Challenges Faced by Pre-Service Teachers in Learning STEM Education

Abstract

Many private and some of government schools have adopted innovative and effective cooperative learning strategies in STEM. These schools in Pakistan take the initiative to provide opportunities to preservice teachers so that they can learn through modern teaching approaches and methods. The purpose of research is to check the teaching of STEM based content in teachers training programs and to check the awareness level of pre-service teachers about emerging trend in education. The researcher targeted the in-service and pre-service teachers of teachers training institutes in Islamabad only. Research design is mixed method design. Researcher used two sampling techniques random sampling technique for quantitative part of research and cluster sampling technique for the qualitative part of research. Researcher collected data through personal visits at first researcher took pre-test and practice modules and after that post-test was taken. Qualitative Data was analysed manually by making themes, codes, and categories and quantitative data was analysed through SPSS. The objectives were to check the content of STEM-Edu in teachers training programs, to know the challenges faced by preservice teachers in understanding STEM, to develop and implement the modules. The results showed that the pre-service teachers gained knowledge about STEM-Edu after the teaching of modules. It is recommended that teachers training departments in universities may focus on STEM-Edu to make it a part of teachers training program’s curriculum.