Building Preservice Teachers’ Confidence for Teaching and Learning STEM, Incorporating Innovative, Interdisciplinary, and Integrated (3I) Initiatives

Abstract

Twenty-first-century education needs to respond to the events and trends that young people will meet in their adult lives. While extensive technological, scientific, and medical research has changed the world in the last decade, there are also a number of difficulties that need to be faced, understood, and responded to, such as climate change and pandemics. Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education has a role to play in producing a future generation capable of making changes in existing lifestyles and practices to deal with challenging and complex situations. To achieve this, it is vital that teachers have the confidence, capacity, and skills they need to develop innovative, interdisciplinary, and integrated (3I) STEM teaching and learning practices. Teachers need to build opportunities into learning scenarios so that children experience and engage with the practice of constructing, testing, refining, and justifying evidence-based explanations in authentic situations. This chapter focuses on the programs of preservice preparation for STEM teachers, highlighting the need to blend interdisciplinary conceptual content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge to support the development of relevant STEM classroom experiences. This emphasis at preservice level requires considerable change in approach in terms of the disciplinary/interdisciplinary curriculum, professional experience, and effective mentoring for preservice teachers within the existing practice of STEM teaching and learning in preservice programs and schools. By focusing on innovative, interdisciplinary, and integrated initiatives, preservice teachers could develop STEM pedagogy that helps young people build the skills and knowledge base to meet the challenges that they will need to deal with in the future.