Is Adding the E Enough? Investigating the Impact of K‐12 Engineering Standards on the Implementation of STEM Integration

Abstract

The problems that we face in our ever‐changing, increasingly global society are multidisciplinary, and many require the integration of multiple science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) concepts to solve them. National calls for improvement of STEM education in the United States are driving changes in policy, particularly in academic standards. Research on STEM integration in K‐12 classrooms has not kept pace with the sweeping policy changes in STEM education. This study addresses the need for research to explore the translation of broad, national‐level policy statements regarding STEM education and integration to state‐level policies and implementation in K‐12 classrooms. An interpretive multicase study design was employed to conduct an in‐depth investigation of secondary STEM teachers' implementation of STEM integration in their classrooms during a yearlong professional development program. The interpretive approach was used because it provides holistic descriptions and explanations for the particular phenomenon, in this case STEM integration. The results of this study demonstrate the possibilities of policies that use state standards documents as a mechanism to integrate engineering into science standards. Our cases suggest that STEM integration can be implemented most successfully when mathematics and science teachers work together both in a single classroom (co‐teaching) and in multiple classrooms (content teaching—common theme).

Mathematical Modeling: A Bridge to STEM Education

“…Content integration and context integration models have been categorized as two models of STEM integration (Roehrig et al, 2012). Content integration means preparing a structured or flexible STEM education curriculum by which more than one discipline can be covered.…”

“…Recently, this fact has been more generally voiced with the need for reform in the education of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) areas. Most of emerging jobs require competence, to some extent, in STEM and countries gradually feel the inadequacy of the existing education in STEM areas (Roehrig, Moore, Wang & Park, 2012).…”

Integration of Media Design Processes in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Education

“…STEM integration is usually defined by merging the disciplines of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics in order to (1) deepen students' understanding of these disciplines through fostering conceptual understanding, (2) broaden their understanding of these disciplines with the use of socially and culturally relevant STEM contexts, and (3) increase students' interest in STEM disciplines for their career choices (Roehrig, Moore, Wang, & Park, 2012). Bybee (2013) highlighted that the identification of new learning outcomes, curriculum programs, and teaching practices needs to be clarified by the STEM educational community.…”

Evidence of Students’ Engineering Learning in an Elementary Classroom

“…This was especially true of students' process of design learning, which was seen in varying degrees in almost every lesson and provided evidence that students were learning about engineering design as they progressed through the module and not just at the end when they engaged in the engineering design challenge. This is important because as teachers are thinking about how to integrate engineering into their classrooms, this study provides evidence that student learning of engineering design and engineering thinking can be woven throughout the unit, as described by Roehrig et al 9 and Guzey et al 18 During instruction of science and mathematics content, the evidence of student learning of engineering design was more heavily focused on the problem and background indicator that highlighted the problem scoping and necessary background information that students needed for the final design challenge. As the unit progressed, there was increased evidence of the plan and implement indicator which includes students brainstorming solutions and was largely seen through the students identifying how they could apply their learning to their design challenge.…”

“…The PictureSTEM units were developed to meet this need for explicit STEM integration modules that meaningfully teach each of the STEM disciplines. The theoretical framework guiding the development of the PictureSTEM modules was the STEM integration research paradigm, which is defined by the merging of the disciplines of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics in order to: (1) deepen student understanding of STEM disciplines by contextualizing concepts, (2) broaden student understanding of STEM disciplines through exposure to socially and culturally relevant STEM contexts, and (3) increase student interest in STEM disciplines to expand their pathways for students to entering STEM fields 9 . Additionally, the units were built from the Framework for Quality STEM Integration Curriculum, with each unit intentionally including a motivating and engaging context, meaningful mathematics and science content, student-centered pedagogies, an engineering design task, teamwork and communication skills 10 .…”