Integrated STEM Education:teachers’ views and design practices

Albeit the increasing attention that STEM-related research has received, little is known about how teachers conceptualise and practice integrated STEM. Similarly, there is a need to shift the focus from the technological tools used in STEM to the way the teachers use technology, the challenges they come across, as well as how collaboration helps overcome these challenges. In this light, this PhD study investigates in-service teachers’ STEM views and design practices. Participating teachers (n=26) coming from all S-T-E-M disciplines were divided into four Learning Community (LC) groups and designed and developed STEM teaching material, i.e. STEM modules, artefacts, and related STEM lesson plans. Findings reveal that the disciplinary background affected teachers’ design practices in terms of a) the discussion patterns that the teachers focused on, b) the artefact parts that teachers undertook to develop, c) the type and sequence of the activities in the STEM lesson plans, d) they way teachers approached engineering design and real-world relevance in the STEM lesson plans. Regarding STEM models, most teachers emphasised engineering design, content integration, and real-world relevance. Concerning the integration of technology, we carried out a complementary study with pre-service teachers (n=12) integrating datalogging systems for science teaching. Findings showed that in a non-negligible number of cases teachers did not implement technology, while they mostly used dataloggers solely for measuring data. Prior experiences and cultural barriers seemed to affect technology integration. Finally, the LC discussions followed a collaborative and participatory pattern, while many teachers interacted with peers in designing teaching material