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What are your thoughts on STEM education in schools? Good, bad and ugly?
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coppice:

--- Quote from: magic on February 22, 2020, 02:24:45 pm ---IMO the worst thing about modern education is micromanagement and standardized testing.
--- End quote ---
Standardized testing is not a problem. The problem is that the tests have too much predictability, so you can train for them. Until they started trashing the UK A-levels (pre-university exams) some examination boards had extremely consistent exam papers from year to year. In some, like the London University board's maths papers, each question in each paper was on a consistent topic for about 30 years. However, the actual questions varied so much that people complained a lot about how hard those particular exams were. So much so, that many people who asked which board's papers I sat tried to sympathise when I said London. :)
coldfiremc:
I think that STEM is bad in the same amount that does not stimulate creativity or creates "Tiers" of students. School knowledge must be considered "the basics" and everyone have to have solid education on it. The problem is that STEM education focuses too much in memorize procedures and evaluate formulae, without any sort of creative, descriptive or practical focus. Also, in some parts of this world, STEM is being put as the opposite of the arts/literature/philosophy. Something that is at least scary for me (in my country at least), is the aversion of University STEM-leaning students to read (i.e. If there is a 200 page manual to do it directly or a bunch of loosely related sheets, they prefer the sheets). Most of STEM related stuff, are languages itselves, with many concepts and models, to describe phoenomena, and there isn't only numbers, and if someone doesn't grasp this, it lost the whole point.
The another thing, previously mentioned, is the "Grade Mania", "Pass-course Frenzy" and "Results Now" from lots of STEM students. This, in my opinion, is the byproduct of a Good Graded, but bad quality education, that castrated creativity, Critical thinking, and ultimately omited any concept of epistemology. And the irony: Most of these people, because of these attitude, are the worst teachers/reasearchers/developers(because lack of carreer building or practical skills) even conceivable, and also tend to be brute and rude, but because of their high grades, tend to land in teaching, reasearch chairs, because the metric/grades fetish of Universities (And also maintaining a vicious loop).

Some people say that standarized tests are a problem. I think that they are only in the case that they try to select students. They are trying to put determinism where it isn't any. Those tests work better when try to check if someone is "able" to be in the next level or not (this condition is more loose than the another). Select students is something that Universities/Technical have to do, in the course of their programs.

I'm about to graduate in Electronics Engineering, but prior to Uni I never had pretty good grades in math(I had some times very good grades in physics). In the national test I was 2 questions far of the top score of reading test (this is like get a 99 of 100) and in the 60% upper points of math (this is like getting a 52-53 in a 1 to 100 scale). However in uni, every time that math's get more advanced(Complex variables, Differential equations, Numerical Analysis), I got better grades. Could be an exception, but this shows that there's no perfect correlation between school STEM and STEM in a "more serious" environment, and I don't understand why there's not enough stress in this.
synsis:

--- Quote from: coldfiremc on February 22, 2020, 04:27:27 pm ---The problem is that STEM education focuses too much in memorize procedures and evaluate formulae, without any sort of creative, descriptive or practical focus. Also, in some parts of this world, STEM is being put as the opposite of the arts/literature/philosophy. Something that is at least scary for me (in my country at least), is the aversion of University STEM-leaning students to read (i.e. If there is a 200 page manual to do it directly or a bunch of loosely related sheets, they prefer the sheets). Most of STEM related stuff, are languages itselves, with many concepts and models, to describe phoenomena, and there isn't only numbers, and if someone doesn't grasp this, it lost the whole point.

--- End quote ---

You have made the point that STEM is too narrowly focused, but is this a problem with STEM education?
Mathematics is a kind of literature, used in Science, Engineering and Technology. People use it to communicate right? Scientists communicate primarily using numerical data. They draw conclusions with simple logical predicates, i.e. if the coefficient of x is below 3, then y will occur as a result. Nobody uses artistic prose.
We are electronic engineers. Engineers design, develop and apply technology to solve problems. Problem descriptions should be provided in subject, verb, predicate form, without artistic prose. Solutions should be provided in abstract forms such as mathematics and high-level specifications, or in discrete forms such as blueprints or binaries.
An engineer will use advanced prose in two circumstances: persuading a customer to use their solution or sign their contract and persuading a non-technical colleague to make a decision. A Boeing engineer was concerned about the 737 Max prior to the unfortunate accidents. If this engineer had been capable of forming a convincing argument, then perhaps they could have saved lives. Clearly, senior engineers should possess a higher level of English proficiency.


