Stuff this week - How to do STEM Properly?
Last week I laid out the views of those that believe STEM education is critical for the nation’s future and the governments initial response.
Interestingly, it is those skills in the last sentence above that STEM education proponents are now focussing on. The view is that it is not good enough to simply devote more time to the STEM subjects. What needs to happen is that these subjects need to be studied in a cross disciplinary way to engage students in real world problem solving and to develop the skills mentioned above. Skills that will prepare kids for a future life, regardless of the profession they choose to follow. Teachers tell me that subjects used to be taught in an integrated manner but for some reason it has moved to a very siloed approach (eg. 9am science, 10am maths etc.). It would appear that the old has become new again!
If teachers can show students how in the real world people use a variety of skills to solve a given problem this will increase engagement as the cry of “I will never need to know this!” should be diminished. One way of achieving this cross disciplinary outcome is through an approach known as “ Problem Based Learning” (aka Project Based Learning). I will talk more about this idea in a later blog post but the main point is that STEM Education is not only about increasing the focus on the STEM subjects but also teaching it in such a way that the relevance of these subjects to the real world is emphasised. In doing so kids will learn how to think critically and how to solve problems.
So STEM Education done properly will link STEM across all subjects and engage students in practical real world activities that will require a range of skills to work through. Certainly in my experience of running an extra-curricular STEM program for students from Prep to Year 6 the engagement level will be high!
Next week I will put all this together in the Australian context and show how the Australian Curriculum already has many of these ideas embedded within and thus just requires forward thinking schools to reinvigorate their teaching methods. As Australia’s Chief Scientist wrote, schools need to “Think bold, collaborate and lead change.”
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