Research On STEAM Curriculum Design In Primary Schools

As STEAM education becomes more and more important,the number of STEAM courses in the basic education stage is increasing,which is followed by a series of STEAM course design issues.In the educational practice,the author served as the school-based curriculum teaching of STEAM Design and Production in the fourth grade.The author found that the courses had the problems of "solidification" in form and "difficulty" in content.Moreover,the students couldn't learn step by step,so they could easily lose interest and reduce their enthusiasm for learning.Course design is the basis and premise of a course development.Therefore,it is very necessary to optimize the course design and construct a reasonable curriculum design framework to ensure that the learning content is progressive.Through consulting the literature,this paper summarizes the general procedures of STEAM curriculum design based on the project of Engineering Challenge Competition.:Based on the Constructivism curriculum concept and the STEAM education concept,the students' needs are investigated,the academic situation is analyzed(including the knowledge points involved),the curriculum objectives are formed,and the situation,tasks,and forms of inquiry are designed in the selection of the organization curriculum content.And the content of the course determines the formulation of the specific objectives of the course.The next step is to analyze the needs,academic situation,course objectives,and course content:(1)Students' academic abilities include students' cognitive abilities and existing knowledge and experience(scientific,mathematical,and art related to STEAM).(2)Students' needs include knowledge needs,thinking needs and hidden needs.(3)Formulated the STEM curriculum objectives of "knowledge,thinking,ability,innovation and values" which are mutually integrated and promoted.(4)S,T,E,A,M,design and production elements should be integrated in the selection of course content.The organization of content is based on "scientific inquiry",and the content is presented in a "spiral rise" organization form according to "guiding activities,challenging activities,and open activities".Next,take the fourth-grade STEAM "Design and Production" course as an example,using the methods of action research,classroom observation and interviews,combined with theory and practice to improve design of the course objectives and curriculum content.In addition,three projects were used as carriers to carry out further research,and the STEAM Design and Production course for the fourth grade was designed to provide examples for STEAM design and production course developers.Six suggestions for the improvement of the "Design and Production" course for L Elementary School:(1)Select items that are of interest to students and have certain difficulties.(2)Adopt a “spiral rise” organizational relationship between projects.(3)The situation selection should be true and effective.(4)The problem orientation should be clearly expressed.(5)The task setting considers the number of variables and the difficulty.(6)The inquiry process is flexible.Two suggestions for STEAM course designers:(1)in the design of curriculum objectives,knowledge objectives should be selected according to students' interests,including STEAM knowledge objectives.The thinking goals include problem solving thinking and design thinking.The ability goals are clearly defined by logical lines,and the innovation goals and value goals are determined according to the analysis of course elements.(2)In the course content design,the selected course content is the engineering project of “integrating S,T,E,A,M,design and production elements”.In the content organization,it is necessary to follow the variables in the process of exploration and the difficulty level.Progressively,follow the "spiral rise" concept.