Report: STEM Teacher Workshops
A series of Workshops was organized by the Center for the Study of Mathematics Curriculum to focus on STEM learning design for young students and adolescents. This report provides a summary of the ideas generated by workshop participants and offered to the STEM instructional design community and to agencies that fund this work.
The objective of the workshops was to provide visionary leadership to the education community by: (a) identifying and analyzing the needs and opportunities for future STEM curriculum development and instructional design given current and emerging technologies; and, (b) recommend policy positions and actions by funding agencies and the STEM research and development community regarding STEM instructional resources.
Specific questions addressed included:
• What will a high-impact, technology-intensive STEM learning environment look like in the near and long-term future?
• What materials development and research are required to make this vision possible?
• What design, development, and diffusion processes are most likely to produce new approaches to STEM education?
To address these questions, two workshops were convened to identify and analyze the needs and opportunities for innovative work. The goal was to identify strategies, directions and recommendations about the future of STEM instructional design. Participants included education futurists, researchers in the STEM content and education disciplines and specialists in instructional technology, cognitive psychology, policy, museum and educational media (see Appendix for complete list of Workshop participants).
First Workshop: December 1-3, 2009, Lansdowne, Virginia
The first Workshop solicited perspectives from key progressive thinkers in STEM education and instructional technology regarding the first two questions noted above.
A set of five reflection papers resulting from the discussions are available here.
Second Workshop: May 16-18, 2010, Lansdowne Virginia
The second Workshop focused on articulating a research and development agenda for STEM learning designers. Building upon the visions for future STEM educational environments described in the first Workshop, participants identified high priority work (research and development) needed to capitalize on technological advances and produce/deliver/use the next generation of curriculum and instructional tools and environments for advancing STEM learning in formal (school) and informal (museums, community centers, etc.) settings (and across settings).
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