Integrative STEM Education – Making the connections in secondary education
Integrative STEM Education is about intentionally combining math and science concepts with technology and engineering skills to solve problems. Students who engage in integrative STEM projects in order to solve authentic problems develop communication and collaboration skills, as well as sustained interest in STEM disciplines and increased competency levels.
The STEM courses are designed with an emphasis on project-based learning with real-world scenarios. Each STEM course is presented with a Project Challenge, whose overarching path is proposed to students at the start of the course. Students then use the Engineering Design Process to complete various Support Projects as they progress on the Challenge path.
Making connections through a learning cluster environment
The “learning cluster” approach of our Integrative STEM solution is inherently flexible and allows a STEM classroom to consist of modules from all clusters, specific clusters, or a variety of each. The courses are assigned to one of the three learning clusters: Advanced Manufacturing, Mechatronics, and Environmental Discovery. Each course in our STEM solution allows students the opportunity to explore real-world problems, reflect on the problem-solving process, develop design solutions, and solve problems in science, technology, engineering, and math fields.
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