NSELA 2021 Virtual Leadership Summit

The Transdisciplinary and Critical Cross-Cultural STEM Project (TC3-STEM) is an on-going, longitudinal study with a focus on enhancing elementary pre-service teachers’ self-efficacy in critical-cross cultural education and transdisciplinary STEM integration. Using a hybrid design, we explored the impact of the TC3-STEM project on students enrolled in two different science methods courses (N=31) taught by the same instructor. Findings revealed that participants’ perceptions of preparedness (self-efficacy) to integrate science, STEM and cross-cultural education significantly improved. However, most students were not able to implement what they learned in their methods courses during their 27 hours school-based student practicum. Most pre-service teachers explained that science was not being taught and/or their cooperating teachers neither integrated cross-cultural education nor STEM in any of their classes. These findings illustrate the ongoing challenges between what pre-service teachers are expected to do by innovative teacher preparation programs informed by the NGSS and the realities of working in regular school contexts which continued to be dominated by mandated testing requirements.

Learning objectives:
1. To share examples of effective science/STEM activities designed to model how to integrate cross-cultural education across the curriculum.
2. To illustrate how pre-service teachers’ self-efficacy to integrate science, STEM and cross-cultural education improved after completing the methods course.
3. To discuss the challenges pre-service teachers encounter when seeking to implement what they learned in their teacher education program during school-based practica. 4. To discuss changes needed in policy and teacher preparation programs and school districts collaborations to improve professional development opportunities for novice teachers.