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Promoting engagement and more importantly retention of girls in STEM

17 February, 2019 By Sarah Chapman Leave a Comment

To reshape and better up skill the future workforce, the focus must begin with education, as “STEM education underpins innovation and plays a critical role in economic and business growth” (PwC, 2015). Further, education in STEM is recommended as being the key to broadening community understandings of what STEM is saying and doing about the complex problems facing society, now and in the future (Office of the Chief Scientist, 2013).

Young people need to be digitally competent, adaptable and adopt core competencies that will enable them to respond to the ever-changing workforce (CEDA, 2015). STEM is a key driver of innovation and entrepreneurship that can significantly impact on the economy (PwC, 2015) and 21st century skills are recognised as a key component within a STEM skills set that enable young people to achieve success in our evolving workforce (World Economic Forum, 2016).

Increasing the engagement of young people in STEM will enable the building of aspirations for a lifelong journey in STEM. There are currently inequities that exist in STEM in Australia. Girls, students from low socio-economic status backgrounds, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and students from non-metropolitan areas are currently less likely to engage in STEM education and are at higher risk of not developing high capabilities in STEM-related skills (Education Council, 2015). As a result, these groups are more likely to miss out on the opportunities STEM-related occupations can offer.

To increase our STEM workforce, a priority needs to be made to harness the STEM talents within these groups. Currently, only 16% of STEM qualified people in Australia are female (Office of the Chief Scientist, 2016). Besides there being the requirement for equity in the workforce in terms of pay and career progression for women (Prinsley, et.al., 2016), a significant priority needs to made to promote the engagement and retention of underrepresented groups in STEM.

Practical insights for implementing STEM programs: targeting girls

There are a diverse range of barriers and drivers that inhibit or enhance the engagement and retainment of girls in STEM-related pathways. The drivers often vary depending on the barriers that arise. The diversity of these barriers vary from country to country and for girls of different backgrounds. This issue deserves dedicated research to be completed within the Australian context to best identify the specific barriers that exist for girls in this country, and the key drivers for engaging Australian girls. Through the Fellowship research, observations were made around the key challenges and strategies required to engage girls from the perspective of the organisations visited in different countries.

Challenges/Barriers observed for girls engaging with STEM

  • The fear of failure and lack of confidence of young girls in STEM
  • The lack of relevance to everyday life, STEM being an abstract construct
  • Lack of links to the ‘humanness’ around STEM
  • Parents/Caregivers lack of understanding and therefore lack of support towards STEM pathways
  • Misconceptions and stereotypes perceptions around STEM industries and professions
  • Lack of funds to access opportunities for disadvantaged girls
  • Lack of role models in STEM industries and post-secondary education, particularly in leadership positions
  • Challenges around the culture of STEM industries and support for women to thrive
  • Lack of clarity on STEM careers (including job titles) and professional activities.

Messaging: Effective messaging can attract girls to consider STEM and help girls to envision themselves as STEM professionals, as well as help to support their key influencers. This includes the consideration of effective messaging strategies from marketing to role model interactions.

Key tips for effective messaging:

  • Use adjectives to describe and characterise STEM professional roles and activities.
  • Have role models and volunteers share their interests and activities outside of their STEM-related activities.
  • Develop resources for individual STEM fields for targeted messaging and information.
  • Evaluate STEM program and organisation media for unconscious bias, and ensure diverse representation in media.

Girls-only opportunities: Offering girls-only experiences and learning spaces provides the opportunity for girls to be empowered and feel comfortable to question, experiment and lead in STEM. By structuring these safe environments girls are more willing to try and experiment with STEM.

Key tips to design positive girls-only opportunities and spaces:

  • Provide a comfortable and safe learning environment.
  • Create a gender-neutral environment, free of “STEM stereotypes”.
  • Provide opportunities for girls to connect with female mentors in STEM.
  • Ensure the environment supports girls to try, play and fail without judgement.

