Fostering STEM Thinking in Mathematics Courses for Elementary Education Majors

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This project aims to serve the national interest by improving curricula and generating resources that broaden K-8 prospective teachers’ access to authentic problem-solving experiences and support their understanding of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) thinking and STEM integration in K-8 mathematics. STEM integration is an approach to teaching STEM content not with a focus on individual disciplines per se but with a focus on solving real-world problems bound by STEM practices within an authentic problem-solving context. The project intends to develop, refine, and test the effectiveness of four curricular modules to provide a cohesive framework for supporting prospective K-8 teachers’ learning about STEM thinking and STEM integration. The modular sequence will be used with Marquette University elementary education majors in their first course of a 3-course mathematics sequence. Attention to STEM education in preparing K-8 teachers is important as it serves at these grade levels as the foundation for students’ interest and even future passion for STEM, which has implications for meeting the demands of the STEM workforce in the United States. The project uses the Model Eliciting Activities (MEA) to create meaningful opportunities for prospective teachers to experience STEM integration in problem-solving contexts. MEAs are activities that support students in inventing and testing models in response to open-ended real-world problems. The project employs a boundary-crossing framework to guide the design of instructional activities to build prospective teachers’ understanding of STEM thinking as shared STEM disciplinary practices in the context of problem-solving. In the development of the course activities, Pólya’s general problem-solving process will be interpreted as a boundary object, and STEM boundary-crossing will be conceptualized as STEM disciplinary practices related to problem-solving within each domain. These disciplinary practices and habits of mind are discerned from respective STEM standards documents: the Next Generation Science Standards, Standards for Technological Literacy, Standards for K-12 Engineering Education, and Common Core State Standards for Mathematics. The modules will address data-driven decision-making with an emphasis on curricular topics related to representing quantitative relationships using ratios and proportions, scaling, measurement, and estimation (e.g., solving problems involving rates, defining attributes such as density, and using representative sampling). Using authentic problem-solving contexts, the modules are intended to foster prospective teachers’ engagement in STEM interdisciplinary problem-solving practices (e.g., asking questions, selecting and using available resources, selecting, applying, adapting, or creating models, analyzing structures, generating arguments, and making decisions based on evidence). These behaviors will be targeted in data analysis through the lens of the boundary-crossing framework. Materials developed and disseminated through this project directly respond to calls by the National Research Council (NRC, 2013) for establishing courses where teacher candidates engage in and experience integrated STEM content supported by STEM-specific pedagogical methods and practices. Project materials are expected to be useful resources to mathematics teacher educators nationwide interested in STEM content integration in mathematics. The NSF IUSE: EHR Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Engaged Student Learning track, the program supports the creation, exploration, and implementation of promising practices and tools. Partial funding is from the Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship program.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.