1 Introduction

Current concerns about declining student participation in science, technology, engineering and mathematics [STEM] are well documented in Australia (Office of the Chief Scientist [OCS], 2014; 2016) and in publications representing the views of governments across the globe (Freeman, Marginson, & Tytler, 2015). With declining participation in advanced level senior school mathematics and physical sciences, fewer students are electing to study STEM programs at university, and there are ongoing concerns about the performance of Australian students on the international comparative tests Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study [TIMSS] and Program for International Student Assessment [PISA]. Consequently, government agencies and school systems have been promoting the need for new ways of teaching the STEM subjects in government reports (National Council, 2015; OCS, 2014, 2016) particularly in secondary school contexts (Tytler, 2020).

The constructs of scientific and mathematical literacy, broadly applied to curriculum frameworks globally, emphasise the need for all students, and not simply a STEM elite, to develop critical thinking and problem-solving dispositions and skills (She, Stacey, & Schmidt, 2018). Yet in many countries there is evidence that some students develop increasingly negative attitudes to school science and mathematics across the primary and early secondary school years (Kennedy, Quinn, & Lyons, 2020; Tytler, 2014). Student engagement with science and mathematics, and the development of dispositions towards STEM knowledge and perspectives more generally, is thus an increasing focus (Watt, Bucich, & Dacosta, 2019). In recent reports in Australia, there has been a strong recognition of the importance of developing STEM knowledge to solve real-world problems for all students and an advocacy of the need to bring school science and mathematics closer to the way science and mathematics are practiced in contemporary workplaces across the STEM disciplines (Tytler, 2020). Such real-world problems might consider the nature of recycling and other sustainability issues in local communities.

STEM education is being taken as an opportunity to seriously consider the alignment of school experiences with the distinct and/or integrated experiences of scientific, mathematical and engineering practices in the “real world” (Holton & Thomas, 2021; National Academy of Engineering, 2014; Treacy & O’Donoghue, 2014). This use of the STEM acronym has occurred for some time in the U.S. (Li, Wang, Xiao, & Froyd, 2020) but more recently in Australia there are an increasing number of professional learning programs that are exploring what an innovative, cross-disciplinary STEM approach might entail (Anderson, English, Fitzallen, & Symons, 2020). This curriculum field is, however, still young, and the nature of integration implied by STEM varies widely, and is frequently ill defined (Anderson, 2020; Tytler, Prain, & Hobbs, 2019). The Australian government sought to address the diversity of views and approaches to STEM education by holding a forum involving a range of stakeholders in 2015.

The outcome of the forum was the publication of a National STEM School Education Strategy, 2016–2026 (National Council, 2015). Driven by the two key goals of wanting all students to finish school with strong foundational STEM skills and capabilities, and ensuring all students want to embark on more challenging STEM subjects, the Strategy identified five areas for national action:

1. increasing student STEM ability, engagement, participation and aspiration;

2. increasing teacher capacity and STEM teaching quality;

3. supporting STEM education opportunities within school systems;

4. facilitating effective partnerships with tertiary education providers, business and industry; and

5. building a strong evidence base.

National Council, 2015, p. 6

It was noted in the Strategy that the goals and actions refer to both the separate STEM disciplines as well as to cross-disciplinary approaches. However, there is a need in Australia to explore and clarify the nature of productive and innovative cross-disciplinary approaches to STEM education that engage students in the collaborative problem-solving and reasoning processes characterizing STEM research and development practices, to determine the nature of cross-disciplinary capability, and to identify the processes leading to successful STEM integration in secondary school contexts (Anderson, 2020; Tytler, 2020; Tytler, Prain, & Hobbs, 2019). The STEM Teacher Enrichment Academy (henceforth referred to as the Academy) program described here sought to investigate the efficacy of implementing a teacher-designed integrated STEM curriculum that focused on the needs of the students in each school context. Developing teachers’ capacity to become curriculum designers was an important component of the program, although this is not without its challenges (Anderson, 2020; Tytler, Prain, & Hobbs, 2019).

This article considers the research into the design and delivery of a professional learning program developed to support teachers and school leaders as they addressed student engagement and participation in integrated STEM education in their schools. The Academy program was modeled on commonly agreed core features of quality professional learning (e.g., Borko, Jacobs, & Koellner, 2010) incorporating content focused planning, active learning, and collective participation. The Academy was developed to support secondary school science, technology and mathematics teachers (grades 7 to 10) to design and implement innovative, integrated STEM curriculum (Anderson & Tully, 2020). During professional learning sessions facilitated by STEM academic leaders, each STEM school team of six teachers (2 from each of science, mathematics and engineering/IT faculties) designed a STEM program suited to the needs of their students. Based on the outcomes of the Academy program, the research reported here sought to answer the questions:

1. What are the critical features of teacher designed innovative integrated STEM curriculum in secondary school contexts that emerged from schools in the Academy?

