MATHEMATICS

Each Leaving Certificate syllabus has specified mandatory experiments that must be reported
on; all of the experiments are prescribed by the syllabus, and the reports do not form part of the
assessment. The practical work that students carry out at Leaving Certificate is narrowly
defined. It focuses on what is done in laboratories using common laboratory equipment.
Activities that are not rewarded by the assessment are unlikely to take place.
There are currently no systemic links between formal and informal STEM education in Ireland.
Formalising links between them in some structured way (e.g. by students using outputs from
informal education settings as evidence of learning) has the potential to expand the possibilities
for student engagement in authentic scientific investigation.
Key issues
Assessment strongly influences the learning process and the way students think about
themselves. The nature of the assessment used for STEM subjects will have a strong influence on
how successfully IBL and PBL approaches are implemented in schools. Such assessments should
be designed to measure students’ ability to collaborate, diagnose problems, critique
experiments, plan investigations, research information, construct models, debate with peers,
form coherent arguments and create and co-create new content. Planned changes to
assessment arrangements at Junior Cycle will provide schools with the opportunity to devise
and self-assess short courses.
The significant shift in STEM education towards inquiry-based and problem-based learning
necessitates a similar shift in the type of continuing professional development offered to
teachers. A blended learning approach to CPD offers the advantage of a variety of online courses
as well as learning events where there are opportunities for collaborations amongst teachers in
which they engage in active learning. Active learning builds knowledge, understanding, and
ability. Such an approach allows teachers to tailor their own learning and develop their
pedagogical content knowledge (PCK); when teachers develop teaching and learning skills in the
context of IBL and problem-solving, they also increase their content knowledge. Professional
development activities that model good, inquiry-based science and mathematics teaching and
are sustained, contextual, and require participation and reflection are more likely to translate
into good classroom practice and support teachers to use new innovative pedagogies, in
contexts that are engaging and applicable to students’ lives.
STEM EDUCATION IN THE IRISH SCHOOL SYSTEM
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Curriculum materials that emerge from research and practice to promote teacher learning are
required in addition to text-books and other student-centred resources. Text-books have a
particular role in curriculum, but, in the absence of other sources, teachers come to rely on them
for methodology as well as content. Textbooks may over-emphasise factual knowledge as
opposed to students’ understanding about the processes of STEM. In addition to this, there is a
danger that when a curriculum changes, particularly in terms of pedagogy, that text-book
authors may rely on traditional methods of presenting new content, as indicated in a review of
mathematics text books based on the revised mathematics specifications (O'Keeffe &
O'Donoghue, 2011). Scoilnet.ie is the DES official portal for online resources in Education. The
website is managed by PDST Technology in Education on behalf of DES and has been developed
as a support for teachers at both primary and post-primary levels. Scoilnet.ie has over 2000
resources aligned with STEM subjects.