STEM Skills Inculcation Framework for Primary School
Rose Amnah Abd Rauf, University of Malaya (Malaysia)
Mohamad Sattar Rasul, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (Malaysia)
Abstract
What binds together the STEM movement is the notion of modern skills. Beyond mastering content, individuals need to be innovators The modern skills is the STEM skills which is planned and inculcated through the integrated STEM approach. Culture of teaching and learning science in Malaysia is still stuck to the notion to give content knowledge even with all the initiatives to promote the 21st century teaching approach. The STEM skills that should be acquired are problem solving, flexibility, creativity, intelectual curiosity, argumentation, statistic and evidence based decision making. Teachers can nurture these skills through well planned STEM programme. In this programme students were given problem solving tasks with limited materials and other constraint for them to come up with the solution. During this process it was observed that the STEM skills were acquired not all but some by the primary students. Data were collected on the STEM skills and the conditions which these skills seem to be acquiredby the students. The roles of the teacher were also observed during the process. From these findings a framework on the Inculcation of STEM Skills was developed.
Keywords: STEM Skills, primary students, integrated STEM approach, framework, inculcation.
References:
[1] STEM Skills Strategy , https://innovationandskills.sa.gov.au/science/stem-skills-strategy retrieved on 1st March 2019.
[2] Gitta Siekmann & Patrick Korbel (2016). Defining ‘STEM’ skills: review and synthesis of the literature, NCVER, Commonweatlth of Australia.