- Designing Problem-Centric STEM Activities
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- In the 21st century where skills application and knowledge integration are prized, there is strong advocacy to include Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education in many education models. The goal of this study is to examine teacher’s instructional practice and students’ experiences in terms of the questions asked as they engaged in a problem-centric STEM activity. We designed a science and engineering-focused activity on the theme of photosynthesis and agricultural engineering. The first of the three-lesson series was conducted by a science teacher, who had gone through a professional development course on STEM teaching, to a class of 19 secondary-two express students. Data sources include a video of the lesson that was directed at the whole class, a video of a randomly chosen group during group problem-solving, transcripts of the videos, and students’ notes. From the transcript, teacher’s and student’s questions were categorised and tabulated. Findings show that Socratic questioning was most frequently used by the teacher in the problematising phase. Productive questioning and making real-world connections allowed the class to effectively understand the problem. During group-problem solving and the design process, students raised mainly clarification, generic task-procedural and specific task-procedural questions. By looking at students’ thought processes, we found evidence of informed design patterns.
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