How Should Learning through STEM and Music Be Aligned?

This chapter begins by providing a few “Pool Rules” before jumping into aligning STEM and Music. The importance of quality and authenticity in the learning experience is paramount, and this part of the book seeks to help the reader achieve both. The chapter then explores multiple sides of STEM and Music to provide guidance on using and assessing high-quality educational standards currently available to the greater educational community. Each set of standards explained provides another way that educators may find direct connections between content areas. These standards include the Next Generation Science Standards, International Society for Technology in Education Standards, Computer Science Teachers Association & K–12 Computer Science Framework, Common Core Mathematics Standards for Practice, Engineering Standards, and National Core Arts Standards.

Investigating the Impact of a Mathematics Enhancement Programme on Jamaican Students’ Attainment

Underperformance in mathematics has been an issue that plagues the education system in Jamaica. Studies in first world countries have shown that enrichment programs, including Mathematics Enhancement Programmes (MEPs,) have been positively impacting attainment in mathematics. This quasi-experimental research design study investigated the impact of an MEP on Jamaican students’ attainment in mathematics. A sample of seven grade one classes from two primary schools in representative areas in Jamaica were selected for the intervention group. The treatment involved teaching the Jamaican grade one mathematics standards using the MEP resources for nine months. A statistically significant improvement and large effect size of the intervention was found, indicating that the MEP had a substantial impact on students’ achievement and attitudes towards mathematics. This study has implications for designing enrichment programs geared at addressing mathematics underperformance in Jamaica and in similar countries.

Entropy of Co-Enrolment Networks Reveal Disparities in High School STEM Participation

The current study uses a network analysis approach to explore the STEM pathways that students take through their final year of high school in Aotearoa New Zealand. By accessing individual-level microdata from New Zealand’s Integrated Data Infrastructure, we are able to create a co-enrolment network comprised of all STEM assessment standards taken by students in New Zealand between 2010 and 2016. We explore the structure of this co-enrolment network though use of community detection and a novel measure of entropy. We then investigate how network structure differs across sub-populations based on students’ sex, ethnicity, and the socio-economic-status (SES) of the high school they attended. Results show the structure of the STEM co-enrolment network differs across these sub-populations, and also changes over time. We find that, while female students were more likely to have been enrolled in life science standards, they were less well represented in physics, calculus, and vocational (e.g., agriculture, practical technology) standards. Our results also show that the enrollment patterns of Asian students had lower entropy, an observation that may be explained by increased enrolments in key science and mathematics standards. Through further investigation of differences in entropy across ethnic group and high school SES, we find that ethnic group differences in entropy are moderated by high school SES, such that sub-populations at higher SES schools had lower entropy. We also discuss these findings in the context of the New Zealand education system and policy changes that occurred between 2010 and 2016.

The Nuts and Bots of Math and Coding in the Lower Grades

Use robots and coding to engage K–2 students with specific mathematics standards.