Implementation and Quality Assessment of Integrated STEAM Proposals by In-service Teachers: First Results of a Design-Based Research

The STEAM educational approach is continuing to expand internationally with good results reported for the development of comprehensive competencies among students. However, the materials available to teachers are often insufficient and some teachers may encounter difficulties with both the interpretation and the implementation of integrated STEAM education. A project was therefore devised to address those difficulties, in which this research group developed three STEAM teaching-material prototypes for Primary Education. The specific objective of the study was to evaluate the quality of the design and the usability of the first prototype that was proposed. Thus, the initial results presented in this chapter were obtained after the group of teachers responsible for implementing the first of the prototype designs, within the framework of Design-Based Research, had performed an evaluation of their work. In view of the difficulties that were noted, the design was adapted and improved following a discussion of its strengths and weaknesses.