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Integrated STEM in secondary education: A case study
Tijdschriftbijdrage - Tijdschriftartikel
Despite many opportunities to study STEM (Science, Technology,
Engineering & Mathematics) in Flemish secondary education, only a minority of
pupils are actually pursuing STEM fields in higher education and jobs. One reason
could be that they do not see the relevance of science and mathematics. In order to
draw their pupils’ interest in STEM, a Belgian school started a brand new initiative:
the school set up and implemented a first year course that integrates various STEM
disciplines, hoping to provide an answer to the question pupils often ask themselves
about the need to study math and science. The integrated curriculum was developed
by the school’s teachers and a STEM education research group of the University of
Leuven. To examine the pupils’ attitude towards STEM and STEM professions and
their notion of relevance of STEM at the end of this one-year course, a post-test was
administered to the group of pupils who attended the integrated STEM course (the
experimental group) and to a group of pupils that took traditional, non-integrated
STEM courses (the control group). The results reveal that attending the integrated
STEM course is significantly related to pupils’ interest in STEM and notion of
relevance of STEM. Another post-test was administered only to the experimental
group to investigate pupils’ understanding of math and physics concepts and their
relation when taught in an integrated way. The results reveal that the pupils have
some conceptual understanding and can, to a certain extent, make a transfer of
concepts across different STEM disciplines. However, the test results did point out
that some additional introductory training in pure math context is needed.
Tijdschrift: NUOVO CIMENTO C-COLLOQUIA AND COMMUNICATIONS IN PHYSICS
ISSN: 2037-4909
Issue: 03
Volume: 38
Jaar van publicatie:2016
Toegankelijkheid:Open