Recommendations

Teachers routinely use their pedagogical knowledge and skills to plan, implement and assess learning activities but the countless decisions which are made behind the scenes during planning sessions and preparation time are rarely conveyed to students. Our first recommendation is that the connections between the various STEM disciplines be shared with students to help articulate the process of conceptual consolidation. In this sense, the students are encouraged to reflect on their own learning to make STEM connections. This also affirms the approach suggested by Kelley and Knowles (2016) which contrasted the teaching of content and skills while “hoping students will see the connections to real-life application” (p. 3) with an integrated approach which “seeks to locate connections between STEM subjects and provide a relevant context for learning the content” (Kelley & Knowles, 2016, p. 3). Links between the STEM disciplines do not need to be created or invented as the authentic links are intrinsically there already.

Kelley and Knowles (2016) also reported on how “educational researchers indicate that teachers struggle to make connections across the STEM disciplines” (p. 1). This appears to be the heart of the issue so it is here that we make our final recommendations, where we affirm what Lyons (2022) stated regarding the objectives and transdisciplinary nature of STEM as follows:

STEM connections are everywhere, we just have to look with a STEM mindset.
Learning in STEM means exploring the connections between the four domains.
Effective STEM activities result in students seeing these connections.

Having a Scope and sequence for primary STEM education is a positive step forward but such knowledge is best seen as provisional. To make a meaningful STEM unit of work, it must be conceptual and not merely factual or procedural. Factual and procedural learning is still important but STEM education is an opportunity to go deeply into conceptual topics. Our final recommendation is that exploring carefully chosen conceptual topics can help teachers and students to make important connections and enable them to become competent and functional in an increasingly complex world.

In addition to The 28 STEM units, a new unit on Circles and rotation as scaffolds for STEM education is available here. This units draws on some existing content from other units and combines it around the affordances of circles and rotation.

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