To better understand integrated STEM education, this work explored scores on the STEM Observation Protocol (STEM-OP), a newly developed observation protocol for use in K-12 science and engineering classrooms. The goals of this work were to better understand how integrated STEM might look throughout an integrated STEM unit and identify limitations of the instrument when examining daily scores and full unit implementation scores. The work takes a mixed methods approach to first examine what scores may be typically seen with daily and unit implementations. After identifying an exemplar integrated curriculum unit with consistently high daily scores, the authors qualitatively explore the fluctuations in protocol scores over the course of a curriculum unit implementation. Our work reveals that some items on the protocol may vary throughout implementation, while also demonstrating that achieving the highest scores on all items during one lesson or even throughout a full curriculum unit is challenging.
Dare, E. A. & Ring-Whalen, E. A. (2024). Understanding variation in integrated STEM practice as measured by the STEM observation protocol (STEM-OP). Research in Integrated STEM Education, 2(2), 120-146. https://doi.org/10.1163/27726673-bja00023.