann, Moore & Roehrig, 2012). However, to optimally profit from its possible benefits, integrated STEM should be taught effectively. Therefore this research aims at investigating how teachers’ attitudes and school context are related with their classroom practices. Insight into this relationship can provide useful tools for improving the implementation of integrated STEM education. Three questionnaires (for teachers’ attitudes, classroom practices and school context) were developed, validated and distributed among 245 integrated STEM teachers in Flanders. The concept of integrated STEM education was defined by means of five key principles: integration of STEM content, problem-centered learning, inquiry learning, design-based learning and cooperative learning. For each of the key principles a structural equation model (SEM) was developed. Results indicate a significant relationship between attitudes and classroom practices for all five aspects (range 0.275 to 0.483). Moreover, context factors were found to have a direct effect on classroom practices for three of the principles (integration, problem-centered learning and cooperative learning) and indirect effects for the other two principles. These findings suggest that targeting teachers’ attitudes along with specific context factors could benefit the effective implementation of integrated STEM education.status: publishe