SYMPOSIUM | RPIC120: Integrated STEM Education in Singapore Contexts: Research from meriSTEM@NIE

Code to Sew is an integrated STEM curriculum designed in partnership between meriSTEM@NIE and BERNINA (Singapore) Pte Ltd to create integrative learning opportunities for students to develop their 21st century competencies. Specifically, this programme contains a three-part curriculum that entails learning about the science of materials, coding and digital sewing. In this presentation, we share research findings that address the research questions: (1) What are the learning outcomes of Code to Sew? (2) How does Code to Sew address the learning needs of diverse students? For this presentation, we draw upon the data only from teacher and student interviews after going through a three-day programme. Data analysis of post-programme interviews conducted with eight teachers and six students who had participated in the programme as learners and/or trainers. The interviews were transcribed and emerging codes were identified. These codes were then categorised into the three broad groups of 21st century learning—foundational, meta and humanistic learning outcomes. To address the second research question, the interview transcripts were analysed in an emerging manner to identify learning outcomes for diverse groups of learners. Analysis of the findings revealed learning outcomes that were aligned to the three areas of 21st century learning including content learning, problem solving and creativity. The teachers and students also reported differences in the affordances and engagement of academically inclined and less inclined students during the programme. The findings have implications for STEM educators who are interested to find out how an integrated curriculum can afford learning opportunities for 21st century learning to be honed and addresses equity. Keywords: STEM Quartet, 21st century learning, diverse learners

Integrated STEM learning faces two major challenges - (1) implementation of lessons to ensure opportunities for problem framing, design, building and testing, and (2) assessment of related learning outcomes and creativity. Development of creativity is one of the promises of integrated STEM learning and has been highlighted as one of the indicators of high-quality learning of ‘Education 4.0” (World Economic Forum, 2020). Consequently, accurate measurement of creativity that is related to exposure to integrated STEM learning experience would serve as reliable indicators for the success or failure of integrated STEM learning. Current ways of measuring creativity such as the Torrance Tests of Creativity (TTCT) have been viewed as being domain-generic (Baer, 2015). There are calls to refine instruments for creativity to include domain-specific knowledge and practices. Kaufman et al. (2008), raised Hu and Adey’s (2002) Scientific Structure Creativity Model (SSCM) as an example for designing divergent thinking tools to be domain specific. The SSCM covers aspects of science through its dimension of Product-Technical Product, Science Knowledge, Science Phenomenon and Science Problem. Creativity is embedded in this framework under the Trait dimensions – Fluency, Flexibility and Originality, and Process dimensions – Thinking and Imagination. Based on the SSCM, Hu and Adey designed seven questions for use in the Scientific Creativity Test (SCT). Even though it is domain-specific, the SCT items are still general within the field of science. When measuring the creativity of students engaged in integrated STEM activities, there is value in designing creativity assessment tools that are task specific as proposed by Barbot et al. (2016) who presented the case for creativity levels being dependent on one’s creative potential situated within the context – the requirements of the task students need to perform. The context of vertical farming is a specialised field within the domains of STEM, and an SCT designed for science in general would not be as accurate a measure of creativity when applied to a specialised field with its own set of requirements and task design. In this presentation, we share the details of the activity specific creativity tests and discuss results obtained from our pilot study when the instrument was trialled. Keywords: Creativity, Domain specific, Torrance Tests of Creativity

STEM education and research has gained popularity internationally over the last decade (Li et al., 2020). A review of US-based STEM K-12 education programmes suggests designers of STEM learning experiences typically lacked specifications of how features of an integrated STEM experience/lesson would lead to desired outcomes and how those outcomes should be measured (National Academy of Engineering & National Research Council, 2014). Our literature search for existing K-12 integrated STEM (rather than monodisciplines in STEM) classroom observation protocols revealed a similar concern. Among the limited protocols identified (e.g. Dare et al., 2021; Milford & Tippett, 2015), none were based on a framework that incorporated design principles and pedagogical outcomes. Hence, to bridge this gap, this presentation will share on the team’s preliminary work towards the development of a new integrated STEM classroom observation protocol (iSTEM protocol), articulating how the productive disciplinary engagement (PDE) framework (Engle, 2012; Engle & Conant, 2002) is used in protocol construction. The iSTEM protocol comprises 13 items, four of which correspond to three dimensions of pedagogical outcomes: engagement - extent to which students are cognitively engaged during a STEM lesson, interdisciplinarity of engagement (revised from disciplinarity dimension in original PDE framework) - extent to which students take a systematic approach to make and justify decisions­­­ (with inclusion of disciplinary reasonings)­ - on what to do or how to proceed with the solution, and productivity - extent to which students make intellectual progress from start to end of the STEM lesson and the quality of their solution in terms of meeting the success criteria/solution requirements (two items). The remaining nine items correspond to four design principles: problematising - extent to which nature of STEM problem is a meaningful problem for students and STEM communities, as defined in the S-T-E-M Quartet (one item), resources - extent to which resources are provided to support students in solving STEM problem (two items), accountability - extent to which students’ ideas/actions are held accountable to STEM disciplinary concepts, ways of thinking and doing or norms by self and peers/teacher (examples of disciplinary concepts include mathematically/scientifically accurate concepts/facts; examples of disciplinary ways of thinking and doing include fair tests, appropriate analysis, norms for 2D/3D sketches; three items), and authority - extent to which students are given epistemic authority to construct and critique solution to STEM problem (three items). Each item comprises four options (corresponding to four levels), each indicating the extent to which an outcome/design principle is fulfilled. The proposed iSTEM protocol features two novel attempts. Firstly, application of the PDE framework to design a classroom observation protocol that incorporates design principles and pedagogical outcomes. Secondly, interpretation of interdisciplinarity of student engagement in terms of how student groups engage in decision making in the process of solving a STEM problem. The iSTEM protocol will contribute as a research tool for STEM education researchers and as a pedagogical guide for STEM classroom teachers to improving their design of STEM learning experiences.