Family involvement: The involvement of family, especially parents, in STEM learning experiences is invaluable in providing support for girls engaging in STEM experiences. Parents are role models and key influencers of a girl’s career pathway considerations. Involving family in STEM, not only enriches a girl’s experiences, it also connects STEM into the home.

Key tips to promote family involvement:

  • Host orientation and family evenings that family members can be involved in.
  • Provide updates for family members on achievements and opportunities Authentic connections: Connecting with real world experiences that make an impact and diverse female experts for support and inspiration, can provide girls with authentic STEM connections and opportunities that promote sustained engagement.

Authentic Connections: Connecting young people with real world experiences that make an impact and diverse female experts for support and inspiration, can provide girls with authentic STEM connections and opportunities that promote sustained engagement.

Key tips to enable girls to build authentic connections:

  • Industry visits and experiences.
  • STEM projects that solve compelling problems, with real life contexts for ‘social good’.
  • Mentorship programs where girls link with diverse female STEM experts.

This blog includes excerpts from Engaging the Future of STEM. Authors: Ms Sarah Chapman & Dr Rebecca Vivian. A study of international best practice for promoting the participation of young people, particularly girls, in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM). This research was conducted as part of the 2016 Barbara Cail STEM Fellowship and funded by the Australian Government (Office for Women, Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet), in partnership with the Chief Executive Women (CEW) Ltd.

Come and meet me at the Leading a Digital School Conference where I will be providing authentic international and national examples that exemplify the promotion of engagement and retention of girls in STEM.

For reference list please refer to: Engaging the Future of STEM
 

Filed Under: Advancing Cultures of Innovation, Community, Innovation, Leadership, Learning Spaces, Personalised Learning, STEM Tagged With: Authentic, Change, collaboration, culture, culture of innovation, Education, engagement, Future, girlsinstem, research, retention, STEM, teaching

Abandoning ‘The Age of Manufacture’ concept: How collaboration works for learners and teachers.

11 November, 2018 By Julia Bevin Leave a Comment

Finding your passion changes everything

 In his book, The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything, (2009) Ken Robinson writes  “Students are educated in batches, according to age, as if the most important thing they have in common is their date of manufacture.”

Children all around the world are growing up in villages where the “date of their manufacture” has never been considered. Children enjoy opportunities and experiences based on their interests and their needs. However, throughout much of the developed world, this is not the case. At some point in our history, the idea of ‘schools’ was born and the industrial model was applied. Children of similar age were placed in rooms, provided with information (inputs) and then tested on their ability to remember this information (outputs). They were taken out of their learning environments and placed in schools and classrooms but for what purpose?

These are the kinds of wonderings that have niggled at me for a number of years. I have taught in classrooms where students were grouped by age, I’ve taught in small country schools were siblings, cousins, children of all ages learned and played together. I am a parent of three children and at no point could I say “well you are 10 and at 10 all children must be ….. or do ….” My children learned to walk, talk, read, write, ride a bike, cook at different ages. Their needs could not easily be correlated to their “age of manufacture”.

I have been principal of Paekākāriki School since October 2015. In that time we have implemented a school structure that helps students find collaborative learning and playing opportunities with children of a variety of ages. Our systems enable teachers and leaders to be collaborative in their everyday practice. Our process started with extensive community consultation in 2016 and we began the 2017 school year with multi-level classes in collaborative learning environments.

Paekākāriki is a small village and it was important to us that our school reflected the village values and philosophies. It no longer seemed right for us to separate children based on their age, these were children who joined clubs and sports teams with younger and older peers, they played with others in their neighbourhood based on similar interests, not a similar age. We carefully planned out how this could be actioned within our school setting, a setting that still had a very traditional physical layout. We began 2017 with 3 learning areas; our first area is aimed at supporting transition into school for our 4 – 5 year olds and their families, the second space is for those more settled into school (typically years 2 – 4), and the third space is for the students in Year 5 – 8. Students work in these spaces with a number of teachers based on needs and interests. Some students and their families took to the changes quickly and with ease, for others it has been a more difficult process as change can be very uncomfortable. Families are given the option of having siblings join the same ‘whānau’ class or to be separated – there has been an appreciation for this choice and families are able to do what works best for them. Regardless of the decision, a family has made we will often see siblings sitting together to share ideas, discuss a problem or even just reading together.

