A design-led approach to STEM education : challenges and opportunities in Hong Kong secondary school teachers’ responses to D-STEM

Abstract

Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education is now recognised as a key factor in the development of a country’s workforce and economy. In Hong Kong, the design-led approach to STEM (D-STEM) facilitates the integration of creativity and technology and thereby encourages students to adopt collaborative and reflective processes and helps them develop the interdisciplinary skills necessary to solve real-world challenges. In fact, there are several difficulties facing by the secondary school teacher’s in promoting D-STEM during execution in which there was limited research focusing on this issue in the past. Therefore, this paper aims to examine the challenges of the secondary school teachers in teaching and learning D-STEM and to investigate potentials opportunities accordingly via the use of a design-led approach as a solution in tackling problems. A mixed-methods approach was adopted for the study in both quantitative and qualitative measure in data collection. The findings showed that this intervention addressed the teachers’ deep concerns about the management of STEM teaching and learning in schools by providing guidelines during the implementation of D-STEM classes, content based on advanced technology and materials, and a teaching toolkit with materials and activities. The participating teachers expressed a high degree of satisfaction with the programme and they believed that the interdisciplinary approach of D-STEM would provide opportunities for students to learn from each other’s strengths. The findings reported here and those of the whole research will advance D-STEM education and serve as a guide for developing and implementing D-STEM curricula in Hong Kong.