STEM-Infusing the Elementary Classroom by Reagan Miranda Talley;

Author:Reagan, Miranda Talley;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781506336978
Publisher: Corwin Press
Published: 2022-04-11T14:35:23.489922+00:00

Instead, the purpose of this activity was to build 21st century learning skills of collaboration, communication, critical thinking, and creativity while also strengthening background knowledge for the story the students were reading.

Not Your Mama’s Thematic Teaching

I have heard many teachers who have been in the education business for a couple of decades talk about the swing of the pendulum between rigorous skills-based instruction and a holistic approach to education. In fact, in my own lifetime, as a student and then as a teacher, I have been affected by the 1980s swing toward basics after President Ronald Reagan’s A Nation at Risk report, then back toward holistic learning in an effort to educate the whole child in the 1990s, followed by the skill-focused No Child Left Behind initiative of the early millennium, and now the Common Core State Standards that have consumed educational debate in the current decade. A web search of the phrase “educational pendulum” results in page after page of opinion pieces written by teachers begging for the swing to stop.

As seems to be human nature, we in the business of education tend to overcorrect in order to improve. In my estimation, there are three major flaws to this line of thinking:

The Problem of Extremes. I am no expert in statistics, but I do have a basic understanding of the bell-shaped curve. In short, the extremes, whatever they are, do not tend to apply to many people. Thus, it seems to me that the idea of our educational system living in one extreme or the other does not make much sense. When we are teaching at one extreme, we are only reaching students who learn best with that extreme type of teaching. There are some kids who are most successful in a world of skill and drill. And there are others who can thrive in a highly unstructured and creative learning environment. However, most students find their sweet spot somewhere between the two.

Time to Work Out the Kinks. A ten-year cycle is hardly enough time to create, implement, and fine-tune an educational reform. In fact, it seems that just about the time educators start to understand how to best implement a set of standards or an educational trend, another group has compiled its argument for why it won’t work. And therefore, the tides begin to change again in the other direction. Therefore, we spend so much time fixing what’s broken, we rarely spend time in improvement. (As a STEM advocate, I assure you this is the most essential step of any design process.)

Reactive Instead of Proactive. As stated before, the pendulum swing is usually an attempt to fix what is not working in the education world. We look at PISA [Program for International Student Assessment] reports and the global economy and panic because we as a nation don’t stack up. In this state of stress, we take an extreme approach to reform. We say, “This isn’t working so we must try the exact opposite!” But what if we didn’t

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