2. How did the Academy professional learning program facilitate the development of innovative integrated STEM curriculum?

The term ‘innovative’, as employed in these questions, is taken to mean ‘innovative for the teachers involved’, rather than necessarily an innovation that is new to the STEM education community. The scaling up of any substantive, principled innovation such as transdisciplinary practices inevitably involves its contextual interpretation and development by schools and teachers. As such, this work of ‘local’ innovation is a crucial aspect of effecting large-scale system change.

2 Literature Review

Concern by government organisations about Australian students’ achievement, participation and engagement in STEM subjects has grown in recent years. Secondary school students’ results on the international assessments of TIMSS and PISA do not seem to have improved compared to some other countries (Thomson, De Bortoli, Underwood, & Shmid, 2019; Thomson, Wernert, Rodrigues, & O’Grady, 2020). As mathematics and science are not compulsory in senior secondary school, participation in these and other STEM subjects has declined with more students opting to study no STEM subjects beyond grade 10, limiting their future STEM career options (Kennedy, Lyons, & Quinn, 2014). Recent studies have identified students’ negative attitudes towards mathematics and science with a lack of engagement contributing to declining participation and aspirations towards STEM careers (Kennedy, et al., 2020; Watt, et al., 2019). These factors have the potential to seriously reduce the numbers of students pursuing STEM careers and entering a growing STEM workforce (Australian Academy of Science, 2019; Tytler, 2020).

Debate continues about the best teaching and learning approaches to address the trends of declining achievement, participation and engagement given the impact of individual, behavioural and contextual factors on student learning outcomes and aspirations. However, Watt et al. (2019) report a classroom environment focused on learning and understanding (ie mastery) has the potential to impact motivational expectancies and values including utility value, and Eccles and Wigfield (2020) concluded learning subjects perceived as ‘useful’ enhances engagement and motivations for future study. So, the challenge is to create a curriculum and develop pedagogical practices which have the potential to inspire students to pursue STEM pathways (Tytler, 2020).

Teaching the STEM subjects, particularly mathematics and science, using more traditional practices where teachers present knowledge without opportunities for students to engage in inquiry through challenging tasks, is not an option if this situation is to be addressed. Freeman, et al. (2015) report in their review of international STEM education policy and practice that:

On the whole, the most successful countries have instituted active programmes of reform in curriculum and pedagogy focused on making science and mathematics more engaging and practical, through problem-based and inquiry-based learning, and emphases on creativity and critical thinking.

Freeman et al., p. 10

There is mounting evidence that creating learning environments where students engage in inquiry-based learning opportunities, where teachers provide support, managing and guiding the learning, students are more engaged and develop deeper understanding of the discipline. Students also develop important problem solving and critical thinking skills to become active and informed citizens (English, 2016; Mockler, 2018, Sullivan, 2015; Tytler, 2020). Inquiry-based learning refers to “student-centered ways of teaching in which students raise questions, explore situations, and develop their own ways towards solutions” (Maab & Artigue, 2013, p. 780). Further, in solving inquiry questions, students may need to pose their own questions, determine what evidence they need to collect and analyse to answer the question, and create the best approaches to communicate their conclusions. Using such approaches within an integrated STEM curriculum supports student engagement and improves their attitudes and aspirations (Kennedy & Odell, 2014).

The challenge is to support teachers to develop inquiry-based teaching approaches so that they can foster collaborative work, provide constructive feedback when appropriate, and to help students make connections within and across the curriculum (Maab & Artigue, 2013; Swan, 2006). Developing teachers’ inquiry-based teaching approaches requires them to become pedagogical learners by collaboratively solving problems, related to task construction and implementation. Like their students, they engage in problem-solving experiences supported by experts (Darling-Hammond, Hyler, Gardner, & Espinoza, 2017; English & Anderson, 2021). Such practices need to be embedded in professional learning programs with time and space for teachers to reflect on their experiences, trial the practices in classrooms, and design appropriate tasks that challenge student thinking (Sullivan, 2015; Swan, 2006).