Adjusting to this new way of working provided challenges for many families and learners. Spending time educating our community about how this works on a day to day basis has been important. Students are now reporting higher levels of enjoyment of school, they have more flexibility over their learning programmes as they are not having to wait for others, they can move on and work with other students as needed. Being exposed to a wider range of skills and opinions is also helpful. There is a sense that behaviour is calmer as students know and understand others better.

A key factor that led us to implement this approach was the recognition of the importance of relationships for the learner and the stress and anxiety that can be caused when students transition from one class/teacher to another every year. Our students transition between learning areas twice in the 8 years they are with us. Over their 8 years, they will learn in 3 main learning areas forming relationships with 3 key teachers, known as ‘whanau teachers’. Families also build strong relationships with teachers – everyone develops strong relationships and a deeper knowledge and understanding of one another. We have experienced more settled starts and less downtime at the start of the new year meaning that the learning is picked more quickly and progress is faster.

Teaching teams required more time together to plan and problem solve so we had to make some changes to our meeting schedules to enable this to happen. Staff have worked collaboratively to overcome some of the challenges associated with reporting to parents, communication, timetabling and meeting a diverse range of student needs. We have used a variety of digital tools to achieve this, however, we still recognise the value of face to face communication and sharing information.

This is an ongoing process for us as we seek to continually modify our systems and processes. Paekākāriki School is situated in a village, we embrace the philosophy that “it takes a village to raise a child” and we enjoy working and learning collaboratively as a group of learners with individual needs, where our ‘age of manufacture’ is not the thing that determines our daily pattern.

Come along and meet me at the Leading a Digital School Conference where I will be presenting on this subject along with a session called Barefoot Learner Capabilities: How we are developing competencies for the real world.

Filed Under: Leadership, Learning Spaces, Uncategorised Tagged With: Leadership, Learning Spaces

Getting from the Good Stuff to the Great Stuff: Flipping high school Mathematics to liberate time for Group Space collaborative problem solving.

9 May, 2018 By Ken Herbert Leave a Comment

My current Year Nine Maths class (MAT091A) must be like many around Australia. It’s very mixed. It has all sorts of critters in residence. Some of its students always find it easy to learn mathematics, are cognitively engaged and self-motivated. Others might be school-refuser’s, have personal disorders such as anxiety, or low literacy attainment. For some, the home environment is dysfunctional. A mathematics teacher’s role here is complex and full of challenges.

MAT091A marks the first case where I’ve flipped a class below Year 10 level, and the first time I’ve used this meta-strategy with a “challenging” class. We are fortunate to have 280 minutes per week contact time, so I’ve been able to implement several flipped learning strategies already in this class with its aforementioned characteristics and its absence of any prior student experience with flipped learning. The Good Stuff has been happening: my videos are watched, and if not, the in-flip is used. Flipped Mastery has been the staple, where I speak with every student, every lesson. Even though students have at times resisted flipping, the implementation is still progressing, as it should. There is much more work to do, however.

I have noticed, unsurprisingly, that there are substantial issues, to do with MAT091A student dispositions and skills in solving problems. I have thought that it would be great to be able to use the freed-up time due to flipping my videos to improve on the status quo. Problem solving is an immensely important element of a mathematics education, and in the twenty-first century, it is cited increasingly as a vital skill.

Problem Solving Teaching – A Background Narrative

My focus on student problem solving first started in a highly resolute manner back in 2006 when I first became a Mathematics HoD. I was concerned about senior student performance initially in the Modelling and Problem Solving criterion of the Queensland Senior Mathematics subjects. However, since then my interest has deepened, and I am active in teaching problem solving at all high school year levels, as an element of both Mathematics, the subject, and numeracy, the cross-curricula ability. One of the key junctures was as a HoD in 2013, when every faculty in my school had to action a mandate from the leadership team to implement Reciprocal Teaching authentically in their subject areas. Darn! As far as I was aware, no maths person was crazy enough to even try this. This mandate forced me to find a way to blend the Great Stuff: Problem-Solving Teaching (PST) – was not going to dump this! – with Reciprocal Teaching (RT) – what the English teachers did. Whilst I value RT and had used RT when teaching English myself, I was at a loss to find how in the world to make these two great strategies work as one machine. So, I used a truly unique plan one Sunday morning. Google.

