Ethnographic case study of early STEM education: Investigating students' authentic learning experiences

Recent national initiatives in education have focused on improving access for young people in STEM careers. It is also important to make efforts to attract more students to scientific and technological achievements, since students can then be taken to the relevant professions. To develop outstanding performers in the field and also to improve the current economy and knowledge level of society, multi-disciplinary education with high quality is needed in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Reaching this aim can be possible with skilled, responsible and inspired young students and the number of graduates in the field of science and technology should be increased. At the point of increasing it, STEM education has crucial role in order to drive critical thinking and innovation in today‟s society. In other words, STEM education provides an insight on students to be more innovative with 21st century skills and so if students experience these skills as early as possible, they can adapt to their future life more easily. In this context, there is a need to integrate STEM into the education system and many countries around the world restructure their education system in this field to develop their innovative capacity. In the same manner, authentic learning provides an implementation of knowledge in real-life context and motivates students to handle with real life problems by experiencing hands-on learning in an authentic environment. In other words, authentic learning focuses on real-life related issues as STEM education and students have an active role during that process. From this perspective, STEM education, especially at primary level, provides knowledge and experiences that students can use them in an active and authentic environment. In this regard, a program called as "Early STEM" based on the framework of Integrated Teaching Project was developed for K-4 students. In the light of this program, one lesson hour per week was assigned and four themes (My Green World, My World of Machines, My Computational World and My World of Imagination) based on STEM disciplines (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) were applied in these lessons. Each theme lasted 8 weeks and the program totally spread over eight months period. Also, the program was implemented within the plans prepared according to STEM Learning Cycline which was developed based on Constructivist 5E Instructional Model. At this point, the present study aimed to investigate the students‟ authentic learning experiences in the early STEM lessons. In order to examine this aim in depth, ethnographic case study design was selected as the research design. Sample of the study consisted of total 13 4th grade students and one classroom teacher who has prior experience on the early STEM program. In this qualitative ethnographic case study, evidence of authentic learning was collected from field/observation notes and transcripts from classroom observations for 8 weeks and face-to-face interviews with the students and teacher in socio-constructivist and interpretivist perspective and also by considering Authenticity Model and STEM Learning Cycline as conceptual frameworks. As a result of the present study, three themes were emerged from 14 categories by using initial and process coding during data analysis. The themes are: 1) Authenticity vital role in early STEM education, 2) Early STEM effectiveness in authentic environment, 3) Essential role of early STEM education upon students‟ authentic learning experiences. These findings provide insight into how STEM education has a role in authentic learning experiences in early grades.