Since curriculum documents are presented as separate subjects and secondary teachers typically qualify to teach one or two subject areas, there has been little opportunity to develop integrated curriculum in Australian secondary schools. While the notion of integrated curriculum is not new, there are many challenges with implementing integrated curriculum in the more traditional secondary school settings where timetables can constrain making connections across subjects, teachers are stretched in teaching the subject for which they are qualified and have little spare time to meet with teachers from other subject areas to do the curriculum design work necessary in connecting the STEM subjects (Anderson, 2020). However, the more recent STEM integrated curriculum ‘movement’ might offer new opportunities as Mockler (2018) states,

… a renewed focus on STEM … both in Australia and elsewhere, might provide us with a new energy for curriculum innovation and curriculum integration. We might add to this the imperatives contributed by the contemporary world, where developing students’ capacity to navigate knowledge and information across disciplinary boundaries is increasingly important.

Mockler, p. 229

The need to improve practices in schools to better prepare students for life in an increasingly complex world has been linked for several decades now with the construct of ‘innovation’ (Serdyukov, 2017). Hargreaves (1999) argued that the innovation process in schools mostly involves local practitioners engaging with imaginative thinking to respond to problems or challenges and think out potentially better ways of operating. Consistent with this localisation of the innovation process, a feature of STEM innovation in schools over the last decade has been the variety of models employed (Hobbs, Cripps-Clark, & Plant, 2018) making it difficult to essentialise the STEM construct in practice. The Academy, by offering principles of interdisciplinarity by which schools develop their own approaches, offers an opportunity to investigate the logic and practice of different STEM innovation models. Providing examples of rich, integrated STEM problems for teachers to solve together, allows them to experience the challenge of drawing on a range of knowledge from across the STEM subjects, and to evaluate such tasks for their students.

In conceptualizing innovation in the current analysis we draw on an Innovation Framework developed by Tytler, Symington and Smith (2011) to analyse schools’ curricular practices based on partnerships with local STEM practitioners and industries. The framework drew on a range of ways to conceptualise innovation (Hargreaves, 1999) including actor network theory (Latour, 1996; Smith, Smith & Ryan, 2004), to identify key human and more-than-human aspects of the resources and concerns that shaped innovations to show how local context was crucial in determining the shape of the innovation. In treating curriculum reform in terms of local innovation it emphasises the need for creative alignment of elements to shape and sustain the reform initiative. Based on a definition of “innovation” that incorporates the features of “a process of assembling and re-assembling” (Tytler et al., 2011, p. 22) that is dynamic and iterative, context-specific, and purposeful, the Innovation Framework was used in this project to analyse the issues/vision underpinning exemplar STEM partnerships that were new to the teachers involved (but not necessarily new to the field). The framework includes five basic dimensions:

1. the issues/vision underpinning the innovation;

2. the ideas being explored/promoted;

3. the practices being pursued;

4. the actors recruited to the project; and

5. the outcomes of the innovation.

While the partnership projects analysed by Tytler et al. (2011) were diverse, they shared a common vision of active engagement of students through designing or investigating, often with practicing scientists or technologists, and linking with wider purposes and practices for the STEM subjects. A key finding of the research was the nature of the interactions between the actors and the extent to which these were mutually supportive in developing coherent ideas and practices.

3 The STEM Teacher Enrichment Academy

Since 2014, the Faculty of Education and Social Work at the University of Sydney has been collaborating with the Faculties of Science, and Engineering and Information Technology, to build STEM capacity through teacher enrichment and professional development with the establishment of the STEM Teacher Enrichment Academy. The Academy’s flagship is a program for up to 70 teachers of grades 7–10 mathematics, science and technology designed to be foundational in enhancing teachers’ knowledge of content and pedagogy, inspiring them to reinvigorate their classroom practice and improve student engagement in STEM subjects. It includes a five-day residential program situated at the university (three days at the start and two at the end) with teacher teams (supported by university mentors) undertaking STEM activities in their schools. The overall Academy aims were to:

• introduce and support exciting and effective approaches to learning, enhance teachers’ knowledge of content and approaches to teaching mathematics, science and digital technologies;

• develop a community of practice for participating STEM teachers, with ongoing support and engagement through mentoring, online forums, seminars; and

• develop teachers’ knowledge of STEM-related research and industry as well as knowledge of STEM programs at universities and career pathways.

Earlier research into the features impacting effective professional learning informed the approach taken to design and deliver the Academy program (Borko, et al., 2010; Darling-Hammond, Hyler, Gardner, & Espinoza, 2017). Based on extensive research, Darling-Hammond et al. (2017) proposed seven key features of highly effective programs noting they:

• are content focused – focus on teaching strategies associated with curriculum content;

• incorporate active learning – engage teachers in designing and trying out teaching strategies, provide deeply embedded, highly contextualized professional learning;

• support collaboration – create space for teachers to share ideas and collaborate;

• use models of effective practice – provide teachers with a clear vision of best practices;

• provide coaching and expert support – focus directly on teachers’ individual needs;

• offer feedback and reflection – provide time for teachers to think about, receive input on, and make changes to their practice by facilitating reflection and soliciting feedback; and

• are of sustained duration – provide teachers with adequate time to learn, practice, implement, and reflect on new strategies that facilitate changes in their practice.

