Kiddipedia
Teaching STEM can be challenging, especially if you have never explicitly incorporated it into your teaching before. To help you overhaul your teaching and effectively integrate STEM, we have identified 8 key principles that you can use to add STEM to your classroom, transforming your education and getting your students excited about STEM.
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Create Partnerships Between Schools, Industry, and Community
Creating meaningful partnerships is an excellent way to bring STEM education into your classroom. You can partner with other schools, businesses, or organisations to provide STEM education initiatives that can improve student engagement and outcomes.
Incorporating partnerships allows students to experience workplaces and inspires them in STEM, encouraging them to pursue this field for further study or as a career. It will also enhance and complement the curriculum. Reaching out to other schools, museums, local councils, government, or relevant industries can help you find a partner to work with on a STEM problem.
2. Differentiate for Different Levels
Differentiating your STEM teaching for different levels is essential to ensure that every student can access the materials and enjoy the sessions. Ensure that your lesson plans provide additional support and extension tasks to meet the needs of every student.
3. Engage Parents and Families
Education continues beyond the classroom, and engaging parents and guardians to be active in their students’ education is an excellent way to incorporate STEM into your teaching better. It can help improve aspiration, enrollment, achievement, and belief in the importance of STEM education. Consider inviting parents and families to a STEM exhibition day to showcase the students’ work.
If you know of any parents or family members who work in STEM fields, it’s worth reaching out to them to see if they would be willing to spend time in the classroom or partner on your projects.
4. Equip and Empower Teachers
For STEM to be taught effectively, the teachers delivering the sessions need to be equipped and empowered to do so. They need the right resources and skills to teach best practices in STEM education. These can be achieved by providing up-to-date technology in classrooms and offering further training for teachers, such as postgraduate courses in STEM education. These courses are invaluable, providing STEM pedagogy and foundational theory while showing teachers how to apply this knowledge in practice.
Partnering with a STEM teacher or mentor within your school or college can also be beneficial, as it allows you to bounce ideas off one another and create meaningful sessions that successfully integrate STEM education.
5. Link STEM Education to 21st Century Learning
STEM education should be linked to the technology and learning of the 21st century, helping to develop critical thinking, collaboration, and creativity. Ensure that you are encouraging teamwork and healthy debates, where students can ‘play’ with their STEM subject matter, like a piece of 21st-century technology, to see how it can be used for education and any limitations it may have.
6. Solve Real-World Problems
Real-world problem-solving enables you to move beyond textbooks, utilising contemporary STEM knowledge to guide students in investigating and addressing existing challenges or needs, such as designing a solution to a local council problem. Doing so can help teach students the relevance of STEM education and how it connects to the ‘real world’ after education, while enhancing their critical thinking and problem-solving skills.
You can partner with a local business or have students work on a project that addresses a real-world problem to help integrate this into your teaching.
7. Teach Integrated STEM Learning
Integrated STEM learning focuses on combining the subject matter of your class with two or more STEM subjects, transforming the session into a joint learning experience and subtly weaving STEM into your classes. Doing so will support cross-disciplinary STEM skills, and it can enhance student interest, especially if you can make it relevant to their experiences or personal interests.
To do so, you might teach science and use an engineering process to incorporate design-based learning into your studies. Collaborating with other STEM teachers can help integrate strategies and materials for successful sessions.
8. Use Inquiry-based Learning
Inquiry-based learning focuses on investigation and problem-solving, reversing the order of learning. You begin with a range of scenarios, questions, and problems for students to navigate, which can provide them with the answer. Typically, this involves a four-step process where you:
- Set a challenge for students
- Encourage active student investigations
- Make generalisations
- Reflect
These problem-based scenarios you create for inquiry-based learning will teach students to think critically to find solutions.
Enhance Your STEM Teaching With A Graduate Certificate in STEM Education
These 8 principles are excellent ways to incorporate STEM into your teaching; however, we recommend further study for teachers who have not previously delivered STEM education courses. A graduate certificate in STEM education will provide you with the knowledge and skills to create meaningful sessions that engage and inspire your students. Courses offered by the University of Canberra are ideal, providing the latest pedagogy and foundational theory while offering complete flexibility to study alongside your teaching schedule. Explore their graduate certificate in STEM education to discover how it can benefit you.
