Achieving STEM education success against the odds
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POINT AND COUNTERPOINT
Achieving STEM education success against the odds Steve Murphy 1 Published online: 18 September 2020 # Australian Curriculum Studies Association 2020
Keywords STEM education . Mathematics and science . Rural schools . Socioeconomic disadvantage
Introduction Australia’s STEM school education strategy (Education Council 2015) aims to improve STEM education in response to a growing need for STEM skilled employees and STEM literate citizens, and a concomitant nationwide decrease in student STEM enrolments and achievement. The strategy highlights several groups particularly at risk of not developing required STEM-related skills due to particularly poor performance in STEM education, including students from low socio-economic status (SES) backgrounds, and those living outside metropolitan areas. While it is certainly true that many students from rural and low SES schools perform less well in STEM education than other schools, this is not the case for all of these schools. This article shares findings from a study of four relatively low SES, rural schools from Victoria, an Australian state, that consistently achieved STEM success, where rural schools include those located outside of metropolitan Melbourne and other large regional cities. The paper examines the curriculum practices of these high STEM performing rural schools and uses these findings to make recommendations for similarly disadvantaged schools hoping to achieve STEM success.
STEM performance of low SES students from rural locations In Australia student STEM performance tends to be discussed in terms of student performance in the separate learning areas of science, technologies and mathematics (there is no engineering learning area in the Australian * Steve Murphy [email protected] 1
Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga, New South Wales, Australia
curriculum). SES impacts both the STEM achievement and engagement of Australian students which is particularly evidence in student enrolments in the senior grades when mathematics and science are not compulsory. The results from the 2015 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) suggest grade 9 students from the lowest SES quartile are on average 3 years behind those from the highest SES quartile in mathematics and science (Thomson et al. 2017a). Results of the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) suggest the situation is similar for students in grades 4 and 8 (Thomson et al. 2017b). My own research into senior secondary school STEM performance in Victorian schools suggests this disparity continues through to the end of schooling, with SES positively correlating with achievement in all Year 12 Victorian Science, Technology and Mathematics subjects (Murphy 2018, 2019a, b). SES also impacts student engagement and participation in STEM. High SES students are more motivated and engaged in science and mathematics (Thomson et al. 2013, 2017a), and more likely to enroll in senior secondary science or advanced mathematics (Cooper et al. 2020; McPhan et al. 200
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