Abstract:

In Pakistan, there are 22.6 million out-of-school children which accounts for almost 44 percent of the total population of children in the country. Even those who are enrolled, the quality of education imparted in the schools poses a serious threat to their learning opportunities. The average scores of Pakistani students for math and science on the National Education Assessment System all fell below 50 percent. Rote memorization and learning of these scientific subjects that push memorizing rather than fostering inquiry and practice develops fear and hate of these subjects in kids’ minds. Hence, it demotivates the students and they gradually start losing interest in these subjects. Moreover, they find it very hard to implement and apply these theoretical concepts in real-life context to solve their daily life problems. One solution to address this dilemma is use of Science Technology Engineering Mathematics (STEM) education to make learning engaging, motivating, authentic and applicable. However, due to the current resource-crunched circumstances, they don’t even have access to basic high-quality formal education, let alone the use of electronic boards and modular kits for STEM activities.

STEM Play Area is our proposed solution that aims to deliver effective, affordable and accessible STEM education and study it’s impacts on engagement of elementary student. For this purpose, cost-effective and easily accessible daily-life household recyclable items are used to perform hands-on STEM activities.

This study is conducted in the Tent School System’ for underprivileged kids, located in the slum area of Islamabad. The students comprised of the diverse range of both male and female primary students from grade 2-5 in cross-age learning environment. We developed creative and multimodal STEM lesson plans for an interactive experience.

The study is divided into different sessions for systematic and efficient implementation of STEM curriculum. To engage and spark the interest of students, we started with ‘Break the Ice’ session. This session is followed by quantitative interviews of the students to learn about their contextual backgrounds. This data is collected in an informal setting to learn about their demographic structure and economic performance. In the STEM classrooms, students performed various STEM activities like Marshmallow-Pasta tower building activity in groups of 3-4 students each. Throughout the activities, students are only provided with scaffolding tips and participant observations are recorded to evaluate their performance. In the concluding session, every student is interviewed to collect the feedback of the research study for future work.

This study demonstrated that the hands-on STEM learning activities enhance engagement of students. The use of simple and cost-effective household items made STEM activities community and culturally relevant for students. Through participant observations, we analyzed that the students are more interested to perform design activities rather than receiving the theoretical knowledge passively. This hands-on constructive approach of STEM education tapped into their creativity and their design abilities are greatly improved.

Keywords:

Experiential learning, STEM, classroom-based research, design education, authentic learning, edutainment, affordable STEM.