 Good morning. Good afternoon. We have Professor Tan Ekling with us to deliver the third plenary talk of the conference. Welcome Tan. Professor Ekling will be talking to us today on issues related to educational accessibility and policies in STEM education. She will share with us details of programs that have been implemented in Singapore to increase accessibility to STEM teachers' professional development and to build a sustainable STEM ecosystem through partnerships between schools, tertiary institutions and industries. Tan is an associate professor and deputy head at National Institute of Education Singapore, NIE Singapore. She's also a core team member with a multi-centric education, research and industry STEM center at NIE. Her research focus on the scholarship of science, teaching and learning, science teacher professional development and STEM education. Over to you Tan. Thank you. Thank you for the introduction. Thank you also for inviting me to present at this particular conference. So good afternoon to my colleagues out there. It's a pleasure to be here and to share with you some ideas related to accessibility of STEM for teachers and what is at stake. Now in this particular conference, one of the some of the key ideas that I like to bring across is this idea that STEM education needs to be, teachers need to be more well trained before STEM education can be well taught in schools. Now STEM education has gained a lot of attention, particularly so in the past couple of years whereby many economies around the world, many curriculum around the world have been trying to infuse this idea of particularly integrated STEM learning into schools. This movement or this wave came about because, partly because of the NGSS where they tried to introduce engineering into science curriculum. So the STEM ideas that I will be talking about today, it's not about science or math on its own in a mono disciplinary STEM but rather it's integrated STEM where I define integrated STEM as two or more of the STEM disciplines coming together to help students learn and apply to solve problems. Alright, so I want to talk about, I want to address and push this idea of accessibility. How accessible is this idea of integrated STEM learning for teachers as well as for students? So what are some of the tensions that we have and we see in STEM education, particularly in multi interdisciplinary STEM learning? First of all, STEM learning itself is a blur concept. Now by a blur concept we are saying that we mean that there are multiple understanding of this notion of STEM learning. So for some people the idea of STEM just simply means science learning or mathematics learning or the use of technology in facilitating learning. Well that is one aspect on the continuum of STEM definition. There are also the other form which is integrated STEM learning where we look at how we can infuse or marry two or more disciplines within a certain learning experience so that we can use this knowledge to solve problems. So that is integrated STEM on the other end of the continuum. Now regardless of the disciplines that definitions that we talk about there is a need to unpack what STEM learning is and so because it is a blur concept it makes teachers confuse what exactly is STEM because if I take the definition loosely everything I do can be considered STEM learning but if I'm very strict with the definition then what exactly makes up STEM? So this idea of trying to scope what STEM education is is one of the first tension points that leaders that schools and teachers have to confront before they embark on their STEM learning journey. Secondly there is certain expectations of teachers to implement STEM learning in our classrooms. I work with many teachers across different economies and one of their point is oh you know governments and policy makers say that we have to implement STEM but what kind of STEM are we supposed to do? How do we do this? How is STEM learning different from what we are currently doing in our classrooms? So there in lies the expectation is there but how to go about doing that lies on the shoulders of the teachers and that we are trying to argue that is not very fair for the teachers. Thirdly in many schools schools are still structured in a very traditional mode where learning is structured by subjects is classified by subjects. So students go to school the schedule of school is you have you have a math class now you have a science class now you have a Chinese you have a Malay you have a Tamil you have English classes now so it's still very traditional by mono discipline subjects. So there in lies a tension point how do you then create create a space for integrated STEM to come into the picture unless we create a space called integrated STEM as a subject in school but this has yet to be seen in many parts of the world because this idea of integrated STEM is still people are still trying to work it out alright so the traditional structure of subjects is not helping us push forward for integrated STEM and last but not least the issue of identity of STEM teachers question has been asked are you a STEM teacher or are you a teacher of STEM subject so for many teacher training or teacher education institutions around the world we still we still train or we still certify disciplinary teachers for instance we certify science teachers we certify math teachers we certify English teachers we don't are not yet do we certify a STEM teacher now if we don't certify a STEM teacher then who owns STEM in schools who is the person who is responsible for teaching STEM and though is it also fair to to want to have subject knowledge or disciplinary knowledge of four disciplines residing in a single teacher should STEM therefore be taught as a team rather than dependent on one individual teacher so you see here these are the