Darling-Hammond et al., pp. v–vi

Each of these features was incorporated into the program (Anderson & Tully, 2020). Academy sessions were facilitated by the University’s academic specialists and STEM leaders, with some sessions led by teachers. The program began with three days of face-to-face sessions followed by up to two full school terms working on developing, planning and implementing STEM strategies in school-based teams. Teachers then returned for a further two days at the University to share their experiences, present evidence of teacher and student learning, discuss issues and challenges, and consider future initiatives. Each cross-disciplinary school team worked together to develop inquiry-based learning approaches to teaching both within their subject discipline as well as across the STEM subject disciplines (Anderson & Tully, 2020; Tytler, Williams, Hobbs, & Anderson, 2019).

A unique feature of the Academy is its mentoring and support provision. Throughout the Academy program, professional mentors worked with participating teachers in their schools, providing support and assistance to plan and implement STEM strategies. Mentors visited participating teachers between the two workshop sessions. An online platform was used to facilitate continuing discussion and sharing of resources between teachers across schools. This community of practice developed through interactions in the online community, information updates about STEM initiatives via a newsletter, and STEM one-day conferences to further facilitate sharing of approaches and resources from the wider community of schools in NSW. Since all aspects of the Academy program were fully funded, schools were required to submit an ‘expression of interest’ to join the Academy, to commit to participating in all sessions, and to develop a final report outlining their program.

4 Research Methods

The research described in this article uses a case study design (Yazan, 2015) with the case being the experience of a cohort of teachers participating in the Academy and developing STEM curricula in their schools, supported by a detailed, collective case study of three participating schools, purposefully selected for their diversity along key dimensions to illuminate features of interest (Stake, 1995). The Academy program (2015–2016) included two workshops for the 70 teachers from 12 schools, in November 2015 (Workshop 1; 3 days) and May 2016 (Workshop 2; 2 days). Present at the workshops were the Director of the Academy (Judy Anderson), Academy mentors who visited schools to support teachers between these two workshops, and at least one of the pair of researchers (Russell Tytler and Gaye Williams) evaluating the Academy Program. More detail is now provided concerning the nature of these workshops.

The November 2015 Workshop (Workshop 1) was a three-day program, the structure of which began with a focus on individual disciplinary input and moved towards cross-disciplinary STEM team planning. The evaluation from the previous Academy (2014–2015) led to more time dedicated to this cross-disciplinary STEM team planning for this (2015–2016) cohort. The workshop commenced with invited experts in each STEM discipline presenting to disciplinary groups (Day 1). Academy staff worked with discipline groups in the morning of Day 2, and teachers from different disciplines (in the same school) met to plan an integrated STEM project. This was the first time the STEM teachers from some schools had met together, while for others this was an opportunity to continue ongoing collaborations [Workshop 1 Questionnaires]. On the morning of Day 3, presentations were given from other schools who had already achieved successes (as judged by the Academy Director) with integrated STEM activity. For the remainder of the day, school teams planned STEM programs and presented initial thoughts on these projects to other schools. This movement from a single discipline focus to an integrated STEM project was the key feature of new learning from STEM Academy Workshop 1 for many schools.

The May 2016 workshop (Workshop 2) included school presentations of their projects and time for teachers from other schools to ask questions, school team planning time, discipline time (less in proportion than in Workshop 1), a session about the STEM Professionals in Schools program organized by the CSIRO (the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation is an Australian Government agency responsible for scientific research), and a visit to the Field Robotics Unit of the university.

Due to teacher promotions, transfers, and commitments to other duties, there were some changes in teacher participants between Workshops 1 and 2. However, most the 70 teacher participants engaged in the full Academy program in the 2015/16 cohort. Of the 70 participants, 25 were mathematics teachers, 24 were science teachers, and 21 were technology, engineering, or computing studies teachers. One participant was a school principal, three were deputy principals, 22 were leaders of their school’s subject faculty, and the remainder were teachers. Of the 12 schools, three were in a large regional city in the Australian state of New South Wales [NSW] with a population of approximately 63,000. The remaining nine schools, were all located in the large Sydney metropolitan region, the capital city of NSW.

