Affordances and Constraints to Implementing Project-Based STEM: A Case Study of Systemic School Change

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 14
  In Roundtable Session: Achieving Educational Change: The Cases of Collaborative Inquiry, STEM Education, Equity, and Reading Achievement

Abstract

School change is difficult and is both leveraged and hindered by interactive influences within complex systems of social practice. A qualitative case study approach was used to analyze educator perspectives of affordances and constraints to implementing project-based, STEM focused curriculum across all grades and classes of a rural school district. The case was informed by educator journals and interviews over the first 1.5 years of the initiative. Identified affordances and constraints to implementation were organized into seven factors. External, teacher, and curriculum factors were disproportionately described as affordances while administration and district factors were disproportionately described as constraints to the initiative. Student and fixed factors were identified as balanced between affordances and constraints.

Authors

• Michael Giamellaro, Oregon State University

• Benjamin Ewing, Oregon State University

• Deborah Siegel, Institute for Learning Innovation