0000000000804784
AUTHOR
Robert Weinhandl
Developing and Evaluating Educational Innovations for STEAM Education in Rapidly Changing Digital Technology Environments
In this paper, we offer three examples from our research projects on both technological and pedagogical innovations to illustrate the impact of rapid technology changes on research. Members of our research team both developed and used technology applications in their research projects, utilizing design-based research (DBR). During the experiments, we encountered new challenges by the end of the research cycle due to updates in technologies. Although we had an idea of how to redesign the project for the next cycle based on the analyses of data, we noticed that we needed to not only redesign our approaches based on the research results but the changes in technologies were so rapid that materi…
STEAMTEACH Austria: Towards a STEAM Professional Development Program
The STEAMTEACH (STEAM Education for Teaching Professionalism) project works with teacher trainers to develop a program of Transcultural STEAM Professional Development for in- and pre-service teachers. Following a literature review, a semi-structured questionnaire then interviews approach was used to elicit current practice, challenges for teachers and recommendations from Austrian teacher trainers. These recommendations were then compared with and supported by STEAM academic literature. It was found that none of the institutions offered a STEAM approach and it does not appear in the curriculum. Indeed, this fact is the primary challenge to overcome. Recommendations were that teachers should…
Hothousing: Utilising industry collaborative problem-solving practices for STEAM in schools
Collaborative problem solving (CPS) has been widely used in both industry and in schools over at least the last twenty years. The Industry Hothousing variant of CPS in its adult format is an intensive, time-constrained workshop based process designed to build mutual trust between customers and industry experts in order to synergically develop creative solutions together. Its potential use in schools raises two important questions: Firstly, what degree of structure and support is required to unleash student creativity and enhance learning - as in industry or does the student need more structured methods including explicitly being taught collaborative problem solving skills? Secondly, is CPS …