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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Educ.
Sec. STEM Education
Volume 9 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/feduc.2024.1423158

Promoting integrated STEM education among students via fabrication of interactive exhibit

Provisionally accepted
Yong Leng Kelvin Tan Yong Leng Kelvin Tan 1Ramanathan Subramaniam Ramanathan Subramaniam 2*
  • 1 Hwa Chong Institution, Singapore, Singapore
  • 2 National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Few studies in the education literature have focused on integrated STEM in a comprehensive manner and, even among these, there does not seem to be a significant emphasis on all the four disciplines. In addition, there are hardly any studies that focus on transitioning across prototype variants to demonstrate students' understanding of what they must grapple with, including STEM concepts while coming up with a product. This qualitative study explored how a group of high school students harnessed the constituent disciplines of STEM to fabricate an interactive exhibit on laminar flow in an iterative manner. It was found that in the process of prototyping a working model of the exhibit, the students were able to demonstrate a working understanding of 35 relevant concepts in the four STEM disciplines, with science (13) and engineering (12) predominating, followed by mathematics (5) and technology (5). The students were able to incorporate four levels of interactivity in the exhibit, and this allowed visitors to explore the factors affecting laminar flow in the exhibit during a public exhibition in the school. Examination of the STEM dispositions of the students indicated a positive influence as a result of the activity. To the best of our knowledge, this study has incorporated the highest number of STEM concepts. We argue for the need for more studies that integrate all the four constituent disciplines of STEM in promoting integrated STEM education.

    Keywords: integrated STEM education; prototype fabrication, Exhibit, STEM dispositions, laminar flow, stem

    Received: 25 Apr 2024; Accepted: 03 Oct 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Tan and Subramaniam. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Ramanathan Subramaniam, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, 637616, Singapore

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.