Author Information
Hsin Chen, National Changhua University of Education, TaiwanMeichun Lydia Wen, National Changhua University of Education, Taiwan
Abstract
This study investigates the relationship between a science teacher’s instructional beliefs and his practices while implementing a STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) curriculum. As Taiwan’s educational reform increasingly emphasizes interdisciplinary learning, many science teachers without a background in engineering or technology face challenges in curriculum integration and teaching outside their specializations. This research focuses on a junior high school teacher with a unique cross-disciplinary background—holding an undergraduate degree in environmental engineering and a master degree in biology education—who is passionate about science, committed to instructional innovation, and recognized with national teaching awards. The research examines how the teacher integrates a personal passion for science and inquiry, adjusts teaching goals and views on student roles, and translates STEAM principles into classroom practice. Through a qualitative case study, data were collected via semi-structured interviews, classroom observations, and curriculum document analysis. The teacher, with ten years of experience teaching biology, designed STEAM units within a technology course based on his strong belief in inquiry learning, rooted in science education traditions. The findings illustrate how his inquiry-oriented beliefs translated into diverse hands-on activities, such as using origami to explore structural principles or employing reverse engineering tasks to analyze everyday mechanisms. This study sheds light on how deeply held beliefs inform instructional design and offers insights into teacher professional development and the enactment of interdisciplinary STEAM curricula.
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