tensions that needs to be resolved in order for STEM education to become successful so in our last year my colleagues and I got together and we talked about these tension points and the question we asked ourselves would be what then would help teachers resolve these tensions and the decision and the conclusion that we came up with was leadership leadership in schools leadership at policy level leadership in curriculum design so this whole idea of leadership could be something that will help us try to resolve at some point the tensions created from the push for STEM integrated STEM learn now so what is the definition of leadership leadership is defined as a process all right leadership is a process as compared with a product it is not a product but rather is a process it's a process of influence leading to the achievement of a desired purpose so in STEM learning what we are trying to say is there must be a desired purpose and this desired purpose could be integrated STEM learning it could be more proficient problem solvers so we need to work out what this desired purpose is now successful leaders develop a vision so for their schools based on their personal and professional values so in all organizations there will have to be a vision so the question what then is the vision for STEM education so good leaders also articulate this vision at every opportunity and influence their staff and other stakeholders to share this vision to share this vision that integrated STEM is a promising way forward for education for the 21st century for instance the philosophy structure and activities of the school are geared towards the achievement of these of this shared vision so there must be certain structures there must be resources that are put into our schools to ensure that integrated STEM can take place so the three questions that I like to leave us with this from this particular slide for all of us here to think about as we leave this talk later what is the desired purpose of STEM education in your own context in your own schools in your own classroom what are the desired purpose has it been articulated has it been articulated clearly if it has not been articulated perhaps it is time that we take some time and effort to articulate the purpose secondly what is the vision for STEM education now this vision is important otherwise no matter what we do in curriculum design it is not going to help us achieve this vision now a student once asked me in the in the master's class that I was teaching on STEM education and the student asked so Prof Tan is STEM is integrated STEM a compound or a mixture for the chemists among us you would appreciate this very very interesting question our analogy if STEM is a compound it will have a new property of its own property that is different characteristic epistemic practices perhaps that is different from science technology engineering and mathematics right these individual disciplines it will be different but if integrated STEM is a mixture it will resemble it will have properties of science technology engineering and mathematics so therein lies what exactly is STEM and unless we know that we cannot articulate this vision all right so what is the vision do you already know do are we producing a vision or is there a consolidated one and after we have got the vision for STEM education the next question that I like you to think about that all of us not I like you we all of us need to think about is how can a shared vision for STEM education be developed all right and how can it be developed can it be developed solely by the teachers themselves or can it be developed or must it be developed by a community of people coming together or can it be developed by strong leadership so my colleagues and I decided to consult consult the literature for leadership now there is a lot of leadership literature all right if you read some of the leadership more generic ones not particular to STEM you will have things you will come across ideas such as instructional leadership which actually talks about creating conditions within schools to foster and improve learning teaching and support students learning that's instructional leadership related to teaching we talk the literature talks about distributed leadership which is actually shared leadership collaborative leadership delegated leadership or democratic leadership that can there are and can be influenced by societal and cultural values and norms the literature also talks about teacher level leadership in teacher level leadership the teacher is involved in shared decision-making processes in schools and contribute to the professional development of others potentially their peers they share their expertise they contribute innovative ideas and have autonomy in decision-making now when we we took a leaf from these various ideas of leadership and we asked ourselves the question what then is STEM leadership or leadership for STEM schools what does it look does it look different does it look the same what are some of the considerations so leadership for STEM schools we realize need to have three C's they have three C's that needs to be considered first C is the culture and the context collaboration and courage to change from the comfort zone now these three C's can be unpacked further which is what i'm going to go through in the next slide but let me talk about why there is a need for these three C's now these for culture and context one of the key questions we ask ourselves is that is whether integrated STEM is culturally sensitive what this means is that is integrated STEM the same here in Singapore compared with that in India compared with that in the United States or in the UK if it is the same if it is universal then culture and context is irrelevant but what we are arguing is that because we have different needs we have different