--- Quote from: coldfiremc on February 22, 2020, 04:27:27 pm ---The another thing, previously mentioned, is the "Grade Mania", "Pass-course Frenzy" and "Results Now" from lots of STEM students. This, in my opinion, is the byproduct of a Good Graded, but bad quality education, that castrated creativity, Critical thinking, and ultimately omited any concept of epistemology.

--- End quote ---
This is an interesting point, but so irrelevant to STEM education. Make a thread titled "our society is overly pessimistic and culture is dying".
magic:

--- Quote from: coppice on February 22, 2020, 02:43:27 pm ---Standardized testing is not a problem. The problem is that the tests have too much predictability, so you can train for them.
--- End quote ---
And that's the problem, because standardized testing has to be like that ;)
Case in point, it is like that. They did trash those A-levels for whatever reason, go figure.

It has to suck for many reason. Firstly, the dynamic range. Any test which is to be taken nation-wide by almost everyone leaving high school (which is the case in Poland at any rate) needs to not only discover those with "critical thinking skill" but also sort all the average mass into higher and lower tiers of average ;) There are two levels of this test here and the lower is mandatory in certain subjects for everyone while the upper is voluntary but typically the only one considered by universities. Still, even the higher level has to cater to diploma mills as much as to elite universities, so it can't be too hard. Part of the problem is that almost everybody wants / is expected to have higher education these days, even if it makes no sense.

Another thing is that the moment something starts to depend on the outcome of the exam (such as uni admission), you bet your ass that students will demand that the exam is "fair" and will also flood you with disputes of their grades and demand to justify every damn point you have awarded or not awarded them. You also better be consistent, even though the tests are graded by thousands of random teachers, because it has to be fair again. So you write tons of grading guidelines trying to cover every possible answer you may get and the students respond by memorizing the guidelines and trying to target them. Grading turns into lawyering, because the stakes are impractically high for that kind of exam at that kind of scale.

Then you may have policies like AFAIK in America, where schools are supposedly required to track their "progress" over years, so the tests presumably can't be too varied or their outcomes would show high year-to-year noise and would be useless for this purpose. Also there are other pragmatic concerns originating from politics, such as a desire by whatever minister for education to demonstrate that test results have improved during his tenure or whatever. Life is always much more nuanced than idealists anticipate ;)
R4T:

--- Quote from: coppice on February 22, 2020, 02:43:27 pm ---
--- Quote from: magic on February 22, 2020, 02:24:45 pm ---IMO the worst thing about modern education is micromanagement and standardized testing.
--- End quote ---
Standardized testing is not a problem. The problem is that the tests have too much predictability, so you can train for them. Until they started trashing the UK A-levels (pre-university exams) some examination boards had extremely consistent exam papers from year to year. In some, like the London University board's maths papers, each question in each paper was on a consistent topic for about 30 years. However, the actual questions varied so much that people complained a lot about how hard those particular exams were. So much so, that many people who asked which board's papers I sat tried to sympathise when I said London. :)

--- End quote ---

Hi Coppice,

When do you feel they trashed A-levels?  And how?

Are they too easy?

My A-levels (1983) were a walk in the park compared to my Dad's. The ones I teach have ranged from more challenging than those I did to significantly easier. I would say that the Physics I teach is currently marginally tougher in terms of content and volume than my own A-level.

Do they not discriminate adequately?

This depends on your point of view: is an A-level a selection tool or a measure of knowledge and competence? Many teachers would argue that 'criterion referencing' - a measure of knowledge and competence - is fairest for the students, though 'norm referencing' has a role in maintaining the standards year on year.  The effect of criterion referencing is that students believe that working hard gets good grades, so many of them work hard... and get good grades.  A-levels aren't and should not be an intelligence test, though it seems to me that the harder students work at them, the more intelligent they get.

In the end, I would argue that the problem here is not one dimensional: 


* In the UK, the prospects for people with STEM qualifications are a hard sell in an economy that is 80% service based - where is the draw into science and engineering?

* We also operate in a political culture were senior politicians can say 'I am rubbish at maths' and people laughingly accept that rather than feeling sorry for their embarrassment.

* Show students the excitement and they will do STEM.

Time I stopped and got back to fixing a school DSO-1062D that has never worked  |O
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