A comparative study of pre-service teachers' perceptions on STEAM education in UK and China

Abstract

As more countries emphasize the development of science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics (STEAM) education, the training of professional pre-service teachers has received considerable attention. To explore Chinese and UK preservice teachers' understanding of STEAM education, their willingness to engage in STEAM-related occupations, and their attitudes toward various STEAM disciplines, this study designed a questionnaire to investigate the perceptions of 109 and 379 preservice teachers from the United Kingdom and China, respectively. A quantitative analysis revealed the following: (1) Preservice teachers lacked the understanding of STEAM education in general. (2) Chinese and UK preservice teachers had different overall understandings of STEAM education. (3) Both Chinese and UK preservice teachers had different opinions about the role of art in STEAM. (4) The scores of Chinese preservice teachers in the semantic questionnaire in each discipline were significantly higher than those of the UK teachers, and significant differences in gender and profession were observed. (5) No significant differences were observed between the total scores of the UK and Chinese participants on the career interest questionnaire. Finally, we combined the experiences of the Chinese and UK preservice teachers to provide recommendations for teacher training.

Keywords

• preservice teacher
• steam education
• teacher training
• china
• united kingdom