STEM Learning Is Everywhere: Summary of a Convocation on Building Learning Systems by Steve Olson

Author:Steve Olson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: The National Academies Press
Published: 2014-09-17T00:00:00+00:00

DISCUSSION

During the discussion session, Justin Duffy, a STEM specialist with World Learning in Brattleboro, Vermont, asked how the lessons derived from the convocation could be applied across socioeconomic and racial lines so that all schools and students benefit from the integration of STEM learning. Bevan emphasized the importance of examples that can serve as visual talking points and the need to have conversations across sectors. “We don’t have those at this point. We have pockets of activity, but it is not integrated into the mainstream conversation about STEM education,” she responded.

Christopher Roe, chief executive officer with the California STEM Learning Network in San Francisco, asked about the role of “backbone” organizations in supporting and sustaining an integrated approach. Peck referred to the role of intermediaries at the local or regional level in facilitating and brokering conversations and in directing attention to the policy arena. Both the public and private funding sectors can help create more of that infrastructure, she opined. These intermediaries also can leverage public resources to get the most out of public investments.

On this topic, Linda Ortenzo, director of STEM programs at the Carnegie Science Center in Pittsburgh, described the Chevron Center for STEM Education and Career Development, which takes into account all of the major STEM programs in the area and includes a teacher excellence academy.4 She said this effort has created a group of people who represent all of those stakeholders in the STEM learning system. It also has created a process for schools to evaluate their STEM education programs and figure out how to increase integration, which it now is piloting with three different school districts. “The goal is to give schools rails to run on, not a prescription, to allow for diversity but to give them guidance to get to the place where we’d all like to see the whole ecosystem go,” she explained.

Finally, Bevan urged that groups interested in influencing policy work through state associations of school boards, given the difficulty of working with all of the individual school boards. Such relationships can lead to policy guidance from state associations that comes from a source local boards can trust and use. “It really supports advocacy work at the local level,” she said.

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1The PowerPoint file for this presentation is available at http://www.samueli.org/stemconference/documents/Bevan_Cross-Setting_Learning.pdf [June 2014].

2More information about the program is available at http://www2.ed.gov/programs/21stcclc/index.html [June 2014].

3More information about the grants is available at http://www2.ed.gov/programs/sif/index.html [June 2014].

4More information about the center is available at http://www.carnegiesciencecenter.org/stemcenter [June 2014].

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