Research
STEMeez is a research-informed educational resource. Some of the papers and studies that have shaped our project are listed here.
In 2014 the Invergowrie Council embarked on a journey to realign the Foundation’s grant-making process to focus on a specific area of interest that supported the Foundation’s mission of advancing the education of girls and women in Victoria. The Council decided that girls and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) was a high priority. The number of girls
undertaking these subjects at school has been declining at an alarming rate, significantly contributing to an under representation of women in careers in these areas.
The Council sought advice and undertook a review of the current issues in STEM
education for girls to identify what opportunities might exist for the Foundation to make a contribution in this area.
This paper presents the findings from a systematic review of 29 websites and 13 frameworks that provide STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) educational resources for parents, educators, and children (birth–8 years of age). Our theoretical approach is rooted within a social semiotic perspective that has indicated that multimodality enables children to use different types of expression to communicate a message or share an idea. Using the PRISMA methodology and the narrative document analysis approach, the themes that emerged included how the content and resources available on the websites addressed whether multimodality supported STEM engagement in an inclusive manner. The findings revealed that there were scarce multimodal resources that engaged children with fun, interactive, and meaningful opportunities to be autonomous learners (e.g., children had agency) (n = 11 out of 29), moving between the digital and hands-on physical spaces (n = 8 out of 29), employing gamification for deep learning (n = 4 out of 29), and piquing children’s imagination, inquiry, and creativity, and links to everyday STEM scenarios were hardly present (n = 10 out of 29). The implications lie in addressing early STEM engagement by considering children’s learning abilities and agency, bearing in mind parents/educators’ sociocultural backgrounds, confidence in STEM awareness, and multimodal avenues for communicating STEM learning and inquiry.
Despite decades of research, investment and policy development, the issue of gender and STEM engagement remains intractable. The problem of participation in STEM is deeply complex and involves multiple influences that often constitute barriers to equitable participation in STEM. The STEM communities have had a focus on girls in STEM in particular across these decades leading to interventions at a number of levels including curricular and pedagogical responses, careers advice, the use of role models, special events and single sex classes. Thus far, however, the intractability of the issue is evident in the little substantive change that has occurred.
In this paper, we explore factors influencing gendered access, engagement, and participation of young children in early years STEM through a critical review of literature on the topic of gender equity in early years STEM education. Informed by this review, we propose a conceptual framework for guiding curriculum design and development that aims to foster gender equity and inclusivity in early years STEM education. Positioning STEM practices and core values at its very heart, encapsulated through three intertwining themes of Everyday STEM, Career Awareness, and Gender Inclusivity, we argue that this framework has the potential to guide researchers, educators and parents in creating equitable opportunities for children of all genders to participate in STEM and in developing their strong sense of belonging in STEM.
This study co-designed and developed multimodal educational games in collaboration with parents and teachers to engage girls in STEM from early childhood onward. Recent studies examine the supportive and complementary role of digital educational technology, such as multimodal games, in engaging girls in STEM education during primary and secondary schooling. Different skills, such as computational thinking, mathematical and scientific skills, can be developed via simulations, models, narrative-rich videos, and digital games.
In early childhood and early primary settings, science education is often overshadowed by other subjects such as literacy and numeracy due to the perception that learning science is less essential than acquiring skills in other core subjects. The teaching of biological science, in particular, have limited engagement and interactivity, leading to lower student interest and participation. This scoping review aims to explore the current practices and challenges in teaching biological science within early childhood and early primary settings with a special focus on multimodality to increase student engagement and interactivity via the integration of digital tools.