Introducing new STEM courses!!!

PODetc is pleased to announce our new course - Focus on STEM offering instructional strategies in math and science education. This course will introduce educators to the concept of teaching within a STEM framework. A critical step occurs in the first week as participants develop a working definition for STEM in the context of their own practice and collaboratively build a glossary of working terms. PODetc participants will work with their fellow educators to define and rank the top ten critical STEM skills as we examine research and literature on 21st century learning. In the second half of the course, participants will create a lab report or project template aligned with the critical STEM skills, a rubric to evaluate students in their attainment of STEM proficiencies, and a final unit project within Intel Thinking Tools that integrates STEM with critical thinking, evaluation, and creation of new knowledge.

STEM is an acronym for science, technology, engineering, and math. Educators, legislators, and business leaders have long been concerned with the state of science and mathematics in our schools. In a comparison of international scores for 4th and 8th graders, results show that the American students are still lagging behind our major global competitors including Japan, China, Russia, and Singapore (TIMMS 2007). As these countries outcompete us in academic assessments, they are also outcompeting us in capturing the global markets particularly in the area of information management.

The purpose of STEM initiatives at the national, state, and local levels is to bring together the resources of government in support of improving our educational system, the private sector in making alliances to support authentic learning applicable to what is needed in the workforce, and educational institutions in collaborating on the best pedagogy and curricula to develop students who are prepared to meet the challenges of their futures. This course is applicable not only to the disciplines of science and math, but to all other disciplines as teachers continue to develop a 21st century approach through cross-curricular integration. In real world work and interactions, we don’t have clear cut divisions between disciplines. Rather learning through STEM gives students tools to develop creative and systemic problem solving, collaborative networks, leadership abilities, and long-term strategic outlooks.

With the nearly ubiquitous access we have to global resources of information, it is no longer adequate that we teach our students the content of science and math curricula. Peter Drucker (1999) predicted information management would be one of the key challenges of the 21st century (1999). For organizations to remain competitive in the information society, they must tap the potential of their knowledge reserves. Those reserves are people as Drucker explains, “The most valuable asset of a 21st-century institution, whether business or nonbusiness, will be its knowledge workers and their productivity” (Drucker, 1999, p. 135). Only a decade into the 21st century and we may have already surpassed that challenge to move on to the next. Now we need not just knowledge workers, but individuals with the creative acuity to know how to use that knowledge for the next evolution of governments, society, economies, medicine, and business. A side effect of an over-focus on information management is that the facility in the transfer of information leads to the tendency to detach the concept of knowledge from the context of the knower (Fahey & Prusak, 1998). It is not enough to teach a set of content standards, our students need to understand how to use that content.

Engineering is the application of skills and contents to the solution of real world challenges. Tony Wagner (2008), author of The Global Achievement Gap, describes what he calls the seven survival skills for the 21st century. These are critical thinking and problem solving, collaboration across networks and leading by influence, agility and adaptability, initiative and entrepreneurialism, effective oral and written communication, accessing and analyzing information, and curiosity and imagination. “Being a lifelong learner and knowing how to access and analyze information, which is growing exponentially and is constantly changing, is far more important than rote learning of specific academic content” (Wagner, 2008, p. 257). The STEM initiatives are designed to encourage educators to move beyond the curricula to find application of content so as to nurture the ability of students to look at problems systemically from the roots up and find each level of cause and effect in the development of creative solutions.

Focus on STEM introduces educators to a new perspective from which to develop their craft. PODetc students will use online tools to integrate and apply the components of STEM to their curricula. Course participants will develop a working definition of STEM as it applies to their own teaching. We will develop strategies to reflect society’s evolution from an agricultural to industrial to information age, in which the world of work has shifted to requirements of self-directed use of time, mental rather than physical energy, a demand for creativity and innovation, and a high degree of independence (Goldberg, 1999). Students need the opportunity to forge not just social networks, but problem solving networks to collaborate across borders in finding common solutions to global problems. Educators must work toward the goal of preparing tomorrow’s builders and recognize that the workforce must be multi-talented with a combination of technical skills, flexibility, continuous learning, teamwork capacity, and communication (McLagan, 2000). Development of evaluative inquiry encompassing shared learning processes, training in inquiry skills, collaboration, links between learning and performance, and valuing a diversity of perspectives supports the development of these critical skills (Preskill & Torres, 1999).


Drucker, P. F. (1999). Management Challenges for the 21st Century (1st ed.). New York: Harper Collins Publishers Inc.

Fahey, L., & Prusak, L. (1998). The Eleven Deadliest Sins of Knowledge Management. California Management Review, 40(3), 265-276.

Goldberg, B. (1999). Overcoming high-tech anxiety. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

McLagan, P. A. (2000). Portfolio Thinking. Training & Development, 54(2), 44-51.

Preskill, H., & Torres, R. T. (1999). Evaluative Inquiry for Learning in Organizations. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.

Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, 2007. http://nces.ed.gov/timss/table07_1.asp retrieved May 24, 2009

Wagner, T. (2008). The Global Achievement Gap. New York: Basic Books.