The Role of Concept Mapping for STEM School Curriculum Inquiry ...

The Role of Concept Mapping for STEM School Curriculum Inquiry and Problem-Based
Learning
Author:
Dr. Jaime Curts,
Department of Curriculum and Instruction, Chair
The University of Texas Pan American, 1201 University Dr. EDCC 2.510,
Edinburg, Texas, 78539-2999;
jbcurts@utpa.edu phone 956-665-8792
Presenter: Dr. Jaime Curts
Type of presentation: 2 hour workshop session
Focus of Presentation: Math
Age/Grade Focus: 6 - 12
Background and purpose of the workshop
STEM education has been acknowledged as “an interdisciplinary approach to learning” that
provides the best opportunities for students to make sense how the world works instead of
conceptualizing it in bits and pieces. Facing this opportunity and provided that STEM continues
developing new spheres of knowledge and integration of new disciplines in STEM classroom,
school education -specially in low-socioeconomically school areas- still lag far from reaching the
required innovations in curriculum, instruction, and assessment. Though STEM classroom
school education is still largely undeveloped, it is well known that effective STEM lessons are
highly dependent upon teachers‟ content and pedagogical-content knowledge preparation.
Measuring school teachers‟ knowledge in STEM preparation is critical to determine how deeply
and flexibly they understand subject matter and how can it be facilitated or transferred to
students in inquiry learning environments. Several efforts have been conducted to achieve the
aforementioned objective and have included the use of concept mapping to isolate, monitor, and
measure changes in content knowledge of classroom teachers and their ability to infuse that
knowledge in their teaching of K-12 students.
Give the above background the purpose of this workshop is the following:
a) Provide a framework where Concept Mapping (CM) fits in Problem-Based
Learning (PBL) action steps and STEM learning.
b) Learn how to implement CM in inquiry and PB learning classroom
environments
c) How to use CM to measure content achievement and deep, surface and nonlearning
STEM learning outcomes
Description of interaction/experiential components
Participants will have an opportunity to participate in model-eliciting activities, by elaborating –
in collaborative group- CMs of specific STEM grade content knowledge and learning to measure
“deepness” of knowledge. A round-table discussion session will be conducted to analyze group
results, integration of acquired knowledge to a PB setting, and discuss CM‟s feasibility to

improve teachers‟ and students‟ understanding of STEM knowledge. Pre and post testing
activities (using electronic clickers) will be used to illustrate the integration of traditional
assessments with CM‟s authentic assessment results.
How does it involve STEM Education?
This workshop will also illustrate how to use CM to build learners „capacity and as a tool to
enhance STEM school curriculum education