My Google search of “Problem Solving Teaching + Reciprocal Teaching” yielded an immediate bulls-eye. Unbelievably, the first result listed was an article about RT in Maths, written by Yvonne Reilly, Jodie Parsons and Elizabeth Bortolot of Sunshine College, Victoria. This was Great Stuff! Later a team from my school comprising of the principal, three deputies and three HoD went on an expedition to some of the best schools we could find in Victoria. Sunshine College was one of these. We saw the aforementioned authors in action in their classrooms. This school seemed to have every excuse not to be producing great outcomes, with well over fifty different languages spoken in students’ homes, and an ICSEA index of well below 1000. However, the opposite was true. What the staff were doing there was amazingly successful – especially with regard to problem solving in Maths classes.

Reciprocal Teaching in Hattie’s Visible Learning, has a high effect size of d = 0.74. It is a renowned strategy for reading comprehension, and it is a collaborative group process.

  1. Predicting
  2. Clarifying
  3. Questioning
  4. Summarising

However, the key change Reilly et al made, and thus, my way of meshing PST and RT, involved replacing Questioning, which usually has little relevance in a high school mathematical problem-solving context. Questioning in RT is where students textually analyse, and interrogate an extended text and explore deeper meanings. The vital change was to use Solving instead:

  1. Predicting
  2. Clarifying
  3. Solving
  4. Summarising

This key change, plus refining the nature of the other three steps to suit a high school Maths context was what we needed. Now for the job of making it our own.

As a fan of PST (d = 0.61), and in particular the heuristic work of George Pólya, I set to work on modifying the ideas from Sunshine College for our needs. Over four years and a few iterations in collaboration with staff (past and present) from my current school, we have arrived at the following process (see Figure 1) which we call Reciprocal Maths Teaching (RMT), or just Reciprocal Maths. RMT dovetails Pólya’s PST steps with a reading comprehension strategy, in a collaborative context. Pólya’s steps are inherent in RMT.

Pólya’s steps:

  1. Understand the problem
  2. Devise a plan.
  3. Carry out the plan.
  4. Look back.
Figure 1: Reciprocal Maths Teaching (RMT)
Figure 1: Reciprocal Maths Teaching (RMT)

By explicitly teaching students these RMT steps, as well as the “toolkit” of mathematical strategies in Solve, students gradually build an arsenal of tactics to tackle problems they may encounter in future. Our Maths faculty has spent up on physical resources to facilitate the implementation of RMT. Students from Years Seven to Nine have a trolley in their Maths classroom with laser-etched, ceramic-coated, tablet-sized whiteboards. On one side is a blank template version of Figure 1, where students may write their responses with whiteboard markers, and the other side is blank for rough working, of a temporary nature. We found from Sunshine College that mini-whiteboards give some students more courage to take a risk and have a go at the problem. We supply the stationery too. Additionally, we have a truly gigantic outdoor RMT template (as per Figure 1) with three RMT template full-size whiteboards.

Flipped RMT – Observations Thus Far

I’ve been using RMT since 2013, and I knew that this would never be an easy quick fix in MAT091A. And it hasn’t been! Just like when a teacher trains a new class over weeks in how to watch flipped videos, take Cornell Notes, and use the Group Space responsibly, Flipped RMT is a lot of work initially. Certainly, by flipping MAT091A, I have far more contact time available than traditional non-flipped Maths classes to train students.

