Abstract:

The social and technological challenges of contemporary society impose the need to prepare children and young people to be competent in STEM areas, involving science, technology, engineering and mathematics. The relevance of STEM education from the earliest years has been increasingly highlighted, seeking to enhance logical and critical thinking skills, creativity and the ability to solve problems. These skills should be developed in challenging and innovative environments that encourage collaborative work in the search for solutions to everyday problems. It is essential that students have learning experiences based on a modeling cycle that begins with the interpretation of a real situation, the construction of a simplified model and the use of scientific tools to find appropriate answers.

This paper describes and presents the results of a higher education practice with pre-service teachers, where conceptions of STEM education and STEM professions were discussed. The pre-service teachers were involved in tasks to identify real situations with the potential to develop STEM experiences with elementary school students. The results show that the students, future teachers, still have a low awareness of STEM education, but were able to creatively design a wide range of real-life situations, including problems posing with 21st century professions.

Keywords:

STEM education, Problem posing, Pre-service teachers, Higher education.