Making sense of STEM

Delhi Private School Sharjah implemented the use of STEM labs in its curriculum earlier this year. While this was no small task for a school with more than 6,000 students, the school's principal Vandana Marwaha was determined to get it right.

"Times have changed — it's no longer about imparting knowledge, but about what the child does with the knowledge available to him. STEM is one such area where we are encouraging learning through the inquiry-based process, where the child does things, understands them, and then he questions himself about why it's happening," she says.

An inquiry-based approach to learning was also different to the Indian curriculum, which is typically known for its rote learning and textbook-based style. Marwaha acknowledges that it was also a concern for her.

She notes: "I had a lot of apprehension when I saw that we would be moving from textbook learning to inquiry-based. But, I was quite amazed at the ease with which students accepted it and got excited about it. I also worried about whether teachers would adjust to this kind of teaching where they're only a facilitator, and not the provider of knowledge in the class, but it has been received so well by everybody — there's so much excitement in learning, and teachers are also enjoying teaching because the class now responds more actively."

To develop the STEM programme, the school worked with Atlab to set up the STEM labs for students in KG1 through to Grade 10. Planning began six months prior to the implementation of the programme, with DPS Sharjah's senior supervisor ICT and STEM in-charge Anubha Kalra working with the team at Atlab to plan resources, train teachers, and map the curriculum.

Atlab general manager Senthil Kugan says: "STEM has been a hot topic for schools for the last few years, but when we clearly looked into it, not many schools were really able to adopt it as part of their school programme; we found there was a huge gap. At Atlab we actually researched how to integrate a proper STEM programme as a part of the school. We did the entire process of first looking at what are STEM attributes — what STEM actually has to deliver to a school. We created an entire rubric for DPS Sharjah.

"A STEM programme should be hands on, it should be project based, inquiry based, and at the same time it should foster critical thinking, problem solving, creativity, and it should develop a culture of innovation. It also has to be mapped vertically and horizontally for science and mathematics."

Kugan said the team also wanted to make sure the programme was sustainable for the school, so they designed a format to deliver the model using the 4Cs concept — connect, construct, contemplate, and continue.

"Connect is to create real world connections before more hands-on tasks; it's like inspiration, by creating videos and images. So every STEM project starts with connect, and then the hands on experience is linked to "construct". The curriculum integration happens with critical thinking, problem solving, open-ended questions — so that falls under 'contemplate'. 'Continue' is more for research and innovation on a particular topic," Kugan explains.

Another important attribute for a STEM programme, according to Kugan, is the involvement of the school's teaching community.

He explains: "Implementing these STEM labs would have been impossible if the teachers did not support such a programme. The school clearly changed their system in order to deliver this programme, so every teacher has to be involved as part of the mapping. So there is a STEM planning meeting every month, where the science and maths teachers and STEM coordinators, as well as Atlab's STEM teams will be involved.

"The science teacher picks the topics for the month and the maths teacher picks the topics for the month, which will go into the horizontal and vertical mapping grid along with an activity that will be created by Atlab. We created STEM activity guides mapped to the lesson plans much before the programme was delivered, and all the resources are also well planned."

Teacher training was also a big part of the process, Kugan adds: "There is a customised PD programme for the teachers based on their skill-set. First we try to get everyone to the same level of understanding regarding the STEM programme. So the teachers go through a five-day professional development programme. First we looked at how to create a STEM activity — mapping the curriculum, connecting the life-skills, career integration and things like that. At the end of this PD, the teachers had to develop their own STEM activity for a lesson plan assigned to them and they had to design that based on the resources available during the training. They had to demonstrate and run a STEM activity programme."

Kalra adds: "Initially we started training with around 16-17 teachers. Our school has a process of professional development, so all the science, maths and English teachers are getting trained activity by activity. About 70% of my staff is already trained and I'm hopeful that by the end of the year, my entire department will be trained."

Mapping the curriculum also helped the school determine how many more teachers would need to be recruited. Kalra explains: "Once that is done, you also realise how much more recruitment you need to do. A STEM teacher would be in the lab to teach but they also need support from the teachers in the classroom. It has to be a good amalgamation so that what students are learning in the class is not different to what's going to happen in the labs."

Every STEM lab has a minimum of at least three teachers present, Kalra says. These include the STEM teacher, a lab assistant, and either the maths or science teacher, depending on which subject the particular activity is focusing on.

This also meant that timetable management was a big part of the planning stage. Kalra explains: "We had to make sure that the science and maths teacher and the STEM teacher for a particular class are all available at the same time. And then comes the resource management. We have seven labs here — so what resource goes from one lab to another, which activities are happening — so all those operational elements were mapped. Six months down the line, we are now at a stage where we are working very smoothly; everybody knows what's going to happen, and we have our lesson plans that are pre-approved."

With the STEM and robotics programmes now running smoothly, the school is working on plans for the next stage, which will focus on senior students in the school.

While students in the primary and middle years focus on more interactive elements of STEM, learning in the higher grades will focus on industry-related skills. "For example a Grade 6 student will go for an interactive robot, whereas a Grade 12 student will have finished all this and will be closer to industrial standards, like a robot arm doing a task," Kugan explains.

The programme has also been well received by parents who have noticed the enthusiasm in their children, according to Marwaha. She says: "Implementing the STEM programme did come at a cost — it was a little bit of extra money that parents had to pay, but this has been the easiest project I've had because the children were my ambassadors, when they went back and told their parent what they were doing in school. I actually had parents walking into the school asking to see what this lab was all about because their child was so excited. So the parents' acceptance was very easy because the ambassador was his own child telling them he was very excited about his learning."

Kalra enthuses: "I am very happy seeing real, active learning now; it's no more just textbook based learning here. That makes me very happy."