Breaking Down Subject Silos by Promoting Interdisciplinary STEM Education

• In Event: Thursday Roundtable Session 9:00 am
  In Roundtable Session: Creating New Spaces and Methods for Equity in Science Teaching and Learning (Table 22)

Abstract

Recent studies suggest that STEM education should go beyond traditional subject silos and adopt an approach that integrates core subjects into a cohesive curriculum. The emphasis should be on developing lessons around big ideas such as food processing and nutrition. As such, we aim to develop a program that consists of five packages of interdisciplinary STEM lessons for elementary students using the iterative process of three stages (lesson development – field test – refinement). In this study, we conducted a field test to examine the feasibility of the initial lesson packages in a classroom setting. Piecewise hierarchical linear growth models were employed to analyze patterns of three distinctive growth rates in pre-, during, and post- intervention phases on students’ science vocabulary acquisition and contextualized problem-solving ability during 40 weeks of the observation period. Based on our findings, this session will further discuss how the interdisciplinary STEM education framework can be expanded to secondary education to attract more students to food science and related college majors.

Authors

• Lexi Hwang, California State University - Los Angeles

• Sam Choo, University of Minnesota

• Mengyuan Liang, University of Chicago

• Sungwook Hong, California State University - Bakersfield