A range of data sources and analyses were employed to probe the experience of Academy teachers at the workshops, their perceived learning through those workshops, influences of these workshops on what occurred back at school, types of support provided by Academy mentors visiting schools, and feedback from students and other teachers who participated in the school project. The data sources were:

1. document analysis prior to the three-day workshop to gain an understanding of the aims of the Academy and their philosophy in relation to how these aims will be achieved;

2. interviews with the Academy Director concerning the rationale for aspects of the program and responses to ongoing teacher feedback;

3. a teacher Online Questionnaire after each of the two workshops to identify what teachers had learnt, influences on that learning, what they had found most useful about the workshops, what support they were receiving back at school, collaborations occurring to support their STEM activity, resources available, and constructive feedback to inform future Academies;

4. researcher field notes during each Workshop to capture the nature of the sessions and teacher responses to them;

5. analysis of School Presentations during Workshop 1 (initial ideas about a STEM project), Workshop 2 (progress with Projects), and of school reports at Workshop 2;

6. interviews with Academic Mentors after Workshop 2 to provide information about progress of STEM projects in schools, and the support they provided to schools;

7. final reports from schools to the Academy describing what they had achieved; and

8. detailed data from three of the twelve Academy schools (interviews with STEM Academy teachers and other teachers/support persons who engaged with the project at school, students and school leaders, and document analysis) purposefully selected for differences in the models employed that represented significant features of the schools’ experiences.

Analysing the data through the lens of the Innovation Framework informed exploration of the research questions. Table 1 shows how exploration of the different dimensions of the Framework drew on the different key data sources listed above. In addition, analyses through this lens illuminated ways that the professional learning processes undertaken by the Academy stimulated and supported teacher change.

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Illustrations of data informing exploration of constructs associated with dimensions of the Innovative Framework (IF)

Citation: Research in Integrated STEM Education 1, 1 (2023) ; 10.1163/27726673-00101001

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Responses to the post-Workshop 1 questionnaire were received from 61 of the 70 Academy teachers. Although only 14 of the 70 teachers in the Academy responded to the questionnaire after Workshop 2, teachers from eight of the 12 schools were represented. A range of open-ended questions were coded to identify themes and provide a snapshot of whether and how teachers considered they benefitted from the Academy, insights into what occurred, and a frame for further questions. The data from questionnaires, field notes and interviews were shared between the evaluation team and themes identified in an iterative process that involved ongoing discussion and refinement amongst the authors until all data had been examined and agreement reached concerning the major themes represented in the data. These identified themes transcended the particular contextual STEM models identified across the schools. The questionnaire data responses, being more discrete, were thematised using a constant comparative process then again subjected to iterative analysis to bring out the main dimensions of teacher responses, and the temporal patterns in response across the two workshops. In these cases, numbers were initially generated to identify response patterns to major themes of importance, and their representation across teachers from the three disciplines.

5 Results and Discussion

In identifying key features of the pathways followed by schools during and between the two workshops, we present analysis of the data under four headings, based on the research questions:

1. the role of the STEM Academy in supporting teachers’ professional learning needs;

2. variation in schools’ STEM curriculum practices;

3. the process of curricular change; and

4. the nature of innovation in STEM Academy schools.

6 The Role of the Academy in Supporting Teachers’ Professional Learning Needs

Key aspects of the Academy workshops identified by teachers as valuable were the chance to work in cross-disciplinary teams, and particularly the opportunity to share projects across schools. From the field notes (Workshop 1), interactions between teachers and schools in the interdisciplinary session of workshop Day 2 were noticeably more animated than they had been in the discipline-based sessions. On Day 3 of the workshop, when schools planned, and then presented initial ideas on their projects, teams displayed enthusiasm as they developed their ideas and decided how to communicate them to other schools. Interest in these presentations was demonstrated through the attention paid to each presentation, and the number and nature of the questions teachers asked. These presentations focused more on the activity intended than curriculum requirements that could be addressed during the activity.

In Workshop 2, with schools now having substantive activity to report, participants showed similar enthusiasm when schools presented their projects. There was a buzz of excitement and anticipation prior to school presentations. Spontaneous interactions between various schools occurred during the subsequent session that was intended to be planning in school teams. Some schools consulted with other schools about their project with some geographically close schools planning to meet and collaborate after the Academy [Field Notes]. The value of sharing of ideas and projects involving interdisciplinary work was also clear from questionnaires:

Participating in the Academy has encouraged us to review some already good projects to formally identify the links between [subject areas]. We are more open to crossing the boundaries between departments within the school.

Time to get together outside of school to focus on development of our STEM program, in an environment where we are expected to present our developing ideas to a supportive audience (peers, instructors).