cultural beliefs about about our society about what makes good learning we believe that these need to be considered as well the culture and context of our local of our society as well as the culture and context of local schools must be considered for leadership of STEM okay this could also include things like the kind of vision the resources that's available to the schools within a specific local contact these need to be considered in STEM leadership the second C talks about collaboration now as you might have understood the STEM consists of people with teams of people with different disciplinary knowledge coming together we have the math teacher we have the science teacher we have the engineering train teachers we have the technology train teachers coming together to draft curriculum to plan learning activities this idea of collaboration must be very strong unless people know how to form teams uh there are diverse teams that have got different disciplinary knowledge then STEM learning is not going to take place in a meaningful manner so how do teachers from different discipline collaborate how do we take each other's strengths understand each other's disciplinary nuances before we can come together one of my PhD student is studying the idea of border crossing boundary crossing across for for teachers of different disciplines trying to come together and to work together and and one of her findings was that uh um that there are key challenges because uh we we tend to think in a certain manner we tend to give emphasis we tend to value different things when we have different we come from different disciplines so collaboration is one fundamental aspect to consider and the the third sea that we want to advocate is this courage to change from comfort zone now why is courage important in many uh communities that we work with um people or teachers students parents uh leaders are very comfortable now these discipline existed on their own for many many years let's not rock the boat all right so this idea of integrated or interdisciplinary teams coming together caused a lot of tension and pretty much most of the time um their preference is well you know what let's not change all right because change is scary so we feel that in order for STEM to change the leaders must have the courage to move to move themselves to move their teams out of their comfort zone so with these three seas in mind culture and context collaboration courage to change from comfort zone we propose this idea of um three seas i'm sorry i didn't realize this was blocking we propose the three seas model of STEM leadership all right three sea model of STEM leadership well on the vertical axis you see that we have agency identity building a community now in this particular table we raise many questions now these are important questions important questions for any potential leaders to consider so first of all you can see under culture and context and under agency hang on you see one of the key question is how do different departments make decisions a good leader has to answer this question or try to find out how different departments how the science department how the math department how the engineering department make their decision be it decision of resource allocation decisions for curriculum decisions uh manpower decisions uh student assessment decisions how do these different discipline uh departments make these decisions are they the same are they different and if they are different what are the differences the second sea of collaboration under this idea of agency we ask ourselves this question who has the power to make decisions who has the power is it the principal is it the heads of department is it the teachers who makes the decision which department makes the decision who decides on working teams how do teams come together is it very grounded decision making where the teachers have a lot of agency or typically it is the head of department coming in and then assigning people to teams and under courage to change for agency are there avenues for individual stem teacher to initiate change so for instance you may be very passionate about integrated stem can you form a team and and tell your your leaders look i think this is going to be good this is going to work let me try it out with my students do we have that agency can teachers nominate themselves to be in the stem team you see a team that's performing well and you think that's something of your interest do you have the power to nominate yourselves to invite yourselves into the team so that's under the agency questions relates for the three seas under agents the second point is identity this idea of identity for context identity for collaboration and identity courage for change questions for culture and context that we are asking ourselves do teachers identify themselves as stem practitioners over here in Singapore at least we know that our teachers still identify themselves as either science teacher or math teacher or technology teacher no one has identified themselves as a stem teacher what about yourself in your community do your commute do you identify yourself as stem practitioners under collaboration how are new identities of interdisciplinary teams created this is an important question because when we want to collaborate how do we create this identity all right and i think this is one of the most important and probably the most challenging aspects in forming new identity be it at schools k12 schools or at the university we found this to be particularly challenging at the university levels because universities are very specialized and when we when we advocate specialized disciplines it becomes difficult to say hey you know what we want a little bit more porous all right so engineers will say i'm an engineer i've got nothing to do with the scientists so