Promoting STEAM Education in Primary School through Cooperative Teaching: A Design-Based Research Study

TLDR

The COVID‑19 pandemic underscored the need for students’ information literacy and computer skills, and STEAM education is viewed as essential for sustainable development, yet China’s K‑12 schools face teacher shortages, unsustainability, and challenges in meaningful discipline integration. The study aims to develop an innovative STEAM education model that leverages cooperative teaching, project‑based learning, and collaborative learning to overcome these challenges. The model employs a multi‑teacher cooperative strategy with diverse scaffolding, familiar themes, curriculum integration, and extended instruction hours, grounded in project‑based and collaborative learning theories. After two design cycles, the model and five instructional design principles were validated, demonstrating that cooperative teaching enhances discipline integration and mitigates faculty shortages in primary‑school STEAM education.

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of students’ information literacy, computer skills, and research competencies for self-regulated learning and problem solving. STEAM education, with interdisciplinary knowledge building and higher-order thinking development as its main purpose, is considered essential for students’ sustainable development in the post-pandemic era. However, STEAM education in China’s K-12 schools is facing several problems, such as insufficient qualified teachers, unsustainable development, and difficulty in achieving meaningful discipline integration. To address these problems, this study proposes an innovative STEAM education model supported by cooperative teaching and theories of project-based learning and collaborative learning. After two iterations of design, evaluation, and revision, the proposed STEAM education model and a set of instructional design principles were validated. The resulting model features a multi-teacher cooperative strategy, detailed and diverse scaffolding, familiar themes for students, the integration of STEAM education into formal curricula, and extended instruction hours. The study results suggest that cooperative teaching can facilitate meaningful discipline integration and can alleviate the STEAM faculty shortage. This study produced five proven instructional design principles for conducting STEAM education supported by cooperative teaching in primary schools.