Group norms comprise an essential set of skills and protocols that students must be trained in. In MAT091A some students take over, others avoid the tasks at hand, some disrupt other groups because they don’t like the group I’ve put them in, and some initially refuse as they still haven’t decided that problem solving is worth the effort. However, collaborative skills are essential twenty-first century skills. Students learn by hearing their peers explain mathematical concepts or strategies, and deep learning occurs when students teach other students.

Some students often like to immediately go to the Solve step (I’m looking at you boys!). After all it’s the answer that matters – nothing else, right? My students sometimes come from households where parents can be heard to say (e.g. at PT interviews) that “It’s maths. It’s only right or wrong…”. Whether we flip or not, teachers must be patient and never give in to students who balk at the other key stages Predict, Clarify and Reflect.

I note with great interest that the new SATE system in Queensland (the new senior schooling system for curriculum, assessment and tertiary entrance – the largest systemic change in decades) for Senior Mathematics will assess students against a process and rubrics which are remarkably consistent with our RMT modus operandi. See Figure 2. Hence, in terms of preparing students for the increased rigour and required levels of initiative and insight, we think we are on the right track.

An Approach to Problem Solving and Modelling - Mathematics
Figure 2: An Approach to Mathematical Problem Solving and Modelling

The amount of active learning has been great to watch during RMT sessions. It is also often the reason why some students initially resist. Groups are typically small (I like two or three), and provided the right questions are provided (we have a growing bank of problems that our numeracy coach has been assembling), students wrestle with collective reasoning, apply their mathematical concepts and strategies in partnerships, and justify the reasonableness (or not!) of their results. Higher order thinking is required, as are initiative and insight. Sometimes, we can get students to re-watch an Individual Space video if no students in the group can recall the maths underlying the problem. This is sometimes, my job as a facilitator – to intervene and diagnose “just in time”, what the blockers might be. Other times, I like to just fire questions at students to prompt them, in little ways. The thinking needs to come from the students, wherever possible. As a result, I get to speak to lots of my students and have substantive conversations about the maths during RMT. It certainly does not do working relationships any harm.

Flipped RMT – What Next?

I am very confident in the validity and effectiveness of this strategy. However, it is crucial that I do some formal diagnostic work to more scientifically measure the effect of RMT in MAT091A. This will be a future focus. Additionally, I’m still not quite satisfied with some of the finer elements in our RMT process. For example, I want to “beef up” Predict, as students demonstrate some uncertainty around how to respond to this phase. We need to provide training that is more meaningful to students to help them understand and value this part of the process.

Note that we don’t use the same collaboration dynamic as English classes often use with RT. In English classes four students each take, or are assigned, one role: Predictor, Clarifier, Questioner, or Summariser. We have not pursued this dynamic in RMT, as we value that each student is participating in every step. However, perhaps I should do more investigation regarding these mechanics. At this stage, I’m interested in mimicking the “one role” mode from RT and using a system of rotation, so that students become experienced in all processes. No doubt, what I find will be interesting.

Finally, I’m beginning my journey in gamifying RMT. I’m calling the groups “tribes” and have devised a points system. Apart from checking out basics of Classcraft, I have not yet explored digital resources to support gamification. If any reader of this blog has some gamification strategies which they feel may work well in an RMT class, please contact me. I am all ears for this Great Stuff!

References

Hattie, J. (2012). Visible Learning for Teachers: maximizing impact on learning. London: Routledge.

Palincsar, A. S. (1984). Reciprocal teaching of comprehension-fostering and comprehension-monitoring activities. Cognition and Instruction, p. 59.

Polya, G. (1945). How To Solve It. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Queensland Curriculum and Assessment Authority. (2017). 21st century skills for senior curriculum: a position paper.

Queensland Curriculum and Assessment Authority. (2017). Specialist Mathematics 2019 v1.0: General Senior Syllabus. Brisbane: QCAA.

Yvonne Reilly, e. a. (2009). Reciprocal Teaching in Mathematics. MAV Conference 2009 (p. 8). Melbourne: The Mathematical Association of Victoria.

Filed Under: Active Learning, Flipped Learning, Learning Spaces Tagged With: flipped learning, problem solving

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