how do we form this stem identity and under courage for change we ask ourselves are there mechanisms to recognize transient identity i am transiting and transiting from being a science educator to a stem educator i'm transiting from being a math teacher to a stem teacher do we want to recognize this are there mechanisms to recognize multiple identities i have multiple identities do you belong to one department or many departments so these are questions that are still outstanding that we were we we tried to seek answers within the literature but we weren't able to find a lot of these answers and of course the last one is building a building a community building a community under cultural and context our current departments collegial in their interactions i think this is something we we ask ourselves a lot how do different departments work together are we always happy with one another how do different departments work we all work differently and what does each department value we cannot assume that each department value the same thing they could be different and we need to find this out and of course our collaboration with industries are their collaborations with industry or the community now one of the things with culture and context is that at least in singapore and in in many parts of asia we realize that with stem education there needs to be deliberate collaboration with community out with i'm sorry with industries because cutting-edge knowledge related to stem does not reside in the school context their teachers themselves do not have these cutting-edge knowledge and these cutting-edge knowledge of science technology engineering mathematics resides in the industry so we need to have active and meaningful industrial partners who will be able to bring this new knowledge into our classrooms who will be able to work with the teachers to translate and transform these knowledges that they have and bring them to the students this will help to keep learning all right learning updated learning for our students at a cutting-edge level under collaboration for building a community our school schedule conducive for interdisciplinary teams to meet this is probably one area that some people may perceive it to be administrative but at the same time it is more than being administrative we need to have structures we need to build in structures to enable teams to meet so if the science teacher always you know never have a time common time with the math teacher how then would interdisciplinary teams come together so how can we facilitate that to happen are there mentors to develop the novice stem teachers within teams how do we build up a mentoring culture within teams and are there structures for professional developments in teams so these are things that some some communities have all these in place others need to think about them and the last one which is courage for change we are talking about our stem teams inclusive do we have inclusive stem teams or our stem teams only for the privileged how can stem teams be inclusive if we are not yet inclusive how can we be more inclusive and can changes in interdisciplinary teams be evaluated do we need to evaluate and if we do need to evaluate how can we evaluate so i'd like to reiterate the fact that these three c models of stem leadership throws up many questions many questions which are fundamental and structural that needs to be considered for stem learning to get to the students for teachers to become effective stem learners so one of the things that we have done in Singapore is that we had a program we have a program called the empowering stem education professional program this is one of the many efforts that we have put together to build an ecosystem to support stem teachers to support stem learning particularly integrated stem learning so the vision that we have at Mary stem at NIE which is a stem education research center that was set up in 2018 one of the vision that we have is to ensure that we have the industries coming in the teachers coming in the schools coming in as well as our partners from different parts of Asia coming in to have a dialogue to talk about some of the questions that were raised under stem leadership so that collectively we can build a stem an Asian stem identity that will be that could look the same or different from what is actually carried out in the West so in this empowering stem education professionals program it is an annual program that we organize all right we've organized it only for two years right now and we've seen good good results and good feedback from the participants so it's open to all teachers to participate so therein lies what we call teacher agency we let the teachers decide we let the teachers decide if they want to be part of this particular program all right so agency is important choice is important for our teachers one of the requirements to be part of the program is for teachers to work within interdisciplinary groups or interdisciplinary teams within their own school or between schools so we also have seen teachers between schools schools within the same cluster schools within the same area coming together to work together in interdisciplinary team so here we try to build the teacher's identity so they no longer see themselves as i'm a teacher from school x i'm a science teacher from school x no rather their identity has become i'm a teacher belonging to this particular stem team so through time we do want them to build an identity to say you know what i'm a science teacher but i'm also a stem teacher or a teacher of stem this is where the multiple and transient identities come in and of course we have winners what this program does is that we open this as a competition of sorts for teachers to put in their lesson ideas so they have to think of a problem a stem related problem they put