Course Description
Focuses on strategies for the integration of relevant principles and concepts from the allied disciplines of technology, engineering, and mathematics into the secondary-level science curriculum and classroom teaching. Interdisciplinary STEM topics, themes, and skills used as examples are selected based on their maximally synergistic characteristics.
Athena Title
Integrated STEM in Science Ed
Non-Traditional Format
This course will be taught 95% or more online.
Semester Course Offered
Offered fall
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
Students will be able to select, critique, adapt, and/or develop examples of strategies for the integration of relevant principles and concepts from the allied disciplines of technology, engineering, and mathematics into the secondary-level science curriculum and classroom teaching. Interdisciplinary STEM topics and themes presented as examples are selected based on having one or more of the following characteristics: • Specific technologies are currently or historically vital to the practice of basic science research and/or engineering design and development. • Specific scientific concepts and practices are vital prerequisites for successful engineering design, or for understanding the nature of technologies or mathematical concepts. • Specific mathematical concepts or skills are vital to a deep understanding of scientific concepts and practices and/or engineering design. • Specific engineering applications, or the general engineering design process, are the most promising context for developing meaningful scientific understandings.
Topical Outline
• Development of workable operational definitions of technology, engineering, and mathematics that may be helpful to science teachers for conceptualizing problems in attempting to integrate them into student work and learning, particularly in specific-discipline-based (Biology, Chemistry, Earth/Space, Environmental, Physics, etc.) science classrooms • The prominent role of engineering in the rationale for STEM integration in the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), the national document that served as the informal basis for the Georgia Standards of Excellence (GSE) for Science, as well as for the latest revisions of more detailed curriculum guidelines in many local school districts • The NGSS Science and Engineering Practices of Analyzing and Interpreting Data (#4) and of Using Mathematics and Computational Thinking (#5), and the engineering-specific aspects of Defining Problems (#1) and Designing Solutions (#6) • Graphical data analysis and presentation skills, as the most immediately accessible and readily teachable common interface among skills/practices between STEM disciplines • The role of computer coding-base activities for teaching science concepts and for integrating science and mathematics concepts in the context of problem-based learning
Syllabus
Public CV