Adapting the CACAO model to support higher education STEM teaching reform

Background Efforts to achieve improved student outcomes in STEM are critically reliant on the success of reform efforts associated with teaching and learning. Reform efforts include the transformation of course-based practices, community values, and the institutional policies and structures associated with teaching and learning in higher education. Enacting change is a complex process that can be guided by change theories that describe how and why a desired change takes place. We analyzed the utility of a theory-based change model applied in a higher education setting. Our results provide guidance for change efforts at other institutions. Results Use of the CACAO model to guide the transformation of STEM instruction at a large public university resulted in changes to faculty teaching practices and department culture consistent with the vision defined for the project. Such changes varied across STEM departments in accordance with the emergent nature of project activities at the department level. Our application of the CACAO model demonstrates the importance of (1) creating a vision statement (statement of desired change or end-state); (2) attending to different levels of the organization (e.g., individuals, departments, and colleges); (3) working with change agents who are situated to be effective at different organizational levels; and (4) employing strategies to meet the needs and interests of faculty at different stages of adoption with respect to the desired change. Conclusion Our work, which demonstrates the utility of the CACAO model for change and captures its key elements in a matrix, provides a potential foundation for others considering how to frame and study change efforts. It reinforces the value of using change theories to inform change efforts and creates a structure that others can build on and modify, either by applying our CACAO matrix in their own setting or by using the matrix to identify elements that connect to other change theories. We contribute to the growing body of literature which seeks to understand how change theories can be useful and generalizable beyond a single project.

A Distinctive Method of Online Interactive Learning in STEM Education

A breakthrough that has occurred in recent years is the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic. It has affected various sectors of society, including the educational sector. It has prevented students from performing group-oriented hands-on activities and has eventually transformed their active learning environment in schools into virtual passive lectures at home. Therefore, to solve this impedance, we exercised several online STEM programs (five online STEM programs with repetitive cycles) for school students, including 140 students (middle and high school), 16 undergraduate (UG) secondary mentors, and 8 primary STEM professionals. Thus, the study revealed the results of a distinctive interactive online STEM teaching model that has been designed to overcome the virtual classroom’s impediments. The employed teaching model demonstrates an interactive learning environment that ensures students’ engagement, retention, and participation, driving them to STEM innovations. Various digital tools, including PowerPoint presentations, videos, online simulations, interactive quizzes, and innovative games were used as teaching aids. Both the synchronous and asynchronous means in a student-centered approach, along with the feedback mechanism, were implemented. Finally, the employed method’s effectiveness was revealed by the maximum student retention and STEM innovation rates, along with the model’s potentiality towards its replicability and sustainability. Thus, the outlook of such initiatives could further be broadened by its sustainability and replicability aspect towards vulnerable student communities such as academically introverted and specially challenged students.

Schoolchildren about STEM professions: General and gender-specific representations

The persistent gender imbalance in the labor market - both in Russia and globally - is largely formed during the school years as the period of the development of professional preferences and human capital. The article presents the views of schoolchildren on various aspects of the STEM school subjects, including their common interests, attitudes to the STEM teaching, their role in choosing a career related to STEM, and the ideas of schoolchildren about jobs related to STEM. The authors refer to the Soviet experience of overcoming gender inequality in the labor market, in particular, by helping women to get the industrial and specialized technical education. The results of the search study show that for the majority of girls, especially those not engaged in special education projects focused on STEM, school profile lessons do not contribute to changing gender representations of professions. The authors argue that to change these gender representations we need classes focused not on the academic achievements but on the practical features of professions that are in demand in the labor market. Such an experience is necessary for it is impossible to choose the most promising career if you do not know about it or if you are convinced that you would not cope with a particular job. At the same time, the schoolchildren should understand that some of todays professions have very short future, for instance, due to the inevitable consequences of automation. The schoolchildrens positioning of all professions as gender-neutral can be used for a positive study of career-related challenges and for designing career-guidance activities as taking into account those aspects that are essential for girls and boys, even if at the moment they are perceived negatively.

Essential Questions and Data Sources for Continuous Improvement of Undergraduate STEM Teaching and Learning

Essential Questions and Data Sources for Continuous Improvement of Undergraduate STEM Teaching and Learning helps member campuses track the progress of their reform efforts. This resource complements the Framework and provides a set of key questions designed to engage institutional leaders and faculty members in discussions about teaching and learning. The report also provides data sources and analytical tools available to answer these questions and inform decision-making, as well as provides guidance to address common challenges in evaluating the quality and effectiveness of undergraduate education.

Framework for Systemic Change in Undergraduate STEM Teaching and Learning

The Framework for Systemic Change in Undergraduate STEM Teaching and Learning provides a change model for improving the quality and effectiveness of STEM teaching and learning at research universities. The Framework recognizes the wider setting in which educational innovations take place — the department, the college, the university and the external environment — and addresses key institutional elements necessary for sustained improvement to undergraduate STEM education.

Promoting Transformation of Undergraduate STEM Education

During a 2019 workshop, the American Association of Universities (AAU) convened experts involved in leading, researching, evaluating and funding efforts to transform undergraduate STEM teaching across all sectors of higher education. The goal was to synthesize essential issues and challenges in designing, leading, and researching institutional and multi-institutional transformation projects to improve undergraduate STEM education.

On the development of pedagogical content knowledge through lesson study

PurposeThe objective of this editorial is to focus the author’s attention on the nature of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) and its development through Lesson Study.Design/methodology/approachDiscussion in the editorial draws on papers in this issue, synthesized through the lens of PCK and supported by evidence from relevant literature.FindingsTeachers' engagement in lesson and learning study action research has the potential to develop their PCK in two ways: they gain insights into the ways their students experience objects of learning with reference to their own content knowledge, and they gain insights into the ways students should become able to experience objects of learning in more powerful ways identified by the teachers. The papers in the current issue elaborate on the contextual development of PCK from multiple perspectives: STEM teaching, cross-cultural lesson study, inclusive education and cultural competence through bansho.Originality/valueThe studies presented in this issue allow the readers to see PCK through different lenses.