Integrated Curricula
Full STEAM Ahead: Addressing the Opportunity Gap through an Afterschool Enrichment Program
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Sandy Buczynski
This study was designed to evaluate the effectiveness of the Full STEAM ahead afterschool program implemented in five elementary schools in an urban school district in Southern California. The study evaluated students’ level of science, technology, engineering, and math conceptual understandings and attitudes toward experimenting and confidence in STEAM learning. Results revealed how this STEAM enrichment program helped the development of learner’s analogy skills, engineering capabilities, prediction testing, reasoning skills, and application of science concepts. Seventy-four percent of students surveyed reported to “like” the full STEAM ahead activities while 81% indicated that they enjoyed experimenting. Forty-two percent of the students revealed that they did not know the science content prior to participation in this enrichment program. The self-efficacy of the students was very high with 69% self-reporting that they expect to do “very well” in their academic science/math classes. Since the majority of students in the program are Latino, the inference is that enrichment of these skills will help bridge the "opportunity gap" that today's Latino students face in the U.S.
Self-regulatory Learning Style: The Formularizing Role of Hope and Self-efficacy, and the Effects on Performance in Language and Mathematics
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Georgia Stephanou, Fotini Tsoni
This research aimed at examining students’ self-regulated learning style regarding the four different types of behavioral regulation: external, introjected, identified and intrinsic, the role of hope (pathway, agency) in the formulation of self-efficacy, and its impact on self-regulated learning style and the interactive effects of all above factors on performance in the school subjects of language and mathematics. The participants were 165 primary school students, fifth and sixth grades, both gender, who came from 20 state primary schools of various regions of Greece. The students completed the scales at the middle of a school year, while their teachers estimated their school performance. The results showed that the students reported a mixed profile of self-regulatory learning style, favoring external and identified, hope (mainly, agency thinking) was a positive formulator of self-efficacy, hope explained a small percentage of variance of self-regulatory, beyond self-efficacy, with no effects on intrinsic regulation, and the three set of concepts influenced school performance in language and mathematics, particularly agency hope thinking. The findings are discussed with for their implications in education and in future research.
Math Anxiety and Emotional Intelligence
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Hosin Shirvani
The study included 82 senior-level students in a elementary education undergraduate program in the United States. The study investigates whether students with overall emotional levels exhibit different levels of math anxiety. The study also examined the relationship between math anxiety and five components of emotional intelligence which are: self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills.
Good Practices in STEM Based Instruction for Learning Competency Improvement of Secondary School Students in Thailand
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Suttipong Boonphadung
Instruction based on STEM education has been known and valued as the emphasis on learning through a project which integrates science, mathmatics, technology and engineering disciplines for enhancing learning competency of students, therefore; this study aimed to investigate good practices from STEM education’s instructional models of regional STEM education centers in Thailand, investigate good practices of learning evaluation at schools which are regional STEM education centers. This research design is qualitative and the informants were 8 coordinators at regional STEM education centers and 16 experienced teachers trained from STEM education centers. The research instrument was an interview form (IOC=1.0) and the gained information was analyzed by the content analysis and, then, written as description. The results revealed that (1) the good practices about the instructional models of the regional STEM education centers consisted of (1.1) the practices to propel STEM education in class (1.2) the practices to propel STEM education in courses by employing project or problem-based learning (1.3) the practices to propel STEM education in curricula by the cooperation among teachers of all strands to develop integrated curricula (2) the good practices in learning management design were the inclusion of a school or a community’s context to the learning content and the support of problem solving skill integratedly through 5E cycle (3) the good practices for evaluating learning based on STEM education were evaluating the process of working and its product by authentic evaluation and performance task evaluation and the evaluation criteria was designed to cover all dimensions definitely.