Consistent with this, participants expressed a desire for “more time dedicated to the challenges and the accomplishments of participating school’s projects”. They demonstrated that they valued opportunities to hear on-the-ground details of STEM innovations.

Following feedback from the previous Academy cohort, these opportunities to share and reflect in workshops had been increased. Benefits of changes made to the Academy program, based on this feedback, were evidenced in teachers’ provision of critical analysis and constructive feedback. Two themes emerged, that relate to these points: the desire to know more about the pedagogies and the content in other disciplines [Workshop 1 Questionnaire]. These common themes surprised us – that teachers considered the need for greater understandings of teaching and learning in other discipline areas necessary for effective design of integrated STEM projects. The need for such a session was again raised in the questionnaire after Workshop 2 where a teacher suggested this would be a better use of the discipline time:

When we were separated I think it would’ve been more beneficial to have a review of the curriculum of the opposing disciplines because this is where the gaps in our knowledge are.

This raises interesting questions about the nature and role of disciplinary approaches in relation to integrated projects. The discipline-based sessions were intended to set a pedagogical ‘tone’ towards higher order thinking and student-centred pedagogies, but were presented within single discipline traditions. The suggestion that these Workshop 1 presentations be made to cater for across-subject groupings potentially raises questions about how these discipline traditions can contribute to cross-disciplinary thinking and practices. The Academy used this feedback to adjust the program for later cohorts.

Consistent with the Academy’s growing realization of the value teachers placed on inter-school engagement, the Workshop 1 presentations from schools who had already achieved successes with integrated STEM activity were found to be beneficial:

[I] learnt from other schools [who were already] implementing the strategies. This was important so that you could see that the strategies had merit and could work in the classroom.

This opportunity to see integrated projects ‘that had worked’ added to the confidence of teachers associated with implementing integrated STEM projects and provided them with ideas that had already been trialed. Teachers from all disciplines reported the presentations from these more experienced schools as very useful to their learning [Questionnaires]. The same theme of learning from projects that have been trialed was evident:

Showcasing ideas and successes and failures, great to reflect with all partners on progress to date and hear of others’ successes and challenges.

Although most teachers identified the discipline workshops as an area from which they learnt, sharing with other schools and amongst the team, and their own growing experience of integrated activity, were the major sources of learning identified by respondents in the Workshop 2 Questionnaire. Also important was drawing on what they had learnt through these interactions as they developed and implemented projects back at school.

Influences on teacher learning [Workshop 2, Questionnaire] varied from teacher to teacher. They included personal experience, observation of students working on various tasks, student feedback data, interacting with their own student group, running trial activities, frequent contact with colleagues, the STEM Academy (including talking to teachers from other schools, and presentations from other schools) and online activity. The following quotations show some of the ways in which schools and teachers approached STEM activity and demonstrate the thinking within the cohort concerning the development of tasks.

Start with a project that originates in one particular [subject]then expand it to find the other [subject] outcomes that are already there or that can be added with some tweaking of the original plan.

Teacher of Science

Most productive day was when the entire STEM team worked with the STEM class for 4 consecutive periods.

Teacher of Mathematics

7 Variation in STEM Curricular Practices

As pointed out above, a clear model of STEM interdisciplinary practice has yet to emerge from the many reported explorations of integration (Hobbs et al., 2018). In this research we have been able to investigate details of the contextual factors and experience of schools adopting different approaches to STEM. Academy schools’ innovations were mainly grouped under three models that reflected different approaches to the challenge of representing STEM within subject based curricular settings:

1. Authentic, cross-disciplinary activities within a single subject;

2. Teachers from different subjects planning and teaching together around an inter-disciplinary project-based task or theme; and

3. A project-based design task centred in one subject with related/contributing work, involving team teaching, taking place in the other subjects.

In addition to these models, schools also engaged in ‘special events’ STEM activities not embedded in the curriculum, such as outreach to industry, or visits by engineering university students to work with the school students. In other cases, schools worked towards designing a cross-disciplinary STEM unit extra to the normal subject arrangements, with teachers from different subjects contributing. To further elucidate the nature of these models and schools’ experiences of them we present in Tables 2 to 4 an example of each model from the three collective case study schools’ STEM innovations – Diamond School (Model A), Merri School (Model B) and Kirk School (Model C).

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Diamond School: STEM activity was separate in each subject domain (Model A)

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The data were generated through document analysis and interviews with teachers and students and in some cases school leaders, in addition to the questionnaire data, and field notes taken of school presentations in the Academy workshops. The data attended particularly to the nature of the innovation, the challenges for the team in establishing the innovation and the strategies used to overcome these, changes in pedagogy and awareness of the nature of STEM practice and the sources of teacher learning, perception of student engagement and learning, and future plans.

