The STEM School Study (S3) seeks to understand the landscape of inclusive STEM high schools across the United States. S3 examines how STEM schools define themselves, the strategies they use, and the student experience.
In 2013-2014 and 2014-2015, members of the S3 team visited 134 classrooms at 12 different S3 schools. Demographic information about these classrooms can be found here. After learning about the variety of instructional practices that STEM schools use, we wanted to see how they look in action. We examined the following strategies, which were identified by STEM school leaders as essential to their school models.
Data was collected at 12 inclusive STEM high schools across the country: one school each in Ohio, California, and North Carolina; two schools each in Tennessee, Washington, and Ohio; and three schools in Texas. Half of the observations were of classrooms comprised of a relatively equal number of males and females, and mostly white students. We observed all grade (9-12th grade) and achievement (i.e., regular-level versus advanced placement classrooms) levels. Lessons that were observed were on average 75 minutes long and had 21 students present. We primarily observed teachers and students in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) subject lessons; of these, 36 (42%) were math classes, 35 (41%) were science, 8 (9%) were engineering, and 6 (7%) were technology.
Cognitive Demand: Teachers facilitating and students engaging in thinking and processing skills, including considering alternative arguments or explanations, making predictions, interpreting their experiences, analyzing data, explaining their reasoning, and supporting their conclusions with evidence.
Autonomy and Risk Taking: Teachers facilitating and students demonstrating independence in and ownership of their learning, as well as skills such as organization and self-regulation, and stepping outside of their comfort zones (intellectually and emotionally).
Connections Between Lessons and the World Outside of School: Teachers and students making connections between the lesson and real-world experiences, current events, and/or students’ lives.
Integration of Disciplines: Teachers and students making connections between and across disciplines.
Student Cooperation and Teamwork: Teachers facilitating and students working with one another in meaningful ways.
Customization of Learning: Teachers tailoring instruction for their students, based on their interests and abilities.
When observing classrooms, we rated the presence of these instructional practices (whether they occurred or not), as well as our impressions of their quality as good, fair, or poor. Poor ratings were given when the implementation of the given instructional practice did not meet our definitions or where there was an opportunity to incorporate an instructional practice that was not capitalized on. Here, we compare only lessons where an instructional practice received a poor or good impression score in order to highlight differences across the widest range in our sample. For more detail on our observation process, click here.
The pie charts below show the percentage of lessons in our sample that received poor and good impression ratings on each classroom instructional practice. Click on a pie chart to see how often the behaviors in each instructional practice took place in these types of lessons. Some key takeaways and a note on technology use in classrooms are shown to the right; a graph showing the presence of these instructional practices in lessons rated overall as good or poor appears below the pie charts.
*Click each graph to learn more.*
In classrooms receiving a good impression of cognitive demand rating, students appeared challenged, engaged in discussions with other students and teachers, and were asked and able to support their conclusions with evidence. Classrooms where teachers and students participated in these behaviors, as well as behaviors characteristic of the scientific method (such as making hypotheses or predictions and analyzing data), were rated more favorably than classrooms where these behaviors were not present.
Many inclusive STEM high schools focus on student-directed learning, which can include independent learning, students making meaningful decisions in their learning, and students pushing themselves outside their comfort zones. When observers rated autonomy and risk taking received, they most frequently reported 1) teachers encouraging students to take risks when they do not understand a topic and 2) students working without teacher input.
Integration of disciplines was present at very low levels across all lessons. This suggests that teachers may not integrate disciplines for a variety of reasons, such as that interdisciplinary learning may be challenging for teachers to implement, or teachers may feel that they don’t have time or the necessary content knowledge.
Observers were more likely to see teachers point out specific connections between in-class content and the real world than to see students make these connections on their own. In addition, as noted in the pie chart, overall levels of connecting in-class content to the real world (current events or students’ own lives) were relatively low, despite being an important component of many STEM school models.
Student collaboration and communication was cited by many S3 school leaders as an important piece of school models. In our observations, active collaboration, such as students helping one another, listening to other students, voicing one’s opinions appropriately, and working on a task collaboratively, frequently separated classrooms receiving poor and good impression ratings.
Customization of learning can accomplish several goals, including facilitating student interest, or allowing all students to learn at a comfortable pace. Observers were most likely to see attempts at customization where teachers provided individual or small group attention, which was a very common practice across all participating schools. However, observers did not necessarily give high customization ratings when this practice was observed. One reason for this may be that quick-check-ins were not be viewed by observers as sufficient to truly address students’ unique needs.
Each lesson was also given an overall rating of good, fair, or poor. Here, we again compare only classrooms that received poor versus good impression scores. Of the lessons reported on here, 67% (41 lessons) were rated as “good” and 33% (20 lessons) received a “poor” rating.
The bar chart below shows the presence of the seven instructional practices we focused on in lessons rated good vs. poor.
Most observed lessons received good impression scores for cognitive demand, autonomy and risk taking, and cooperation and teamwork.
Raters’ impressions of integration of disciplines and connections to students’ lives and the real world were mostly poor across classrooms.
This means that we did not see many examples of integrating disciplines or real-world connections, and/or that when we did, they were perfunctory. This was particularly noted for integration of disciplines. These strategies may be more difficult for teachers to implement in classrooms, compared with commonly used strategies such as student cooperation and teamwork, student autonomy and risk-taking, and facilitation of cognitively demanding work.
Technology was commonly cited by school leaders as a critical component of STEM schools. We looked at technology use in our classroom observations—both basic (such as iPads, laptops, smartboards, etc.) and skill-based (such as robotics, engineering or design software, advanced lab equipment, etc.) technology. Across classrooms, we saw basic technology used very frequently, primarily in the forms of students using technology to conduct research, take and organize notes, and sometimes collaborate (e.g. via Google docs), and teachers using technology in presenting information to students. While we frequently saw technology being used at “substitution level” (i.e., technology is used to perform tasks that could be done without technology, like reading or note-taking), we saw much less rich technology use (technology used in novel, innovative ways, bringing new experiences to the classroom). A good resource for considering technology integration is the SAMR framework.
STEM school leaders often report that their schools emphasize meaningful technology use and skill-based technologies. While we did observe skill-based technology use in voluntary extracurricular activities (e.g. robotics clubs), we saw it only occasionally (it was rated as present in just 21 of the 134 observed lessons) as an in-school activity accessed by a large number of students.
This project was funded by the
National Science Foundation.
