Modeling Activities in Integrated STEM Learning

• In Event: STEM Integration: Promises and Challenges

Abstract

Objectives or purposes
The mechanisms of fostering STEM integration remain largely underspecified in the education research and policy literatures. One key means of promoting STEM integration among students is the use of modeling activities.

Perspectives or theoretical framework
STEM integration is considered in policy statements to be necessary to promote advanced scientific studies, to increase and diversify the pool of capable and motivated employees in technology and science economic sectors, and to prepare technologically knowledgeable and competent citizens (NRC 2005; Sheppard, Pellegrino, & Olds, 2008). STEM integration crosses “silos” of the individual domains of the natural sciences, technology, engineering and mathematics by addressing “the natural connections among the four subjects, which are reflected in the real world of research and technology development” (Katehi et al., 2009, p. 12; Also Schunn, 2009; Roehrig et al., 2012).

Modeling, for our purposes, is regarded as the development of any “system for describing or designing some other system for some specific purpose” (Lesh, 2010, p. 18). It has been used effectively in mathematics (Lesh et al., 2000) and engineering (Hamilton et al., 2008; Zawojewski, Diefes-Dux, & Bowman, 2008) across a range of grade levels.

Methods and Sources of Evidence
Several studies across elementary, secondary, and tertiary levels of education point to promising methods for promoting STEM integration using modeling activities, which facilitate important pedagogical practices among teachers as well as intellectual processes among students that support STEM Integration. Evidence includes analyses of classroom discourse, project cycles and completed designs, and written assessments.


Results and Conclusions
Lehrer and Schauble (2006) used elementary grade activities for representing and modeling natural systems to integrate science and mathematics concepts. Burghardt and colleagues (2010) “infused” mathematics in middle school students’ planning, designing, and physical modeling of bedroom designs with specific constraints and goals, such as space and cost to achieve greater pretest-posttest gains than control classrooms. At the high school level, Nathan and colleagues (2011, 2013) documented teaching practices promoting and maintaining cohesion of central STEM concepts. Students repaired their own trouble spots during project based learning involving bridge design, projectile motion, and digital electronics. For example, students troubleshooting an electronic voting system succeeded once the teacher helped coordinate the circuit design with Boolean algebraic expressions. Students used the underlying combinatorial structure to identify and correct their error, first mathematically, and then with the physical wiring.

Modeling also promotes STEM integration among undergraduates. Moore, Lesh and colleagues (2013) use model-eliciting activities that require students to externalize their thinking through communication, representation, and modularization. This fostered the transition from intuitive system understanding to formal models that helped students correct prior misunderstandings.

Scientific or scholarly significance of the work
Analyses of curricula and teaching materials indicate that curriculum designers often assume appropriate integration will occur when concepts and skills are juxtaposed (e.g., Prevost et al., 2008; Welty et al, 2008). However, findings of student performance and trouble spots strongly suggest STEM integration needs to be an explicit curriculum goal, which needs to be intentionally cultivated and maintained in the classroom.

Author

• Mitchell J. Nathan, University of Wisconsin - Madison