Grade 8 teachers of Diamond school became increasingly aware that they needed to increase their understanding of the way integrated STEM could work. They recognised the benefits of group work for student learning.

In Merri school (Table 3), interviews showed that staff beyond the core team were developing appropriate pedagogies, and perceiving increased student interest in STEM through these projects was reported. Students in interview found learning of mathematics and science in the context of project work engaging.

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Merri school: “STEM Ed” innovation with coordination of activities across three subjects (Model B) (reported in Tytler, et al., 2019)

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Kirk School: Designing, making and trialing Billy carts to increase grade 10 student engagement and understanding (Model C)

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The Kirk school’s (Table 4) group interview discussion post-project (with Gaye Williams) showed the collaborative nature of team members and the close working relationship they had built. All knew what was happening across the project and could take over parts of the discussion as it related to the part they had played in the project. There was evidence that the STEM team were achieving their aim (interview with non-Academy teacher; discussion with STEM team) to developing a way of thinking in teachers where it was okay ‘to make mistakes’ because you learnt from them and knew you needed to try something else.

8 The Process of Curricular Change

From the data, we identified three themes that captured important aspects of the innovation pathways followed by schools to establish STEM curricula. These were:

• dealing with school structures and tradition;

• collaboration across disciplinary teams; and

• growing confidence with student-centred pedagogies.

9 The Nature of Innovation in Academy Schools

As described above, an Innovation Framework developed by Tytler, et al. (2011) has proven useful in making sense of the STEM Academy school curriculum innovations. The framework provides insight into the factors that schools needed to orchestrate to embed their STEM project into sustainable school practices. The framework presents innovation as “a process of assembling and re-assembling” that is dynamic and iterative, is relative to the specific school context, and is purposeful. It considers innovation as requiring an alignment of a common vision, new ideas and new practices for that STEM team, the recruitment of actors including non-human aspects of the local context, and agreement about outcomes. According to this framework, these five dimensions need to be in alignment if innovations are to achieve substantial and sustainable change. Table 5 presents the exemplification of these five dimensions in school innovations in the STEM Academy, drawing on evidence from the data described above.

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The innovation framework as it applies to the STEM Academy schools

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From Table 5 we argue that the framework provides a convincing account of the nature of innovation in the Academy schools, in identifying a set of key features of schools’ principles and practices that underpinned their innovation pathways even if they followed different models and operated under different contextual conditions. terms of the orchestration needed to establish these STEM cross-disciplinary initiatives as significant and ongoing features of the curriculum. It draws attention to the substantive changes in teacher practices involved, and the struggles within schools to establish new ways of working, and new curriculum commitments at a time when curriculum accountability has been moving towards reductionist versions of what it is to learn and to know (Reid, 2021). The table also demonstrates the coherence between the innovations at school level and the design and operation of the STEM Academy program, in that these innovations are consistent with, and were tangibly supported by, the guiding principles and the supportive practices of the program.

A core aspect that drove the workshops and subsequent planning and support was the engagement of students with critical and creative thinking in the STEM disciplines through engagement with authentic tasks, and an emphasis on inquiry and problem-solving pedagogies known to enhance student reasoning and learning. This is consistent with the drive towards STEM in public forums and policy pronouncements. It was presented in the workshops both in discipline specific sessions and increasingly, often driven by teachers’ requests, in interdisciplinary practices. The program did not present specific models of integration but as schools started to plan and share their planning within workshops and through informal networks, ideas for interdisciplinary practices were circulated.

One of the major intellectual challenges faced by teachers involved in this work is the need to align their disciplinary commitments with commitments to engaging students in challenging and compelling activity, evident in many of their survey responses and conversations in the workshops, and in the projects they planned. Many of these challenges are of a practical nature, such as the need for a supportive timetable or time to plan. Some are of a conceptual nature, concerning curriculum coherence, and assessment. Tables 2 to 4 show that schools approached these challenges in a variety of ways.

Teachers expressing a desire to learn more about the curriculum approaches of their non-specialist STEM subjects is consistent with previous research findings that it is not always evident to teachers how they might use integrated STEM resources provided – how these tasks connect with curriculum requirements (English, 2016). English recommends that connections between the STEM subjects may need to be made more transparent for teachers. This is consistent with the Academy’s intended future direction.

