Ong, Yann Shiou

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.

Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) form the basis of many educational programmes around the world. In Singapore, school-based STEM education appears within STEM Applied Learning Programmes (ALP) offered by some primary and secondary schools. In this chapter, we present an in-depth survey of the diverse offerings and benefits of STEM education here; specifically, we examine STEM learning/activities from the websites of 15 secondary schools (Grades 7–10/11). Using a theoretical model of relevance for science education from the literature, we identified the benefits and pathways that STEM education has been reported to afford its participants, that is, how STEM education can be made relevant for students through ALP. Relevance is defined in terms of fulfilment of intrinsic or extrinsic needs in the present or future, and along the three dimensions of individual, societal, and vocational needs in this model. Our main findings indicate that this sample of STEM ALP websites did not sufficiently yield statements that supported the present or future aspects of intrinsic relevance within the societal and vocational dimensions. On the other hand, multiple descriptions in relation to the extrinsic and future aspects across the individual, societal, and vocational dimensions of relevance were provided. Three implications of these findings for STEM education in Singapore are highlighted: (i) greater consideration of student choices, identities, and agency, (ii) greater awareness and discussion of undesirable/negative impacts of STEM solutions on society, and (iii) greater emphasis on the epistemic aspects of STEM.

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.

The prevalence and growing necessity for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) has resulted in many Singaporean schools developing and implementing STEM-based educational programmes. However, due to the novelty of an interdisciplinary STEM programme, few evaluation studies on the effectiveness of such programmes in influencing students’ engagement and aspiration towards STEM have been reported in the literature. STEM capital was used to assess the effectiveness of a particular STEM applied programme that many government schools in Singapore implement. The constructs used were students’ views about STEM lessons, students’ attitudes towards STEM, self-concept in learning STEM, construction of STEM identities, and career decisions in STEM. An online survey with 10 items per construct was administered to students from 13 schools and a total of 151 students participated in the survey. Rasch analysis was then performed on the survey results. Based on the results, although students have positive attitudes towards the applicability and necessity of STEM in the society, students are disinclined towards problem-solving and expressed low STEM self-concept. This could affect the formation of students’ identity in STEM as they perceive themselves to be passive learners rather than active contributors of STEM, thus potentially affecting students’ individual interest and continual engagement in STEM. Based on our findings, future research can focus on improving STEM learning centred around problems. Also, teachers and STEM programme providers can be trained to help develop students’ self-concept in regard to STEM.

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.