Stem Annotated Bibliography
Name
Institution
Date
Blank, J., & Lynch, S. (2018, September). Growing in STEM. The Design Process: Engineering Practices in Preschool. Retrieved from https://www.naeyc.org/resources/pubs/yc/sep2018/design-process-engineering-preschool
This article tries to explain why engineering practices are important in a STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) learning system, most especially in the early ages of learning. Blank and Lynch begin the article with an illustrative story of a teacher and her students, and how the teacher employ the use of different designs to teach the students the concept of engineering. The article illustrates that STEM is an important component of early childhood education because of the fact that it assimilates the global incorporation of content with comprehensive explorations meaningfully embedded in the real world contexts of these children. Blank and Lynch illustrates that engineering is important for this elementary children because it allows the children to learn develop important skills for instance they become creative, they learn how to plan effectively, they learn to work in a team and they also learn how to improve things to make them better. Blank and Lynch concludes by advocating for use of engineering in STEM topics because it greatly helps involve the young minds in unravelling actual problems. Design helps the students to view themselves as problem solvers, something that help them to become better learners and better people in the society at large.
Lyn, E. (2016). STEM education K-12: Perspectives on integration. Retrieved from https://stemeducationjournal.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40594-016-0036-1
This article advocates analyses past research on STEM to show the limitations with the STEM programs integration for young students. Lyn argues for a greater focus on STEM integration with a more justifiable illustration of the four disciplines in studies that relevance to progress STEM learning. Interdisciplinary and Trans disciplinary approaches to STEM research are common topics in literature but this is not the case for STEM integration. Lyn argues that STEM integration is a sprouting field with reverence to progressing curriculum advancement and numerous student results. Lyn goes ahead to illustrate that there is still need to apprehend the learning effects of the students that come about with diverse forms of STEM integration and also from the different disciplines that are being integrated. Lyn argues that more research in this field still need to be done to help come up with a god integration model that will deliver good results. Lyn concludes by illustration that integration of STEM education raises more questions with no answers and there is the need for more research to be conducted to try and understand the best strategy that can be adopted to make the integration easy and effective.
Gerlach, J. (2012, November 4). STEM: Defying a Simple Definition. Retrieved from https://www.nsta.org/publications/news/story.aspx?id=59305
The article begins by defining STEM where it illustrates that it is an acronym for science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Gerlach goes ahead to explain that this is a shallow definition because STEM is so great a puzzle especially in the education sector because no one can truly explain what it really means. The author goes ahead to illustrate that STEM was introduced in the education field within the US because there was a concern that the students were not being sufficiently prepared in the STEM fields and there hence no enough workers in this increasingly innovative world. STEM is imagined to help in creating the next innovators who are intelligent and ready for high-tech fields. Students are constantly encouraged to do well in these areas so that they could secure better jobs in future. STEM is viewed as the path in helping groom the workers of the 21st century with special skills of computers and digital data collection tools. Gerlach concludes by illustrating that STEM is not something that be generally defined because it means different things for different groups. What is particularly true about STEM is that it is all about stirring forward, solving difficulties, learning and pushing modernisation to another superior level.
