Stakeholder responses to core aspects of integrated STEM education: Instrument development and pilot study

The present paper reports on work undertaken within the frame of the STE(A)M IT project on integrated STEM education (Erasmus + program; Grant agreement 612845-EPP-1-2019-1- BE-EPPKA3-PI-FORWARD). We will focus on a comprehensive review of grey and scientific literature published on integrated STEM and how this background desk research informed the development of an instrument designed to elicit stakeholder responses to core aspects of integrated STEM education. We have pilot tested the instrument to assess the validity and reliability of the scales it includes and we present the results of this pilot study together with some implications for educational policy and stakeholder involvement

Examining the added value of the use of an experiment design tool among secondary students when experimenting with a virtual lab

International audienc

Understanding teacher design practices for digital inquiry–based science learning: the case of Go-Lab

Designing and implementing online or digital learning material is a demanding task for teachers. This is even more the case when this material is used for more engaged forms of learning, such as inquiry learning. In this article, we give an informed account of Go-Lab, an ecosystem that supports teachers in creating Inquiry Learning Spaces (ILSs). These ILSs are built around STEM–related online laboratories. Within the Go-Lab ecosystem, teachers can combine these online laboratories with multimedia material and learning apps, which are small applications that support learners in their inquiry learning process. The Go-Lab ecosystem offers teachers ready–made structures, such as a standard inquiry cycle, alternative scenarios or complete ILSs that can be used as they are, but it also allows teachers to configure these structures to create personalized ILSs. For this article, we analyzed data on the design process and structure of 2414 ILSs that were (co)created by teachers and that our usage data suggest have been used in classrooms. Our data show that teachers prefer to start their design from empty templates instead of more domain–related elements, that the makeup of the design team (a single teacher, a group of collaborating teachers, or a mix of teachers and project members) influences key design process characteristics such as time spent designing the ILS and number of actions involved, that the characteristics of the resulting ILSs also depend on the type of design team and that ILSs that are openly shared (i.e., published in a public repository) have different characteristics than those that are kept private.</p

A Critical Reading of Ecocentrism and Its Meta-Scientific Use of Ecology: Instrumental Versus Emancipatory Approaches in Environmental Education and Ecology Education

The aim of the paper is to make a critical reading of ecocentrism and its meta-scientific use of ecology. First, basic assumptions of ecocentrism will be examined, which involve nature's intrinsic value, postmodern and modern positions in ecocentrism, and the subject-object dichotomy under the lenses of ecocentrism. Then, we will discuss implications for environmental education and ecology education including a contradistinction between the instrumental and the emancipatory approach and the study of socio-scientific issues. An outline of protected areas as a socio-scientific issue, which is informed by the emancipatory approach, will be presented in the final part of the paper