Finding Research on Education

This week in EDU 776 we explored research shared concerning education, student learning, and educational technology. Some of the most useful sites to find research on these topics, in order to stay current with the changing student's learning needs, are:

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On Project Tomorrow's website I came across a research project and webinar covering Trends in STEM and STEAM Education. The data used in this project was gathered from K-12 students, parents and educators by a Speak Up Survey. As I listened to the recorded webinar I was surprised by a few statistics. 

Screenshot of webinar: Source

I found this information graph interesting because of the percentage of use of games in the classroom. This surprised me but I was also happy to see that 50% of the educators are able to implement games into the curriculum in order to make education more active.

Screenshot of webinar: Source

This information graph shows the data of the students in middle school and high school answering how interested they are in a STEAM career in the future. It is interesting to see how they compare to each other. Two of the most drastic data in this graph is the technology and engineering sections. I was surprised that the number of girls in middle school and high school differ so much from the boys in those grades. I think that there is an opportunity in education and libraries to help encourage and promote these fields to girls as well as boys in library programs and education. There may need to be a change in the way we present these sort of programs to patrons. For example if most of the engineering and technology programs are geared towards males and art is geared towards female interests this will affect the way that both genders view these fields. We do not need to direct the students interest in any sort of way but to create equal footing here where anyone would feel supported in going towards any career interest. I was happy to see that the interest in science related fields are pretty even though. 

Research of this kind is very valuable to educators and should be utilized more. As I was looking over the many research projects done by the groups I mentioned earlier I was struck with how beneficial this will be for me in the future. I hope that you too, reader, will find this information useful in forming your lesson plans and classroom settings. These free resources offers current and relevant information over a wide range of areas in education.

Resources:

Trends in STEM and STEAM Education Webinar (2018). Speakup. Project Tomorrow. Retrieved from: https://tomorrow.org/speakup/trends-in-STEM-and-STEAM-education-webcast-June-2018_pres.html