ARTICLES
Top FIVE STEPS in Championing STEM Innovations (continued)
4. Assess for Learning
Appendix 1 shows the rubrics and the scales for each of the
six featured 21st century skills.
We adopt an evidence-based approach to self-assess our efforts,
and constantly refine our approaches based on the evidence we
gather – observations of STEM programs, students’ reflections,
surveys, interviews with teachers, videos of students at work and
their prototypes. We do not assume that implementing a STEM
program guarantees the development of 21st Century skills. We
ask ourselves constantly: What is the evidence of 21st Century
learning? How do we know our students are benefiting from our
STEM programs? What evidence do we have of these ‘soft’ skills?
5. Develop Thinking through Talk
There is a close relationship between language and development
(Mercer & Littleton, 2007). By paying attention to how students
interact with one another, we stay attuned to teacher-student and
student-student changing states of knowledge and understanding
over the course of a STEM activity. As mentioned earlier, students
working in a group does not mean that students are able to work
as a group. Based on our experience, we observe three types of
talk evident in students’ interactions (Mercer & Littleton, 2007):
There is a plethora of frameworks for 21st Century skills. We
have found the 21st Century Learning Design Activity Rubrics
developed by Stanford Research Institute (SRI) and Microsoft
Corporation the most useful for assessing student learning
outcomes (SRI International, n.d.). The rubrics feature six key
21st Century skills that cohere with our vision of learning, namely
(SRI International, n.d.):
(i) Disputation talk: This type of talk is not desirable but
does happen when students have not developed the
skills to collaborate in complex problem-solving, causing
disagreement and individualised decision-making. Few
attempts are made to pool resources. There are brief
assertions, constructive suggestions and challenging
assumptions.
(i) Collaboration: Students share the responsibility and
engage in collective decision-making. There is a high
interdependence and as such, students do not simply work
in groups but as a group.
(ii) Cumulative talk: This type of talk is typical of a group of
students that cooperate but not necessarily collaborate.
Students’ interactions show that they build on one another’s
ideas positively but uncritically. There are many instances of
echoing their peers’ ideas, confirming and elaborating one
another’s ideas but the students do not agree to disagree
in order to push one another’s ideas by challenging one
another’s ideas and offering multiple perspectives to offer
the best solution.
(ii) Knowledge construction: Students use higher order thinking
skills to solve the problems they have identified. They
draw on multiple disciplinary perspectives to apply their
knowledge from the relevant disciplines to negotiate and
develop a feasible consensus towards the common goal set
by the group.
(iii) Real-world problem solving and innovation: The task given
to students is based on real world contexts and students’
solutions are feasible in the real world. They themselves can
either implement their solutions or communicate them to
others who can implement them in the real world.
(iii) Exploratory talk: This type of talk is what we aim for in
collaborative learning. Students’ interactions show that they
challenge assumptions and ideas but they are justified.
They offer multiple perspectives and seek opinions before
decisions are jointly made. There is a high level of reasoning
when they justify their ideas.
(iv) The use of ICT for learning: Students use technology as part
of their knowledge construction proces, using it to create
artefacts to represent their knowledge and understanding
for an authentic audience.
We also reflect on how we interact with students when we
scaffold their learning and offer them feedback in our ongoing
monitoring and assessment. Davis (1997) argued that how
teachers listened to their students made a difference to students’
learning outcomes:
(v) Self-regulation: Over a sustained period of time, students set
learning goals, make plans and monitor their progress and
quality of their work. They set learning directions and revise
their plans based on the feedback they receive. They are
clear about the success criteria and know how to chart their
learning paths towards these criteria.
(i) Evaluative listening: The teacher is concerned about the
accuracy of students' answers and is not really interested
in what the student is saying. The teacher may initiate a
question (I) and expect the students to respond accordingly
(R) and evaluate the student’s response (E) based on his or
her expected response.
(vi)
Skilled communication: Students are effective in
communicating their ideas to targeted audience using
appropriate modes and mediums of communication. They
are able to draw on supporting evidence when negotiating,
defending and communicating their ideas.
(ii) Interpretive listening: The teacher is attuned to students'
thoughts/ideas and competencies. He or she requires an
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