Today I was waiting to collect my grand daughter from her government primary school in Western Australia. Her teacher from the previous year came up to me to have a chat. What luck. I was able to test some of the things I am steadily finding out about STEM pedagogy in schools. I'll call her Mary.
Mary and I chatted about STEM pedagogy in schools and I indicated that it was emerging in my research that STEM was best learned through real life problem solving experiences across the curriculum subjects. Mary, who is for 2019, teaching the kindergarten children explained to me how she uses this approach. One such learning experience emanated from literature where she and the children were reading about farming. Out of this she set out to have the children design ways to contain the various farm animals. This meant designing animal homes, fences etc. Engineering in real situations. In another story the topic was lighthouses and how food is delivered to places in environments that are often hostile to landing goods on to the shore. The children designed flying fox techniques to move the food on to the island. They did this out in the school yard sending apples across a flying fox line and working out how best to create a stable carriage of the apples. There were some mishaps and apples spilled out of the container. This led to redesigning the apparatus. Here it is, STEM learning through real situations discovered through literature experiences.
Thanks Mary for opening up avenues for my next explorations into STEM pedagogy.
We discussed a number of other issues in education in Australia : two teachers chin wagging about how it all works or doesn't. Manner from school heaven. Teachers get so little time to learn from one another. Mary and I agreed that the generalist primary teacher per class model means a lot of work time in isolation from colleagues.
May the Force be with you!
GD
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