Dual-focused STEM hands-on activity for teachers’ professional development

ABSTRACT

The adoption of STEM hands-on activities in classrooms should not only focus on artefact building but also aim at helping students construct conceptual knowledge. For achieving such goal through teachers’ professional development, this study proposed a practice-based design. The design provided a dual-focused STEM hands-on activity which aimed at enabling teachers to build artefacts to construct science concepts as well as raising their awareness of what and how the pedagogies were employed. The first section consisted of a hands-on activity embedded with both science concepts and pedagogies, upon which reflection and discussions were held in the second section. Conducted as a case study with 49 participants of STEM in-service teachers, the results indicate that the participating teachers mainly focused on learning how to build artefacts. Although some participants were aware of the need to redesign the proposed hands-on activity to suit their students’ needs, most of them did not acknowledge the importance of pedagogies, but rather focused on improving technology skills. The study findings revealed what contemporary STEM teachers’ concerns in hands-on activity and their attitude towards adoption. Also, teachers’ concerns about and awareness of re-designing the STEM hands-on activity were addressed to provide references for the teachers’ professional development.

KEYWORDS:

• STEM
• hands-on learning
• practice-based teacher education
• core concept
• pedagogy

Acknowledgements

Appreciation was given to STEM teacher, Chia-Sung Wang of Lu Zhou Junior high school at New Taipei City, Taiwan, for his support of the experiment conducted in this study. Also, the experiment and data analysis done by two teaching assistant, Hui-Ting Chang of Department of Mathematics and Information Education, National Taipei University of Education, Taiwan, and Lin Chu of Department of Instructional Systems Technology, Indiana University Bloomington, USA, were acknowledged.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by the Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan (grant number MOST 107 - 2511 - H - 003 - 036 - MY2).

Notes on contributors

Yu-Liang Ting

Yu-Liang Ting is currently teaching at the Department of Technology Application and Human Resource Development, National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei, Taiwan. He acquired his Ph.D degree from the University of Texas at Austin in 1999. His major research interest is mobile learning and its innovative design in science and technology learning, and the use of information and communication technology in facilitating English as foreign language learning.

Yaming Tai

Yaming Tai is a professor of Department of Children English Education at National Taipei University of Education, Taiwan. Her recent research focuses on EFL teacher training and integration of technology into English as a foreign language teaching.