Naslov
Data-Driven Teacher Professional Development in STEM area: Translating a research based experiences obtained in JOBSTEM research project into everyday school practice

Autori
Burušić, Josip ; Babarović, Toni ; Šimunović, Mara

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Sažeci sa skupova, pp prezentacija, znanstveni

Skup
ICSEI 2018: The International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement

Mjesto i datum
Singapur, 08.01.2018. - 12.01.2018

Vrsta sudjelovanja
Predavanje

Vrsta recenzije
Međunarodna recenzija

Ključne riječi
STEM problem ; teacher effectiveness ; STEM intervention

Sažetak
The STEM problem has numerous negative consequences at various levels. USA, and recently EU, have started with many activities focused primarily on the STEM sector, grounded their activities in the statistics that currently there is a shortage of 900 000 experts and engineers in EU. The STEM problem can be observed from different perspectives, such as profile of students who are to a greater or lesser extent affected by this problem, different distribution of the problem among girls and boys, occurrence of the problem in certain social groups, relevance of teaching and active learning in the development of interest for STEM, and the importance of teachers and parents as role models. The specific group which is of greater importance in STEM fields are school teachers. They are in main rule to inspire students to develop and continue their interest about STEM subjects, to decide for some STEM university programs and to take some professional career in STEM field. Therefore, today exist different programs related to teachers, conceptualized to increase school and teacher effectiveness in STEM field. And to create different activities and teacher materials which could be useful as a teaching materials in the school context. As previous studies in this area were mostly conducted in the USA, and only more recently in some EU countries, we present some experiences from Croatia, as a small country which is in many social and developmental aspects different from high industrialized countries. We conceptualize and conducted comprehensive jobSTEM program in Croatian primary schools, with the overall aim to improve school students’ performance in STEM field and to enhance the interest of students for STEM school subjects and for choosing STEM careers. The three main objectives of the jobSTEM intervention are to increase the interest of elementary school pupils in STEM subjects, to help them develop positive attitudes towards STEM, and thereby also to give them more information about possible future educational and career choices. Intervention outcome measures are carefully designed and used to provide data about the intervention’s possible effects on students’ interests, achievements, self-competence beliefs and career decisions. The intervention was structured in three two- hour group workshops with selected classes of students in experimental schools. The intervention took place twice in time for experimental group cohorts and encompass 12 hours of workshops per student in total. The intervention had been performed in the form of multidisciplinary workshops, study visits to faculty laboratories as well as faculty and school based lectures, in which students have had the opportunity to receive more information about STEM fields, STEM careers, to learn and verify some of the natural and mathematical laws, but also to restructure and integrate previously learned facts from different subjects. The effects of intervention on change in student interests, and school performances had been empirically tested, and its effects on the relation between academic achievement, self-competence beliefs and career aspirations in STEM fields are empirically examined through different multivariate procedures. After the STEM program has finished we started to build web platform for teacher which is intended to be place for sharing experiences, to facilitate improvement in school practice and to increase teacher and school effectiveness in STEM field. This kind of web platform could overdrive existing shortcomings, as an existing interventions and programs intended to reduce the STEM problem have been investigated in research laboratories, schools, classrooms and community environments. On other side, experiences obtained in our STEM research projects are related to students, and their immediate experiences from participating in STEM intervention program. Therefore, focusing on students experiences and discussing them with teachers, we believe that our web platform will help in improving school achievement and could influence student self-evaluative processes through teaching strategies and classroom experiences. As many previous research suggested, mostly these factors, like positive learning experiences and support from family, teachers, peers and role models, mediate interest in careers and can help to increase students’ performance in STEM fields. In the present paper, we will present empirical experiences obtained from JOBSTEM project and present and discuss how we translate research findings in school practice through building specialized teacher web platform.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Obrazovne znanosti (psihologija odgoja i obrazovanja, sociologija obrazovanja, politologija obrazovanja, ekonomika obrazovanja, antropologija obrazovanja, neuroznanost i rano učenje, pedagoške discipline)

POVEZANOST RADA