Transforming STEM education through digital education: insights from global curriculum mapping

• In Event: Challenges and opportunities of digital technology for multilingual education: comparative studies across India, Mexico, and Canada

Proposal

The closure of schools across Canada during the COVID-19 pandemic exposed significant gaps in Canada’s educational system, affecting both mainstream and vulnerable student populations and particularly in math (Gallagher-Mackay et al., 2021). Teachers from K-12 struggled to find suitable learning resources that aligned with mandated curricula. Many educators lacked experience in delivering online curriculum, making the transition to remote learning challenging (Shin et al. 2022). The situation was even more difficult for vulnerable students, such as newcomer students who might not speak English or French yet (Lee et al. 2013; Whitley et al., 2021).
To address these challenges, we studied the STEM curricula of 13 countries, including Pakistan, Afghanistan, Syria, Poland, China, Korea, Jordan, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, and Nigeria. We created comparative curriculum maps to identify differences and similarities in content, terminology, pedagogy, and assessment methods. We then developed a website for educators to use for web-based teaching, either as a supplement to classroom instruction or as a standalone resource. We included twelve prototype lessons and student activities linguistically and culturally informed by our international curriculum mapping.
We identified STEM topics and created multilingual glossaries, explaining concepts in both the school language and the languages of these 13 countries. These glossaries, featuring text and illustrations, provide explanations of main concepts, serving as adjunct resources for the lessons and accessible independently through the website. These resources were shared with educators across and beyond Canada.
In our presentation, we will discuss the long-term effects of these resources, including lessons and glossaries, on teacher professionalization. We will explore how these resources addressed the perceptions of teachers of the ethnocentricity of their own curriculum, and their ability to teach newcomer students in a linguistically and culturally responsive manner using digital technology. The project acted as a catalyst for creating a flexible structure that can expand over time to cover a significant portion of STEM curricula across Canada, encouraging teachers to incorporate other languages and cultures into the STEM curriculum.
The results of this research provided tailored solutions to address students’ learning gaps, contribute to teachers’ professional development in digital pedagogy, and significantly increase interest and practice of STEM subjects outside school hours, as well as parental involvement.

Authors

• Emmanuelle Le Pichon, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education OISE, University of Toronto

• Mai Naji, OISE - University of Toronto