The global urgency to improve STEM education may be driven by environmental and social impacts of the twentyfirst century which in turn jeopardizes global security and economic stability. The complexity of these global factors reach beyond just helping students achieve high scores in math and science assessments. Friedman (The world is flat: A brief history of the twenty-first century, 2005) helped illustrate the complexity of a global society, and educators must help students prepare for this global shift. In response to these challenges, the USA experienced massive STEM educational reforms in the last two decades. In practice, STEM educators lack cohesive understanding of STEM education. Therefore, they could benefit from a STEM education conceptual framework. The process of integrating science, technology, engineering, and mathematics in authentic contexts can be as complex as the global challenges that demand a new generation of STEM experts. Educational researchers indicate that teachers struggle to make connections across the STEM disciplines. Consequently, students are often disinterested in science and math when they learn in an isolated and disjoined manner missing connections to crosscutting concepts and real-world applications. The following paper will operationalize STEM education key concepts and blend learning theories to build an integrated STEM education framework to assist in further researching integrated STEM education.

Background: Teachers can have a significant impact on student interest and learning in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) subjects and careers. Teacher self-efficacy can also significantly affect student learning. Researchers investigated the effects of teacher professional development and integrated STEM curriculum development on teacher self-efficacy. Participants in the study included high school science and engineering technology teachers enrolled in a National Science Foundation-ITEST project called Teachers and Researchers Advancing Integrated Lessons in STEM (TRAILS). The TRAILS program sought to prepare teachers to integrate STEM content using engineering design, biomimicry, science inquiry, and 3D printing as pedagogical approaches. Teachers learned within a community of practice working alongside industry partners and college faculty. The purpose of the study was to investigate the impact of the 70 h of professional development to train three cohorts of teachers over 3 years on teacher self-efficacy. The research design utilized a quasi-experimental nonequivalent control group approach, including an experimental group and an untreated control group. Results: Measurements on beliefs about teacher self-efficacy were collected on pretest, posttest, and delayed posttest survey assessments. Researchers analyzed the T-STEM survey results for teaching self-efficacy using the Wilcoxson signed-rank test for detecting significant differences. Science teachers showed a significant increase in teacher self-efficacy comparing the pretest and delayed posttest scores after TRAILS professional development and STEM lesson implementation (p = .001, effect size = .95). Additionally, significant differences between groups (science experimental vs science control group teachers) using the Wilcoxon rank-sum test were detected from pretest to posttest (p = .033, effect size = .46), posttest to delayed posttest (p = .029, effect size = .47), and pretest to delayed posttest (p = .005, effect size = .64). There were no significant differences detected in the control group. Engineering technology teachers showed no significant differences between the pretest, posttest, and delayed posttest self-efficacy scores. Conclusions: The results indicate the science teachers' self-efficacy increased after professional development and after lesson implementation. Potential implications from this research suggest that the science teacher participants benefited greatly from learning within a community of practice, engaging in science practices, and using science knowledge to solve a real-world problem (engineering design).

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract