How are integrative teaching practices used in the STEM minor?
A. All STEM courses are co-taught by a STEM faculty member and an education faculty member. We want elementary education majors to have teaching pedagogy infused into the sciences. Thirteen faculty members were involved — from education, physics, biology, chemistry and mathematics — in designing the minor, and many of them co-teach the courses. A faculty member from the psychology department evaluates all courses, and this informs any changes we make to the curriculum. In the final course, “Robots and the Earth,” we integrated literacy skills. Writing a technical report is different than writing creatively, so we pose the question: How do you read a science text to get the most out of it? One objective in this course is to help students learn to teach these literacy skills to elementary students. Q. Tell us about your meeting with the federal agency in Washington, D.C. A. The federal government is very interested in our work on STEM because our courses are aimed at elementary education
