- Year 2024
- NSF Noyce Award # 2243317
- First Name Dani
- Last Name Rimbach-Jones
- Registration Faculty/Administrator/Other
- Discipline STEM Education (general)
- Role Other: Graduate Research Assistant
- Presenters
Dani Rimbach-Jones, Frances Harper, Clara Lee Brown, University of Tennessee
Need
Teacher preparation programs’ attention to interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary teaching lags far behind the growing need for integrated STEM education. Although some models exist for professional development with practicing teachers, few programs seek to prepare prospective teachers for equitable and integrated STEM teaching and learning, especially at the elementary level (Rinke et al., 2016). We sought to more deeply understand the trends and themes of the limited programs that meet these needs in order to guide the development of more such programs.
Research Questions
Our guiding question was: How do existing Noyce-funded programs build early childhood and elementary teachers’ capacity for interdisciplinary/transdisciplinary STEM education?
Approach
We conducted a systematic review of 471 previously-funded Robert Noyce Projects from 2012 to 2024. Specifically, we sought to identify programs focused on PreK-5 teacher education and interdisciplinary and/or transdisciplinary integration across STEM education. By interdisciplinary/transdisciplinary, we mean that teacher education aims to provide teachers the foundation to use real world problems and applications from concepts and knowledge that is learned from two or more content areas in mathematics, science, engineering, or technology in order to deepen students’ understanding in the respective disciplines (English, 2016). We developed inclusion and exclusion criteria to limit our subsequent review to only those programs that promoted interdisciplinary/transdisciplinary and PreK-5 teacher education. Criteria were developed based on the following conceptual framework for STEM education and its degrees of integration: (1) disciplinary: teaching and learning of concepts and skills in each STEM discipline separately; (2) multidisciplinary: disciplinary learning under a common theme; (3) interdisciplinary: two or more STEM disciplines learned together towards deepening learning in each discipline; and (4) transdisciplinary: the application of interdisciplinary learning to real-world problems and projects, which shape the nature of learning and connections (English, 2016). Nine Noyce programs that specifically centered on early childhood and elementary education with a focus on interdisciplinary/transdisciplinary integration. Next, we collected the programs of study for these nine programs and additional information (e.g., course syllabi, course requirements) and conducted a qualitative content analysis to identify themes and trends in the movement towards integrated STEM education in PreK-5 education.
Outcomes
We identified nine Noyce-funded programs that met the criteria for integrated STEM education at the early childhood and elementary levels. This finding confirms the need for more opportunities for teachers to develop their capacity to teach across STEM disciplines. Initial findings from the content analysis of program materials are forthcoming.
Broader Impacts
The preliminary findings from this analysis point to promising trends and themes in early childhood and elementary teacher education that can be built from and extended to different contexts to meet the growing need for integrated STEM education.
