Ong, Yann Shiou

As the new Singapore science education framework emphasises practices of science, one approach to persuade science teachers of the value of scientific argumentation (a scientific and epistemic practice) is to demonstrate its relevance in an education system driven by high-stake national examination. GCE ‘O’ level pure physics and ‘A’ level physics H2 examinations include DbQ that involve higher-order thinking skills of interpreting, evaluating, and solving problems using given information/data. In other words, the need for engaging in evidence-based reasoning, which is part of scientific argumentation.

STEM education and research has gained popularity internationally over the last decade. However, there is a lack in specifications in existing K-12 STEM classroom observation protocols of how features of an integrated STEM experience/lesson would lead to desired outcomes and how those outcomes should be measured. To bridge this gap, we propose the development of a new integrated STEM classroom observation protocol (iSTEM protocol). This article describes the ongoing development work of the iSTEM protocol, which features two creative attempts. Firstly, the productive disciplinary engagement framework is adapted to design a classroom observation protocol that provides a coherent frame of design principles to be met to achieve desired 3-dimensional pedagogical outcomes. Secondly, interdisciplinarity of student engagement was interpreted in terms of the extent to which students take a systematic and disciplinary-based approach to make and justify decisions during STEM problem-solving. The iSTEM protocol comprises 15 items (4-point scale) rated holistically for the extents to which evidence was found in the observed lesson for (1) the 3-dimensional pedagogical outcomes of productive interdisciplinary engagement (five items) and (2) problematising, resources, authority, and accountability design principles (10 items). The accompanying iSTEM profile visually represents and communicates the strengths and inadequacies in design principles, thus providing explanations for extents of students’ productive interdisciplinary engagement. The iSTEM protocol will contribute as a research tool for STEM education researchers and as a pedagogical guide for STEM classroom teachers to improve their design of STEM learning experiences.

This commentary is an extension to the integrated S-T-E-M Quartet Instructional Framework that has been used to guide the design, implementation and evaluation of integrated STEM curriculum. In our discussion of the S-T-E-M Quartet, we have argued for the centrality of complex, persistent and extended problems to reflect the authenticity of real-world issues and hence, the need for integrated, as opposed to monodisciplinary, STEM education. Building upon this earlier work, we propose two additional variationsjsolution-centric and user-centric approaches to the provision of integrated STEM curricular experiences to afford more opportunities that address the meta-knowledge and humanistic knowledge developments in 21st century learning. These variations to the S-T-E-M Quartet aims to expand the scope and utility of the framework in creating curriculum experiences for diverse profiles of learners, varied contextual conditions, and broad STEM education goals. Collectively, these three approaches problem-centric, solution-centric, and user-centricjcan afford more holistic outcomes of STEM education.

Opportunity to learn (OTL) is a ubiquitous measure of the likelihood of learning in educational research, which typically has been characterized by three dimensions: time, coverage of content, and quality of instruction. The last dimension has been defined in highly divergent ways, which gives it a double-edged nature. While it may be operationalized to better serve a specific problem or context, it also makes it harder to achieve consensus or derive broader implications across studies. Using the four design principles from the Productive Disciplinary Engagement (PDE) framework, we show how PDE can characterize the quality of instruction dimension in OTL that reflects contemporary understandings of the end-goals of science education i.e. learning science as practice. This revision is valuable for science educators and evaluators who rely on OTL measures for it helps them: i) evaluate the quality of instruction consistent with reformed science teaching in valid and reliable ways, and ii) address questions about the adequacy of content coverage in the subject. We exemplify analysis using this refined OTL model with a case study of middle-school learners in Singapore engaged in the challenging scientific practice of argumentation.

Temperature and heat are difficult concepts for children to grasp due to their abstractness. An image-to-writing approach, guided by the visualisation practices of scientists, was designed to engage elementary students with constructing images to represent their ideas about phenomena and translating these images into text using scientific terminologies. Taking a quasi-experimental approach, the experimental group students received inquiry-based instruction based on the image-to-writing approach, while the control group students received a mix of direct instruction and inquiry activities without explicit focus on multimodal representations. An instrument consisting of four free response questions was developed and administered to 129 primary 4 students (aged 9–10) before (pre-test) and after (post-test) instruction to determine their conceptual understanding and representational competences. ANCOVA showed that students in the experimental group perform significantly better than those in the control group in their conceptual understanding. Further analysis revealed that a larger percentage of students in the experimental group demonstrated higher levels of conceptual understanding after instruction, compared to the control group for more complex phenomena, even though both groups showed similar levels of representational competences. The findings suggest that an image-to-writing approach can help students develop deeper conceptual understanding as well as use representations to demonstrate their conceptual understanding. The use of images could have helped students in their thinking and learning of complex phenomena, which allowed them to better convey their understanding of the concepts.