Research On STEM Project Design Process Based On Big Concept

The international competition in the future has been transformed into the competition for talents.Practice has proved that STEM education is conducive to cultivating students' necessary ability to adapt to the future,and can also encourage students to take the initiative to construct knowledge system and form a realistic understanding of big concepts in various fields.Interdisciplinary,exploratory and innovative project-based learning is an effective way to implement STEM education.At present,comprehensive STEM curriculum research is the trend,and the STEM education through project-based-learning has been widely recognized,but there are few researches on how to design STEM project based big concepts.The purpose of this study is to construct the design process of STEM projects which is based on big concepts and is able to go into daily classes.As the result,coordinate STEM project-based-learning with big concepts,and promote the mastery of big concepts with STEM project-based-learning,so as to provide reference for teachers who want to design STEM project courses independently.This paper consists of six chapters.The first chapter is the introduction,which elaborated the reason of selected topic,summarized the current research situation at home and abroad on this subject,defined five important concepts involved in this research,showed the research idea of this study through the flow chart,introduced the purpose of each part of the study,finally introduced the research methods used in this study.The second chapter aimed to prove the realistic need of the study.The author designed the questionnaire in order to understand the present situation of STEM education in primary and secondary schools in Shanghai.Based on the statistics,the research showed that the vast majority of STEM course instructor is single discipline professional background.And the content of STEM teachers training is lack of case analysis and hard to practice.Besides,teachers are lack of the ability of STEM course design and localization cases are few.The last but not the least,there were differentideas about the beginning of the period and form of STEM course.In the third chapter,selected four American good STEM project cases which were from different disciplines,and summed up 11 excellent characteristics of design of STEM project: included project initiation,project process,project evaluation;based on the curriculum standards;with clear results and fuzzy process;creating life situation;studying the big concepts;combining science inquiry and engineering practice;combining student-guiding and teacher-leading;paying attention to the cooperation ability and speech ability;iterative design;diversified evaluation method and specific evaluation standards;suitable for students of different learning levels.Chapter four,referred to the characteristics of excellent American cases,A STEM curriculum was designed called“Potato battery” based on the big concept of“energy”.In chapter five,studied STEM project process based on big concept.Firstly,analyzed the relationship between STEM education and big concepts,then analyzed the big concepts and learning progression in Chinese and American curriculum standards.These two laid a theoretical foundation for the development of STEM project design process based on big concepts.On the basis of theoretical research,combined with the characteristics of American cases and the author's design process of "potato battery" case,the STEM project design process based on big concept was constructed and elaborated.The process consists of three steps: project initiation,project planning,project evaluation.The project initiation included: determining the project theme,determining the big concept,focusing on the secondary concept,setting the project learning objectives,and compiling the main questions;The project planning included: design of classroom teaching process,preparation of resources,design of project schedule;Project evaluation included: clear output results and grasping the output process,establish the evaluation table.Finally,summarized the“STEM project design based on big concepts”: STEM project design based on big concepts should accord to the existing curriculum standard,has clear results and ambiguous process,need to be student-centered and emphasis on collaboration,connect with real life,and has evaluation running throughout.Chapter six introduced the situation of online practice,illustrated the significance of this study,pointed out the shortcomings of this study and the research prospects.