Board 169: Purposefully Designing Integrated STEM Learning Experiences within Elementary Teacher Education (Work in Progress)

Ursula Nguyen; Deepika Menon; Minji Jeon; Amanda Thomas

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Conference: 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Portland, Oregon
Publication Date: June 23, 2024
Start Date: June 23, 2024
End Date: July 12, 2024
Conference Session: Pre-College Engineering Education Division (PCEE) Poster Session
Tagged Division: Pre-College Engineering Education Division (PCEE)
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/46731

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Paper Authors

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Ursula Nguyen University of Nebraska, Lincoln orcid.org/0000-0001-8176-0885

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Dr. Ursula Nguyen is an Assistant Professor in Elementary Mathematics Education in the Department of Teaching, Learning & Teacher Education (TLTE) at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Dr. Nguyen’s research broadly focuses on issues of equity in STEM education at the intersection of race/ethnicity and gender, which stems from her experiences as both an educator of STEM subjects and as a past engineering student.

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Deepika Menon University of Nebraska, Lincoln

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Minji Jeon University of Nebraska, Lincoln

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Dr. Minji Jeon is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Teaching, Learning and Teacher Education at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

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Amanda Thomas University of Nebraska, Lincoln

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Abstract

Elementary teachers are tasked to engage learners across multiple content areas, including science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Yet, due to time constraints and limited pedagogical experiences, elementary teachers often struggle to meet instructional demands that call for them to enact lessons across all STEM areas. To better address these constraints, there has been a shift towards creating integrated STEM lessons. However, due to how most teacher preparation programs are structured, elementary teachers often lack adequate preparation and pedagogical knowledge to construct and teach integrated STEM lessons. Therefore, this paper focuses on the STEM educational possibilities and STEM learning opportunities afforded to pre-service elementary teachers (PSTs) during their STEM semester. In this STEM semester, PSTs are enrolled in science and mathematics methods courses as well as in an innovative learning technologies course. Specifically, as a team, the instructors of these courses have purposefully designed and planned an assignment that is shared among all three courses with the goal of providing PSTs with the opportunity to design and implement an integrated STEM lesson for elementary students in their practicum. Within these integrated STEM lesson projects, PSTs are expected to center an authentic local science phenomena/topic that relates to sustainability (e.g., crop residue burning and air quality). Further, an important aim of this integrated STEM lesson project is for PSTs to design an engineering challenge or design that can serve as a model to their project’s topic. As such, this paper investigates the following research questions: (1) How does a focus on sustainability provide PSTs the opportunity to implement an engineering challenge or design to their integrated STEM lesson project? (2) What features are present in their engineering design activities? This work in progress is from a larger study that uses a design-based research approach (Anderson & Shattuck, 2012), such that the STEM methods instructional team has employed a couple iterations of this integrated STEM unit, each time refining the assignment to better engage PSTs in creating and teaching authentic integrated STEM lessons to elementary students. For this paper, we utilized a content analysis approach (Schreier, 2014; Stemler, 2001) to examine how an engineering challenge or design was implemented in the integrated STEM lesson projects during Fall 2023. Findings from this work will have important implications for future iterations of this shared integrated STEM lesson assignment in our teacher education program, particularly around enhancing engineering education learning opportunities. Moreover, the structure of our elementary education program as it pertains to the STEM semester has the potential for providing critical insights on the process of successful collaboration across STEM methods courses within teacher preparation programs.

Citation
Format

Nguyen, U., & Menon, D., & Jeon, M., & Thomas, A. (2024, June), Board 169: Purposefully Designing Integrated STEM Learning Experiences within Elementary Teacher Education (Work in Progress) Paper presented at 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Portland, Oregon. https://peer.asee.org/46731

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - Elementary teachers are tasked to engage learners across multiple content areas, including science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Yet, due to time constraints and limited pedagogical experiences, elementary teachers often struggle to meet instructional demands that call for them to enact lessons across all STEM areas. To better address these constraints, there has been a shift towards creating integrated STEM lessons. However, due to how most teacher preparation programs are structured, elementary teachers often lack adequate preparation and pedagogical knowledge to construct and teach integrated STEM lessons.
Therefore, this paper focuses on the STEM educational possibilities and STEM learning opportunities afforded to pre-service elementary teachers (PSTs) during their STEM semester. In this STEM semester, PSTs are enrolled in science and mathematics methods courses as well as in an innovative learning technologies course. Specifically, as a team, the instructors of these courses have purposefully designed and planned an assignment that is shared among all three courses with the goal of providing PSTs with the opportunity to design and implement an integrated STEM lesson for elementary students in their practicum. Within these integrated STEM lesson projects, PSTs are expected to center an authentic local science phenomena/topic that relates to sustainability (e.g., crop residue burning and air quality). Further, an important aim of this integrated STEM lesson project is for PSTs to design an engineering challenge or design that can serve as a model to their project’s topic. As such, this paper investigates the following research questions: (1) How does a focus on sustainability provide PSTs the opportunity to implement an engineering challenge or design to their integrated STEM lesson project? (2) What features are present in their engineering design activities?
This work in progress is from a larger study that uses a design-based research approach (Anderson &amp;amp; Shattuck, 2012), such that the STEM methods instructional team has employed a couple iterations of this integrated STEM unit, each time refining the assignment to better engage PSTs in creating and teaching authentic integrated STEM lessons to elementary students. For this paper, we utilized a content analysis approach (Schreier, 2014; Stemler, 2001) to examine how an engineering challenge or design was implemented in the integrated STEM lesson projects during Fall 2023. Findings from this work will have important implications for future iterations of this shared integrated STEM lesson assignment in our teacher education program, particularly around enhancing engineering education learning opportunities. Moreover, the structure of our elementary education program as it pertains to the STEM semester has the potential for providing critical insights on the process of successful collaboration across STEM methods courses within teacher preparation programs.
AU  - Ursula Nguyen
AU  - Deepika Menon
AU  - Minji Jeon
AU  - Amanda Thomas
CY  - Portland, Oregon
DA  - 2024/06/23
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Board 169: Purposefully Designing Integrated STEM Learning Experiences within Elementary Teacher Education (Work in Progress) 
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/46731
ER  -