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STEM teacher education programs for preservice and in-service secondary mathematics teachers: a review study

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Abstract

Few studies have elaborated on how different types of integration can support teachers’ learning and build their capacity to teach for the enhancement of students’ STEM competence. Teaching in a STEM education context requires mathematics teachers to be able to effectively choose, design and implement appropriate tasks in their classes. Given the important role of teachers and tasks as vehicles for STEM education, this paper reviews literature on STEM teacher education programs associated with STEM tasks for preservice and in-service secondary mathematics teachers. After searching for and reviewing the 14 relevant articles, the analytical results indicated that (a) teachers’ STEM knowledge and practices have not been commonly assessed as the outcomes of STEM teacher education programs, although they are explicitly counted as the goals of STEM teacher education programs; (b) the approach of multi-disciplinary concepts integrated with uni-disciplinary practice is mostly adopted as the approach to STEM integration; (c) task design features identified from the articles can be classified by elements of task design (i.e., goals, principles and instructional focus) and task design factors (i.e., disciplinary knowledge, cognition and metacognition, affect); and (d) most programs provide both acquisition and participation approaches to developing mathematics teachers’ knowledge in STEM education. The review results shed light on the design and implementation of STEM tasks and STEM teacher education programs.

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The data come from the database of Web of Science Core Collection.

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Acknowledgements

This paper is part of a research project funded by the Ministry of Science and Technology of Taiwan (MOST 109-2918-I-003-002 & 107-2511-H-003-004-MY3).

Funding

This study is funded by Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan (MOST 109-2918-I-003-002).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mathematics, National Taiwan Normal University, No. 88 Sec 4 Ting-Chou Rd., Taipei, 11677, Taiwan, ROC

    Kai-Lin Yang

  2. Melbourne Graduate School of Education, The University of Melbourne, MGSE, Level 4, 100 Leicester St, Melbourne, VIC, 3010, Australia

    Lynda Ball

Authors
  1. Kai-Lin Yang
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Contributions

The first author contributed to the plan of this review study. Initial coding of the studies was discussed and formulated by the two authors. The first draft of the manuscript was written by the first author. The two authors discussed the first draft and revised it together.

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Correspondence to Kai-Lin Yang.

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The two authors have approved the manuscript and agree with submission to the International Journal of STEM Education and have no conflicts of interest to declare.

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Yang, KL., Ball, L. STEM teacher education programs for preservice and in-service secondary mathematics teachers: a review study. J Math Teacher Educ 27, 185–207 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10857-022-09557-0

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