Learning to teach STEM disciplines in higher education: a critical review of the literature

Abstract

Enrolments in STEM disciplines at universities are increasing globally, attributed to the greater life opportunities open to students as a result of a STEM education. But while institutional access to STEM programmes is widening, the retention and success of STEM undergraduate students remains a challenge. Pedagogies that support student success are well known; what we know less about is how university teachers acquire pedagogical competence. This is the focus of this critical review of the literature that offers a theorised critique of educational development in STEM contexts. We studied the research literature with a view to uncovering the principles that inform professional development in STEM disciplines and fields. The key finding of this critical review is how little focus there is on the STEM disciplines. The majority of studies reviewed did not address the key issue of what makes the STEM disciplines difficult to learn and challenging to teach.

From panic to pedagogy: Using online active learning to promote inclusive instruction in ecology and evolutionary biology courses and beyond

“…As evidenced by a meta-analysis of 225 studies, active learning practices enhance student learning and reduce failure rate in undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) courses (Freeman et al, 2014). Additionally, active learning approaches, accompanied by major changes to course structure, improve performance in evolution courses (Frasier & Roderick, 2011) and can be used successfully in ecology (Burrow, 2018) and in courses aiming to integrate ecological and evolutionary concepts throughout the biology curriculum (White et al, 2013).…”

“…Thus, these instructors better understood nuances of active learning and were able to design effective courses and implement activities in more meaningful ways. This is not surprising given the lack of attention to learning how to teach in STEM disciplinary training (Winberg et al., 2019). Unfortunately, it seems one cannot just use clickers or periodic class discussion and expect increased gains in student learning.…”

Subject matter pedagogy in university teaching: how lecturers use relations between theory and practice

“…To understand the knowledge that is needed for science teaching, the concept of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) has been introduced as an unique form of knowledge for teaching that makes a content domain understandable for learners (Shulman 1986). Recent studies in science and physics suggest that lecturers, like teachers, use an integrated set of conceptions and knowledge based on subject matter and pedagogical knowledge in university teaching (Fraser 2016;Jang, Tsai, and Chen 2013;Winberg et al 2019). In this study, we focus on the individual lecturer as this is the person who makes a content domain understandable for students.…”

The Short Course as a Model for Teaching STEM Graduate Student Instructors About Course Design

“…A key finding of Winberg and others’ (2018) review of the literature on teaching STEM disciplines in higher education reveals that there is a dearth of studies examining the challenge of teaching more than general pedagogical knowledge and making the connection to the content of GSIs’ STEM disciplines. Given this, a short course specifically focused on pedagogies for STEM fields is an opportunity to bridge this gap.…”