The Innovation Framework offers a fresh perspective on key elements of STEM innovation that capture core ideas and practices that teachers and schools should attend to in taking an interdisciplinary STEM pathway. The study thus enriches the literature around integrated STEM in schools, providing some fundamental underpinnings to more deeply inform the field’s interest in STEM models. The Framework, interpreted in Table 5, offers useful directions for a) conceptualizing the core nature of the STEM construct, b) school and teacher practice, and c) the design of teacher professional learning focused on interdisciplinary STEM. The study suggests the need for a program of research that further explores the key features of the Framework dimensions for interdisciplinary STEM in a range of contexts, and under varied professional learning regimes. There is also a need to more explicitly investigate ways in which the Framework can inform and support assessment regimes and affective and conceptual learning outcomes for students. A further direction for research concerns the investigation of conditions for sustainability over a longer time period of STEM innovation.

Limitations of the study include the small number of schools studied in depth and the limited time over which their practices were investigated. The relatively narrow socio-economic range of schools in the collective cases raises questions about the detailed operation of this program approach for low SES schools. This could be a productive area for future study.

10 Conclusions

There is powerful advocacy at the curriculum policy level, in Australia and globally, for moves toward interdisciplinary school practices within the STEM area that more authentically capture professional STEM practice and raise the level of thinking required to undertake tasks (Freeman et al., 2015; National Council, 2015; OCS, 2016). At the same time, there are significant conceptual, cultural and practical challenges to such innovations that need to be addressed as we explore how best to support schools to innovate around this vision (Anderson, 2020; English, 2016; Tytler, 2020). Teachers’ and schools’ experiences arising from their participation in the STEM Academy provide insights into several critical features of innovation in STEM: the commitments of teachers to such activities in the contradictory circumstance of promotion of inter-disciplinarity juxtaposed against curricula structured around disciplines; support for the professional learning needs of teachers in innovating in STEM; and attention to the innovation processes leading to sustainable STEM practices.

Given subject disciplinary traditions within schools (Mockler, 2018; Reid, 2021), it was surprising to find how enthusiastic most Academy teachers were for pursuing inter-disciplinary curriculum and pedagogical approaches. Increasingly over two cohorts of the Academy (2014–2015, 2015–2016), the emphasis has shifted within the workshops to planning for inter-disciplinary project work, and sharing of ideas between schools (Anderson & Tully, 2020). Given the many accountability requirements in the system built around subject based learning, this speaks to teachers’ enthusiasm for change, and the possibility of innovation within a constrained system (Tytler et al., 2019; Tytler, 2020). Aligned with the research of Hobbs et al. (2018), it seems that teachers are willing to be convinced about new directions in STEM, and this by implication indicates the recognition of a need to significantly enhance the way STEM subjects are approached in schools.

Regarding professional learning and school processes, the data demonstrates that innovation requires purposeful planning within cohesive teams of teachers with a shared vision. Developing innovative integrated STEM practices requires time, external expertise, critical feedback, and support from school leadership, program features identified by Darling-Hammond et al. (2017) as necessary for effective teacher professional learning. Building on this earlier research, this study provides rich data about the Academy’s support for participating schools’ innovation processes and raises further questions about the nature of professional learning programs that can successfully promote integrated STEM curriculum.

The analysis provides further validation of the Innovation Framework (Tytler et al., 2011) and its usefulness in capturing critical structural elements of innovation that lead to sustainable practice. The analysis showed the twin practice emphases on collaborative planning and implementation across subject boundaries, and on more student-centred inquiry pedagogies. As argued above, the development of new curricular arrangements supported by teacher commitment to cross-disciplinary collaboration, of renewed understandings of subject teachers as to how their disciplinary knowledge and practice can contribute to interdisciplinary project work, and of new experience of and commitments to student-centred pedagogies, all point to the likelihood these innovations will be ongoing. There is some indication that these aspects, along with the contextual authenticity of the STEM projects, that involve student control of decision making, are key to student engagement in these STEM activities. The analysis also showed the variety of arrangements schools adopted in negotiating subject boundaries and the importance of local context in framing STEM innovation. Arguably, attempts to codify the ways inter-disciplinary STEM should be framed in curricula would interfere with this need to adapt to circumstance, in generating authentic activity.

Finally, the data shows the power of a professional learning experience that enables schools to spend time talking as a community interested in STEM innovation. The clear evidence of how teachers particularly valued time to talk within their school interdisciplinary teams, and to share ideas with other schools engaged in the same struggle, demonstrates the power of the teaching profession as a community of practice in supporting change, and the need to build time for such planning conversations into teachers’ everyday work. Much professional learning is built around a delivery model, but the STEM Academy, a dynamic model in which change occurs through activity, has been found powerful in providing input and support at critical times in teachers’ and schools’ journey, and particularly in providing opportunities for professional discourse around key ideas and practices.