Abstract
The Korea Foundation for the Advancement of Science and Creativity (KOFAC) funds a valuable programme called STEAM R&E for research and education as one of its programmes offered to high school students; the aim of the programmes is to enhance creative problem-solving ability and peer cooperation skills through STEM/STEAM education. STEAM R&E consists of student-centred research tasks that aim to improve students’ real-world problem-solving abilities and research capabilities. The programme follows the scientific research process: students make a proposal, apply for a grant, receive consultation from experts, and make final presentations orally, with poster displays, or both. Through the programme, students experience for themselves constructing research questions, designing and conducting experiments, and writing reports, and even failures are allowed. Participants reported enjoying the presentations and the opportunities to communicate with each other. In this chapter, we report on the quantitative and qualitative achievements of the participating students through, respectively, the gains in cognitive, affective, and practice domains during the programme and essays the students wrote on their experiences in the STEAM R&E programme. Drawing on the results of the study, we make suggestions to improve students’ learning in STEM/STEAM programmes through student-led research.
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Notes
- 1.
For the school type analysis, we only compared general high schools and the science core, science, and gifted schools. Only two students attended schools we classified as etc., and we excluded their data owing to the small sample size.
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Mun, J., Kim, SW. (2022). STEAM Education in Korea: Enhancing Students’ Abilities to Solve Real-World Problems. In: Cheng, M.M.H., Buntting, C., Jones, A. (eds) Concepts and Practices of STEM Education in Asia. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-2596-2_11
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