A Proposed Taxonomy of Teaching Models in STEM Education: Robotics as an Example

Abstract

Many countries and regions have reached a consensus to promote science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education in the past decade. A body of studies have demonstrated that the design and organization of interdisciplinary teaching activities are important for the effective implementation of STEM education. So far, however, little attention has been paid to the taxonomy of teaching models in STEM education. This paper aims to propose a taxonomy based on the dimensions of learning outcomes (i.e., product-oriented and knowledge-oriented) and teaching process (i.e., forward teaching model and reverse teaching model) in STEM education. Through the intersection of the above two dimensions, four teaching models in STEM education have emerged, including project-based learning (PBL), reverse engineering (RE), scientific inquiry (SI), and troubleshooting/debugging (T/D). In addition, four cases are introduced to explain how these four teaching models operate in STEM education. The implications of this work for future research are also discussed. It is promising that the study will be valuable to enrich the current research, and shed light on the theory and practice of STEM education.