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ERIC Number: EJ1224500
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2019-Aug
Pages: 7
Abstractor: ERIC
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0036-8148
EISSN: N/A
Transcending Boundaries
Edelen, Daniel; Bush, Sarah B.; Nickels, Megan
Science and Children, v57 n1 p44-50 Aug 2019
Teachers have the daunting task of preparing students for a future that they cannot predict. In an age of information where students have the world quite literally at their fingertips, and with the ever-growing momentum of integrated science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), it is not enough that students experience STEM subjects exclusively in silos. Instead, they need to provide students with integrated opportunities for learning, which can be beneficial to student achievement (Becker and Park 2011). To be well positioned for the future, students must be able to work productively in environments that transcend disciplinary boundaries to generate novel solutions to improve our world. In this article, the authors share an afterschool STEM inquiry that transformed 22 third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade students by positioning them as engineers solving an authentic problem. While there are several different ways in which to integrate disciplines such as multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary (Choi and Pak 2006), the problem under investigation models a transdisciplinary approach, defined as integration that uses the collective expertise from many disciplines to solve problems in a manner that focuses on the inquiry (as described by Choi and Pak 2006). In a transdisciplinary inquiry, students become so enthralled in the problem that they use previous knowledge and acquire new knowledge from multiple disciplines to provide a solution (Bush et al. 2018). In this inquiry, third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade students modeled, designed, and tested robotic prototypes as solutions to getting a student in a wheelchair from the first floor to the third floor of a school building.
National Science Teachers Association. 1840 Wilson Boulevard, Arlington, VA 22201-3000. Tel: 800-722-6782; Fax: 703-243-3924; e-mail: membership@nsta.org; Web site: http://www.nsta.org
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: Elementary Education; Early Childhood Education; Grade 3; Primary Education; Grade 4; Intermediate Grades; Grade 5; Middle Schools
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A