Author
Listed:
- De Meester, Jolien
- Boeve-de Pauw, Jelle
- Buyse, Marie-Paule
- Ceuppens, Stijn
- De Cock, Mieke
- De Loof, Haydée
- Goovaerts, Leen
- Hellinckx, Luc
- Knipprath, Heidi
- Struyf, Annemie
- Thibaut, Lieve
- Van de Velde, Didier
- Van Petegem, Peter
- Dehaene, Wim
Abstract
Our rapidly changing society needs highly-qualified STEM professionals (experts in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) to develop solutions to the problems it is facing. Many of the students who graduate from a STEM programme in secondary education, however, opt out of STEM when enrolling in higher education, often due to a loss of interest. To ensure sufficiently high and qualified enrolment in higher STEM education, we need to bridge this gap between secondary and higher STEM education by showing our youngsters the relevance of science and technology to their personal life and environment. To this end, the project STEM@school promoted and studied the idea of integrated STEM in secondary education in Flanders, Belgium. In integrated STEM education, learning contents from the separate STEM courses are linked in an authentic way, as they often are in our environmental challenges. This approach encourages students as well as their teachers to acquire a robust understanding of STEM concepts, and a creative, inquisitive, and collaborative mindset. For the design of integrated STEM curricula, STEM@school united secondary-school STEM teachers and university researchers. This article elaborates on the principles, opportunities and challenges of the design and implementation of these curricula and discusses their promising effects on students’ conceptual understanding and attitudes towards STEM subjects. The article concludes with tips and tricks to get started with integrated STEM education in secondary schools.
Suggested Citation
De Meester, Jolien & Boeve-de Pauw, Jelle & Buyse, Marie-Paule & Ceuppens, Stijn & De Cock, Mieke & De Loof, Haydée & Goovaerts, Leen & Hellinckx, Luc & Knipprath, Heidi & Struyf, Annemie & Thibaut, L, 2020.
"Bridging the Gap between Secondary and Higher STEM Education – the Case of STEM@school,"
European Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 28(S1), pages 135-157, August.
Handle:
RePEc:cup:eurrev:v:28:y:2020:i:s1:p:s135-s157_11
Download full text from publisher
Corrections
All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:eurrev:v:28:y:2020:i:s1:p:s135-s157_11. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.
If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/erw .
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through
the various RePEc services.