in their ideas the lesson plans the lesson packages and it will be judged by a panel of judges the judges will pick the winners and the winners will share their ideas with others that winners serve as what we call a center of excellence for stem learning and they will share their ideas with others within the country as well as outside the country so when they share their ideas with others they we're hoping to build a community a community where we help one another improve upon these various stem lessons and of course the winners go on learning journeys to share their ideas with teachers internationally so we have several projects with say Bangkok in Thailand we have projects with our partners in Indonesia so our teachers will in Singapore teachers will visit our Indonesian teachers our Thai teachers to share their lesson ideas we run similar programs in Thailand and in Indonesia as well so they will also come to Singapore now one of the things that we noticed was that the problems that were shared the lesson ideas that were shared look different which is which is the cultural and context sensitivity of stem learning for instance in Singapore we have we look at the problem of sustainable food supply all right Singapore being a very very small country that has got no natural resources we are dependent on a lot of our friends from other countries to import food into our country to give us you know fuel etc etc so sustainable food supply is a big issue for us and it becomes even more acute um as as uh evolve as the pandemic evolves all right so one of the stem problems that we talk about a lot in our country is sustainable food supply so like this year the theme is uh edible landscapes how can we grow food for to feed ourselves last year we talked about clean energy all right now our colleagues in Indonesia for instance our friends in Indonesia their problems are more local they talk about buildings buildings that can withstand earthquakes but this is something which our Singaporean teachers and students won't think about simply because there are no earthquakes here in Singapore so we won't think about that but this exchange of ideas help us appreciate the problems that they face so that we have a better understanding of that of different communities facing different types of stem problem they also have problems with things such as pigeons pigeons and their droppings causing damage to to their local population so they talk about biologically friendly ways to keep pigeons away they have bumper harvests of coconuts within the community and one of the very interesting ideas is how do we make use of this coconut how do we create fermentation products that will store um that will keep well in under hot weather conditions that are equally nutrition so there are different problems which um different society and different cultures uh face and they create different problems for their students to understand and for them to learn so the question is what is the problem of your own community and can you try to use these contemporary problems contemporary issues to help your students better understand the idea of integrated stem now integrated stem has problem at the center most of the time because we want the students to solve authentic problems in 2019 my team and I published a paper called the stem quartet instructional framework where we try to use this framework we propose this framework to help our teachers plan meaningful stem lesson under the stem quartet instructional framework we have problem at the center and this problem is not any types of problem but rather I'm just typing this in the chat stem quartet instructional framework you can download the paper it's a free as your open access paper the stem quartet instructional framework we argue that while students learning are rich in science, math, engineering and technology if they come together it makes it if the four discipline comes together the learning experiences of our students become more enriched just like a choir the sopranos can sing and produce melodious music the tenor as well but when we have all the four parts coming together we make a different sound we make more beautiful music so we have problem at the center but these problems are not any type of problems but rather the problems have to fulfill three key conditions and these three key conditions are that the problem has to be complex it has to be persistent and it has to be extended I repeat the problem must fulfill three key conditions complex persistent and extended complex what is a complex problem we define a complex problem as one that requires students to apply knowledge from two or more of the four disciplines to solve if we only require science knowledge then it's not a complex problem it's just a science problem it's not a stem problem a resume has to get two or more disciplines to solve what is a persistent problem a persistent problem is a problem whereby it won't go away once it is solved let me give you an example a non-persistent problem is like a stuck door problem the door is stuck what can you do you get the mechanic to come in you change the hinge of the door and then the problem goes away the door is no longer stuck that's not a persistent problem a persistent problem is like our energy problem well we have several solutions the problem never goes away we are still continuously trying to look for alternative sources of energy right so that's a persistent problem and of course the last one is an extended problem in stem learning we are trying to argue for the fact that we when we present students with the problems it is not simple problems rather it's problems that require students to be engaged with the activity for a prolonged period of time not just five to ten minutes which is what we do when we give students a math homework right we give them