TeachME Professional Development

1. Integrated approaches to STEM education are designed to help the next generation of students solve real-world problems by applying concepts that cut across disciplines as well as by promoting critical thinking, collaboration, and:

2. Excellence in STEM education can impact jobs, productivity, and competitiveness in multiple sectors and fields including health, technological innovation, manufacturing, the distribution of information, political processes, and cultural change, and innovation in STEM fields drives not only economic growth, but also the quality of life.

3. In order for supports of integrated STEM education to gain sufficient momentum, a conceptual framework that goes beyond a simple definition is needed and should include the rationale, goals, intended outcomes, components, and how the components interact.

4. Integrated STEM education is an evolving field, with research to date raising more questions than it answers, and according to the authors, chief among these questions is that of:

5. Which of the following are NOT indicated as some of the barriers that have been identified to advancing STEM education as an interdisciplinary study in K-12:

6. Pedagogical knowledge plays a large role in teacher motivation and engagement, which have been found to be the most important qualities for effective teaching.

7. When teachers were asked what they perceived to be the challenges to achieving interdisciplinary STEM instruction, the most frequent responses were lack of time for integrated STEM education and insufficient resources, instructional material, and finances.

8. School administrators believe that the ideal STEM teacher would have a passion for and solid content expertise in science and math, along with proficiency in related disciplines and a comfort level with exploring uncharted territory, trying new things, adapting, and:

9. Teachers agree that more professional development is needed in the area of STEM education, such as the opportunity to review exemplar units in key pedagogical strategies like project-based learning, to see video recordings of experienced teachers implementing integrated STEM lessons, and the ability to access quality lesson plans.

10. Until more teachers have greater education in disciplines outside of their teaching area, or in STEM specifically, successful STEM integration is largely dependent on:

11. The primary challenge schools face in teaching STEM subjects in an integrated way is that schools continue to teach STEM subjects separately, and schools must make structural changes that will allow students to learn the nature of each of the STEM disciplines and learn that they are interconnected in ways that will impact real world situations.

12. More work is needed to help teachers understand what inclusive STEM education is, as most teachers’ current dispositions toward the implementation of integrated STEM can best be described as transitional.