The implementation of an integrated approach of STEM education with real-life scenarios is crucial to motivate students to learn and to better prepare them for real-world challenges, which is a big challenge for teachers. Therefore, there are implications for teaching practice and consequently the need for professional development. This paper presents an integrated approach of STEM education developed in the context of a collaborative professional development programme implemented in an exclusive online context, provoked by the COVID-19 pandemic. The programme aimed at providing teachers with knowledge and skills to develop STEM integrated tasks to be implemented in class. This study used a quantitative–qualitative approach to answer the research questions, using mixed methods to collect data. Participants are primary school teachers who participated in the programme during four months in the school year 2020/2021. Based on data collected from questionnaires, participant observation and teachers’ final reports, it was verified that teachers recognized the importance of obtaining training in STEM education and that this type of professional development was very relevant and improved their knowledge and skills to implement STEM hands-on practices in class. In addition, a case study of a science and mathematics 6th grade teacher is presented to illustrate how she implement integrated STEM tasks in class based on a real-world scenario such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, teachers recognized the importance of this approach and that it increases students’ motivation to learn.
There is a growing call on the integration of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) at the primary school level, aiming to motivate students to learn these subject matters, in order to correspond to the scientific and technological challenges of an increasingly demanding society. Recently, many studies sustain the importance of extending STEM to STEAM by adding Arts to the previous areas, to better prepare students for real life. In this article, we present a way to promote STEAMH, by integrating Heritage with STEAM. With a qualitative approach and an action research methodology, we intend to investigate how to develop a pedagogical intervention project that fosters STEAMH learning at primary school and local community. It is concluded that it is possible to implement a STEAMH pedagogical intervention project, being necessary to develop a collaborative partnership with local community and local schools.
The international academic community recommends the integration of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education in order to better prepare students to face the increasing challenges of our real world. However, literature diagnoses difficulties related to the implementation of STEM integrated tasks by the teachers in school, related to the need of having enough specialised knowledge to achieve this goal. Teachers are the key to any process of a pedagogical intervention. In this regard, there is the need to promote their professional development, which raises the following question: What strategies of a professional development programme (PDP) provide teachers with motivation and confidence to innovate their practices? This paper discusses the role of leadership as an important strategy to promote the efficacy of a STEM PDP. With a qualitative methodology and an interpretative approach, a primary school teacher case study is presented. The teacher was able to develop STEM integrated tasks in the context of a collaborative network involving the team´s project leader, the school leaders and the training centre leader.
Keywords: Collaboration, leadership, primary school, professional development, STEM.
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