Promoting Secondary Students' Twenty-First Century Skills and STEM Career Interests Through a Crossover Program of STEM and Community Service Education

Abstract

STEM education has been regarded as an important educational initiative for cultivating students' twenty-first century skills. The present work aimed to explore ways to promote students' twenty-first century skills through an integrated STEM-based curriculum. Specifically, we designed and implemented an 8-week crossover program of STEM and community service education. In this program, students learned about STEM domain knowledge and community service issues. They then applied the knowledge to solve authentic problems faced by Hong Kong community-housing residents from disadvantaged groups. A mixed-method approach was employed to evaluate the effectiveness of the program in enhancing students' twenty-first century skills and attitudes, including (i) creative thinking, (ii) collaboration, (iii) perseverance, as well as their (iv) STEM career interests. The research participants were 121 secondary students from a government-subsidized school. The quantitative results showed that the participants' creative thinking, collaboration, and perseverance improved alongside their STEM career interests. These findings were further supported by the data gathered through focus-group interviews. This study provides theoretical and practical insights into the integration of STEM education with community service learning.

Comparison of attitudes toward the medical student-led community health education service to support chronic disease self-management among students, faculty and patients

“…The educational value of CSL for medical undergraduates, the interest and availability of medical students in provision of individualized healthcare service were appreciated by most responding students, faculty members and patients; both teachers and medical students showed their agreement with the roles of CSL initiatives based on medical student-led community service to support chronic disease self-management in engaging students in active professional learning, social skill development, and professionalization process. These findings were in line with the known pedagogic advantages of CSL programmes [18,[23][24][25][26][27][28][29]. More importantly, some disparities were found to exist among the attitudes of three stakeholder groups, showing that students were more unaware of the current situation of community primary care; patients Table 4 Comparison of the students' and faculty members' attitudes on the possible educational benefits of the medical student-led community health education service to support chronic disease self-management (Mean ± SD) felt more uncertain of the support of higher medical education system for primary care practice and the students' competency, and were less interested in participating in the medical student-led community health service; and faculty were more appreciative of CSL and their own roles in CSL programs.…”

“…In addition, faculty plays a central role in service learning projects, yet there is scarce literature about their attitudes and perceptions regarding service-learning [ 37 ]. It has been well accepted that having competent faculty instructors to guide and supervise medical students is crucial for CSL to achieve the predefined learning objectives [ 25 , 26 , 28 , 29 , 38 ]. As opinion leaders who are influential in students’ attitudes, the faculty members play a central important role in shaping medical students’ professional considerations [ 28 ].…”

“…The participants were informed about the aims of this survey and the idea of CSL as an explanatory letter at the beginning of the questionnaire. The initial questionnaire items were developed by the research team based on existing literature about CSL [18,[23][24][25][26][27][28][29]. The clarity, content validity, relevance, and conciseness of the questionnaire items were appraised by 2 specialists in medical education external to the research team.…”

“…As an interactive learning tool in experiential education engaging students in human-centered service-learning activities to address community needs as well as develop students' professional value and knowledge, the community service learning (CSL) has achieved broad acceptance among medical schools and educators [18,[23][24][25][26][27][28]. So far, the positive educational effects of CSL have been demonstrated at all levels of learning for the cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains [27].…”

“…So far, the positive educational effects of CSL have been demonstrated at all levels of learning for the cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains [27]. Through providing an authentic sociocultural context for medical professional education, CSL allows medical students to gain exposure to primary care and social justice, flexibly apply classroom knowledge in real life, and strengthen their learning, professionalism, communication and problem-solving skills, civic and social responsibility as well as sense of community [25][26][27][28]. Especially for health professions previously being therapy-oriented, there is more emphasis now on prevention and primary care via improving life styles and eliminating risk factors having adverse effects on public health.…”