Methodologies & Technologies to teach STEM in Primary Education: Needs analysis

Abstract

International assessment reports reveal that the scores obtained by Spanish students within the STEM areas in Primary Education are below the average for the EU and OECD. Thus, it is necessary to know the context, perspectives and needs of the different agents of the educational community, both teachers and students. This work, framed into the European CREATESkills project, has been carried out in the Region of Murcia through a quantitative analysis of the data thrown by the questionnaires applied to teachers and students. The questionnaires included aspects such as the resources and spaces, the methodological strategies followed and the use made of the new technologies. Among its main results, we find that teachers need more resources and request more training to improve STEM teaching, while students say they would like to do more experiments and use new technologies. In conclusion, special attention must be focused on the use of active methodologies, the improvement of the digital teaching competence and the development of practical and experimental activities to strength STEM contents in the Primary classrooms..