The STEM Teacher Enrichment Academy : Evaluating teachers’ approaches to implementing STEM education in secondary school contexts

Great Hall 2

Amidst calls for a greater focus on STEM education in schools, attention is inevitably drawn to the quality of teaching and to appropriate means of supporting the teaching workforce so that more young people are engaged and interested in STEM subjects. This presentation describes the development and implementation of a STEM Teacher Enrichment Academy at the University of Sydney, and presents some of the outcomes from teachers’ efforts to implement STEM education across a variety of school systems. The findings draw on survey and interview data from two cohorts of participant teachers and their STEM mentors as they progressed through the Academy program. One of our goals was to establish a professional learning community for enhancing STEM teaching in schools. We had mixed success but each new Academy program builds on findings from earlier efforts so that we develop teachers’ capacity to design and implement STEM curriculum to meet the needs of their students.