Assessing conceptual change of techers involved in STES education and curriculum devleopment - the STEMS project approach

Science-Technology-Environment-Society (STES) orientation in science educat ion is currently being implemented in Israeli high schools within the frame work of 'science for all' reform worldwide. This paper focuses on assessing the conceptual change of teachers who have been involved in the developmen t. implementation, field-testing and evaluation of several modules. These m odules constitute a grade 10-11 high school national curriculum titled STEM S-'Science, Technology, Environment in Modern Society'. STEMS is aimed at d eveloping an autonomous learner, capable of system thinking, decision makin g and problem solving within the real life STES context. We sensed that the intrinsic nature of STEMS curriculum requires that the t eachers, who will teach it, will also be the developers of its modules. Inv olvement of this kind makes the teachers responsible for their own conceptu al change, explanations and interpretations. Our formative evaluation indicates that the conceptual change of STEMS teac hers was gradual. Participants differed with respect to what sort of 'treat ment' or experience within the project actually affected who and when. It w as apparent that the change occurred with respect to both their content kno w-ledge and pedagogical views. A positive response towards teaching beyond the discipline boundaries was f ollowed by teachers' active involvement and participation in the developmen t process and team discussions. Thus, the STEMS project affected their teac hing/learning perception towards interdisciplinarity. These findings are in accord with teachers' support of a life cycle approach for curriculum deve lopment as being suitable for achieving the STEMS objectives. The teachers emphasized the need to practice together with their students scientific inq uiry and experiment design skills which, foster an autonomous learner. At t he end of the first year of the curriculum development process, STEMS was f inally conceptualized by the project teachers as a novel way of learning, r ather than another sophisticated teaching technique. The major conceptual c hange was. the switch teachers made from the role of knowledge providers in to that of learners. The interplay among action, participation and conceptu alization turned out to be instrumental in our life cycle approach for deve loping the STEMS curriculum.