An Integrated Stem Framework for Facilitating Statistics Instruction

Abstract

The spirit of innovation in education has become part of the methods used to reform the way knowledge is learned. Many researchers and educators have continuously made significant efforts to encourage the use of a STEM-integrated approach in the classroom. However, several obstacles exist, such as a lack of teaching resources and pedagogical content knowledge, when teachers want to incorporate the approach into mathematics classrooms. Thus, the Malaysian Statistics Module for Form Four Students (MySTAT4) module was developed to nurture teachers' and students' statistical thinking and inventive skills such as reasoning, critical thinking, and creativity. In this paper, we present the conceptual framework of the MySTAT4 module and demonstrate a brief lesson for teaching and learning a statistics topic based on the approach. Through a content analysis method, we reviewed and analysed literature and documents on STEM-integrated approaches and statistics topics to produce the MySTAT4 framework that connects problem-solving and problem-based learning. The framework is suitable for assisting the STEM and mathematics education communities in developing, providing standard lesson materials and assessment tools, and innovating integrated pedagogical approaches to statistics topics. By utilising the framework, both practitioners and researchers can adapt a common foundation that relates the ways, steps, processes, and activities of problem-solving across interdisciplinary domains into a single point of reference.