Browsing by Subject "STEM integration"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    Design-Based Online Teacher Professional Development to Introduce Integration of STEM in Pakistan
    (2017-02) Anwar, Tasneem
    In today’s global society where innovations spread rapidly, the escalating focus on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) has quickly intensified in the United States, East Asia and much of Western Europe. Our ever-changing, increasingly global society faces many multidisciplinary problems, and many of the solutions require the integration of multiple science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) concepts. Thus, there is a critical need to explore the integration of STEM subjects in international education contexts. This dissertation study examined the exploration of integration of STEM in the unique context of Pakistan. This study used three-phase design-based methodological framework derived from McKenney and Reeves (2012) to explore the development of a STEM focused online teacher professional development (oTPD-STEM) and to identify the design features that facilitate teacher learning. The oTPD-STEM program was designed to facilitate eight Pakistani elementary school teachers’ exploration of the new idea of STEM integration through both practical and theoretical considerations. This design-based study employed inductive analysis (Strauss and Corbin, 1998) to analyze multiple data sources of interviews, STEM perception responses, reflective learning team conversations, pre-post surveys and artifacts produced in oTPD-STEM. Findings of this study are presented as: (1) design-based decisions for oTPD-STEM, and (2) evolution in understanding of STEM by sharing participant teachers’ STEM model for Pakistani context. This study advocates for the potential of school-wide oTPD for interdisciplinary collaboration through support for learner-centered practices.
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    Disciplinary Literacies in STEM Integration: An Interpretive Study of Discourses within Classroom Communities of Practice
    (2015-07) Ortmann, Lisa
    Recent attention to disciplinary literacy and the STEM education movement have opened doors to new visions of disciplinary learning at the high school level. As a result, there is a growing need to better understand what disciplinary integration looks like in the classroom communities of high schools, specifically, how teachers and students integrate the disciplines of STEM in their classroom practices (Wang, 2011; Williams, 2011), and the literacies that are created and practiced within new integrated contexts (Lankshear & Knobel, 2006; Unsworth, 2008). A specific focus on literacy in science classrooms makes evident the importance of spoken and written discourse in the development and use of scientific knowledge, practices, and academic language (Brown, Reyeles, & Kelly, 2005; Brown, Ryoo, & Rodrigues, 2010; Lemke, 1990; Yore, 2000). Although there are a number of studies that have explored science literacy (e.g., Wallace, 2004) and STEM literacy (e.g., Zollman, 2012), none of these studies have applied a sociocultural definition of literacy as social practice (Barton, 1991; Scribner & Cole, 1981). This study responds to these gaps in the literature by offering an analysis of classroom discourse and the broader social and discursive practices that surround it through application of social theories of learning and literacy, and critical theories of classroom discourse. This dissertation is a presentation of results from two research studies of STEM integration discourses by breaking down the research aims into three separate manuscripts. The first essay presents the results from a yearlong investigation into two high school science teachers' efforts at STEM integration in their 9th grade physical science classrooms, in terms of the ways teachers and students positioned, negotiated, co-constructed, and disrupted disciplines within their discourse practices. Through the use of a contrasting case design (Yin, 2009), classroom observations including video and audio recordings, semi-structured interviews with teachers, and student focus groups were collected from each classroom. Findings highlight the situated nature of disciplinary integration, including the enacted social identities and lived experiences of students and teachers, the disciplinary knowledge and expertise of teachers, and the uses of multimodal pedagogies that included explicit language instruction as a means to model disciplinary discourse. The second manuscript presents a cross-case analysis of the two cases presented in chapter two, as a means to develop a grounded theory of a process of disciplinary integration. This investigation also presents the results of a critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 1992) of texts selected using theoretical sampling (Corbin & Strauss, 2008; Charmaz, 2014) from the broader corpus of data (Fairclough, 1992). The findings offer a process of disciplinary integration including the re-presenting, modeling and apprenticing, disrupting, and learning of disciplines through classroom discourses and discursive practices. The presented process offers the fields of disciplinary literacy and STEM education a theory of what it means to integrate disciplines that is grounded in actual classroom discourse practices. The final manuscript presents a single, embedded case (Yin, 2009) of one novice instructional coach, Madison, and her work with middle school science teachers in STEM integration efforts. The goal of this investigation was to explore the initial and evolving coaching knowledge, beliefs, and identities of a new instructional coach in order to contribute to what is known about how coaches develop. Through the use of constant-comparative analysis methods (Corbin & Strauss, 2008) of audio recordings of coaching conversations, written reflection logs, and semi-structured interviews, a full case of Madison's coaching development is presented. Findings from the analyses indicate the importance of a new coach's development of a process of coaching reasoning and action, similar to Shulman's (1987) model of pedagogical content knowledge. Also, the well-established teaching and learning identities that Madison brought into her coaching work as found to play a dominant role in the establishment of coaching roles, positional authority, and content focus for the conversations. Cross-disciplinary coaching experiences such as this one will be essential to the successful integration of the STEM disciplines in K-12 STEM education reform efforts Implications from this dissertation study reaffirmed the need for teachers to model and explicitly teach the language and discourses of the discipline, however because the practices of disciplinary integration resulted in borrowing across disciplines and undefined disciplinary communities of practice, it will be important for teachers to also draw on multiple discourses to teach disciplinary content (Lemke, 1990). These findings also add to the literature that has found the use of specific language instruction in science supports traditionally marginalized youth in learning and succeeding in science subject areas (Ciechanowski, 2009; Henrichs & Leseman, 2014; Lee & Fradd, 1998; Villanueva & Hand, 2011), however the students' uses of familiar social discourses and home languages were essential to their engagement with the science and engineering practices.
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    A new era of science education: science teachers‘ perceptions and classroom practices of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) integration.
    (2012-01) Wang, Hui-Hui
    Quality STEM education is the key in helping the United States maintain its lead in global competitiveness and in preparing for new economic and security challenges in the future. Policymakers and professional societies emphasize STEM education by legislating the addition of engineering standards to the existing science standards. On the other hand, the nature of the work of most STEM professionals requires people to actively apply STEM knowledge to make critical decisions. Therefore, using an integrated approach to teaching STEM in K–12 is expected. However, science teachers encounter numerous difficulties in adapting the new STEM integration reforms into their classrooms because of a lack of knowledge and experience. Therefore, high quality STEM integration professional development programs are an urgent necessity. In order to provide these high quality programs, it is important to understand teachers‘ perceptions and classroom practices regarding STEM integration. A multiple-case study was conducted with five secondary school science teachers in order to gain a better understanding of teachers‘ perceptions and classroom practices in using STEM integration. This study addresses the following research questions: 1) What are secondary school science teachers‘ practices of STEM integration? 2) What are secondary science teachers‘ overall perceptions of STEM integration? and 3) What is the connection between secondary science teachers‘ perceptions and understanding of STEM integration with their classroom practices? This research aims to explore teachers‘ perceptions and classroom practices in order to set up the baseline for STEM integration and also to determine STEM integration professional development best practices in science education. Findings from the study provide critical data for making informed decision about the direction for STEM integration in science education in K–12.