Literature review

According to Jones et al. (2024), "STEM education is viewed as being vital for economic prosperity and productivity; and can contribute productively to changing technological, economic, and social demands of the twenty-first century" (p. 337). The Education Council published a National STEM School Education Strategy 2016-2026 for Australian schools in 2015. As we are nearing the end of this period it is timely to restate the five key areas for national action as follows:

A report commissioned by the Australian Council of Educational Research in 2018 titled Challenges in STEM learning in Australian schools: Literature and policy review found that The Australian Curriculum is packaged in discrete disciplines and is not future facing. It concluded that “the goal is to see students working in an integrative way” (Timms et al., 2018, p. 2). Accordingly, The SILO Project focuses on integrating learning outcomes from the Australian Curriculum for each of the four terms throughout the seven primary school years to achieve sustained immersion in STEM education.

Curriculum integration

Anderson et al. (2022) noted the "challenge of representing STEM within subject-based curricular settings” (p. 30), but it is here than primary schools have an inherent advantage related to integration due to the prevalence of a generalist teacher in most primary classrooms. The fact that primary school teachers are often tasked with teaching all subjects to one class of students means that “an integrative approach is not such a radical move at this level” (Williams, 2011, p. 28). Figure 2.1 shows that there are multiple ways to conceptualise disciplinarities.

Jensenius (2022, p. xvii) further defined the categories in Figure 2.1 as follows:

Intradisciplinary: Working within a single discipline.
Crossdisciplinary: Viewing one discipline from the perspective of another.
Multidisciplinary: Working together with people from different disciplines, each drawing on their disciplinary knowledge.
Interdisciplinary: Integrating knowledge and methods from different disciplines, using a real synthesis of approaches.
Transdisciplinary: Creating a unity of intellectual frameworks beyond the disciplinary perspectives.

According to Mandi Dimitriadis from Maker's Empire, "STEM is an interdisciplinary, or ideally a transdisciplinary approach. It’s about structuring learning opportunities where students draw on their knowledge, skills and ways of working from multiple disciplines and apply them in integrated, authentic and meaningful contexts to solve problems, meet real-world challenges and develop deep connections to the world around them" (https://www.makersempire.com/interdisciplinary-power-stem/). The SILO Project is about finding these authentic connections.

The spiral curriculum

Bruner (1960) proposed that concepts be revisited at increasingly higher levels of complexity which is why this approach is known as the ‘spiral curriculum’. This approach has become widely influential based on his hypothesis that any subject “can be taught effectively in some intellectually honest form to any child at any stage of development” (p. 33). Within the very same paragraph Bruner stated that, “No evidence exists to contradict it; considerable evidence is being amassed which supports it” (p. 33). Over 60 years later this is still largely the case. Webb et al., (2017), have summarised the enduring benefits of Bruner’s spiral curriculum as follows:

reinforcement of key concepts and techniques each time the subject matter is revisited;
progression from simple concepts to more complex ones;
students can be encouraged to recap their previous knowledge and apply their knowledge to new problems and situation” (p. 416).

Figure 2.2 shows how the spiral curriculum moves toward increasingly higher levels of complexity.

Figure 2.2

The Spiral Curriculum

(Image source https://oercommons.org/courseware/lesson/105463/overview)

Figure 2.3 is an example of the spiral curriculum applied to the design cycle. The design is first introduced in SILO 1.3 'Materials' but then extended in SILO 5.2 'Engineering' and expanded in SILO 6.3 'Ideation'.

Figure 2.3

The Expanded Design Cycle

There are several variations of the design cycle but the one adopted here is Think Make Improve (TMI) first proposed by Martinez and Stager in 2013. “Reducing the process to three steps minimises talking and maximises doing” (Martinez & Stager, 2019, p. 54). TMI is an example of the maxim to “make everything as simple as possible but not simpler” which is widely attributed to Albert Einstein. Children are unlikely to forget the three steps in TMI in contrast to existing design models which “may be too wordy or abstract for young learners” (Martinez & Stager, 2019, p. 54). The expanded language in Year 5 of ‘Investigating and defining’, ‘Generating and designing’, ‘Producing and implementing’, and ‘Evaluating’ is from the Australian Curriculum (Technology). The Year 6 version retains the previous versions but with the additional dynamics introduced in An introduction to design thinking (Shanks, 2010) from the Institute of Design at Stanford, namely; empathise, define, ideate, prototype, and test.

Experienced teachers know that new knowledge tends not to be instantly consolidated by students. Vygotsky (1987) considered this to be his most important insight into the process of conceptual consolidation when he stated that a concept “develops” (p. 170) in the mind of the learner. Hence, conceptual growth must be studied over time and understood within the abstract–concrete continuum (Davydov, 1990; Dewey, 1910/1997; Jacobs, Wright & Reynolds, 2017; Wilensky, 1991), where novel ideas become increasingly concrete throughout the process of understanding.

Vera John-Steiner (2000) described “mutual zones of proximal development” (p. 177) or an ‘MZPD’ for instances where the more knowledgeable helper is also expanding their own learning. This can be particular evident in STEM education as many teachers are not experts on STEM topics and STEM education is also expanding rapidly. To enter into the process of conceptual consolidation, it is often necessary for teachers to grapple with the same conceptual issues as their students, which creates an authentic context for the co-construction of knowledge. Perhaps Vygotsky’s most profound insight into the ZPD is to be found in his speculation that the achievements of a student within the ZPD through co-construction might be even more indicative of cognitive development than the more commonly used measures of independent achievement (Vygotsky, 1962).

Diagrammatically, it is common to represent the ZPD using irregular shapes to acknowledge that learning is often a messy phenomenon, quite different from the neat boundaries implied by some Venn diagrams. As the ZPD is so widely accepted, it seems that the ZPD should also be able to account for the way in which new knowledge is acquired, particularly how new knowledge might not be instantly consolidated within the mind of the learner. This new perspective led to a revised Venn diagram for the ZPD as depicted in Figure 2.4 with two important distinctions as follows:

Concepts take time to become consolidated.
The child’s understanding can exceed that of the helper in certain areas.

The dotted lines for the outer shapes, for both the child and the helper, represent abstract knowledge that is known but not fully understood. The solid lines of the inner shapes indicate where conceptual consolidation has occurred.

Figure 2.4

A Mutual Zone of Proximal Development

(Image source Jacobs & Cripps Clark, 2018, p. 36)

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