STEM instructional design for 4Cs’ (critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, communication) skills in learner diversity environment

Abstract

This experimental study used the engineering design approach to develop four STEM activities with two comparable instructional designs for learning the STEM-related subjects content knowledge and meanwhile for developing the 4Cs’ skills of students. Sixty participants where thirty students were from the junior secondary school and the other half were from the senior secondary school, they were assigned to a 2 (instructional design: less vs more-structure design) x 2 (learner expertise: novice vs advanced) conditions. The implications of this experimental study provided us the forecast of instructional design of developing the 4Cs’ skill of students (critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, and communication skills) in STEM education. The result indicates that the instructional design for developing the practical skills should take expertise reversal effect, instructional format, and the gap between teacher’ perspective and students’ perception into account. Evidence from the interviews shows that STEM education brings the motivation of learning to the students. Evidences from the statistical analysis show that the instructional designs with the ideas of “exploration-based” or “direct instruction” have no significant effect on students’ perception of their 4Cs’ skills after the intervention. Whereas the advanced learners were more inclined to improve their 4Cs’ skills under the less-structured design that enable them to explore and discuss more.