a ton of problems and they can solve it within the hour in stem problems we say that no it has to they have to spend about at least six hours trying to figure out what it is and trying to propose solutions to these problems so with the stem quartet we got our teachers to stop designing activities for the community for their students and then what the teachers came back to us and they said you know what Ekleng this is really hard it's really difficult to do why because when they will present when they present a problem students can come up with different different solutions and they said that therein lies a problem because i want to map my lesson onto a set of learning outcomes i want to be able to tick off my learning outcomes but when it comes to problems i can't do that i can't do that simply because i don't know what solution students will generate so so let me give you an example a teacher came to me and a teacher said you know what Ekleng i love to teach my students the intelligent traffic light or the smart traffic light so i use the smart traffic light to get our students to unpack and to learn about Nen gate nor gate or gate and circuitry and i said to the to say to the teacher but what problem does the intelligent traffic light solve and the teacher says wow traffic jam so i said great can you then phrase your activity as a traffic jam that there is a traffic jam outside the school every day at seven in the morning think of a way to solve the traffic jam problem and the teacher said no i can't do that i can't do that because the traffic jam can be solved by a rule a law being passed that only on mondays only green cars can come to the school so they don't actually need a stem solution they may not actually think of a intelligent traffic light and if the student's proposal of a solution is not a traffic light i can't teach them the Nen gate nor gate or or gate and i thought well he's got a point right and if we want teachers to have agency to have a voice to be able to propose changes we need to listen to these problems and difficulties that they face in the class so one of the things that we did was we actually published another paper because um we started to do research on what we call problem centric and solution centric stem learning in problem centric we start with a problem in solution centric we start with a solution the intelligent traffic light is a solution to a problem so it becomes a design based kind of stem lesson when they start with a solution the students must learn the affordances or the understand how the solution works what are some of the areas for improvement some of the gaps in the current solution and then they will be asked to design 2.0 all right they'll be asked to design 2.0 and in the design process all right in the design process they uh they learned the content the disciplinary knowledge they learned the epistemic practices of the board discipline so i'll be also publish a paper a second part of the stem contact paper that talks about centricity of stem problem centric stem user centric stem and the last one we call problem centric stem solution centric stem and user centric stem so we have these different types of centricity different versions coming in now what have we found so far from this particular research uh one of the things that we thought was that in problem centric stem our students become more creative they ask more questions they have a richer learning experience but our preliminary data suggests to us that that's not the case that's not the case in solution when they start with the solution which is a design centric stem they are actually more creative all right they ask more focus questions our hypothesis is that in problem centric stem the cognitive load and the cognitive demand of the student is very high students were asking a lot of questions trying to just make sense of the problem they were trying to scope the problem and and so they use a lot of their time and effort to scope the problem leaving them little time to be creative or innovative in the solution that were proposed for the solution centric they they are given the solution they don't actually they are given the solution they have to think of a improved design for the solution so with that they don't actually spend a lot of time trying to figure out what the problem is so it gives them a freeze up more time for them to be creative in version 2.0 for instance so we are not advocating one method over the other rather what we are trying to advocate is that depending on our students students at different levels will require different ways of approaching stem as a teacher when I work together in the team I will think okay my students are new maybe I will start with solution centric once they are more familiar I move towards more open ended problem centric kind of stem for the students all right now all these require strong leadership I need as a teacher in the classroom I will need resources I will need expert knowledge of my colleagues to come together I will need time to plan I will need time to also implement so this requires good head of departments enlightened principals who share the same vision of stem learning before it can actually happen so I hope that from today's sharing you take away with you three C's culture and context collaboration courage for change and in these three C's of leadership we examine the agency let me let me move back we examine the agency the identity as well as the need to build a community there are various activities that can help build this community and the community is not built by people belonging to the same discipline but rather people belonging to different disciplines so with that thank you thank you professor tan for the nice talk and sharing your insights about the problem so now let's go into the question so so first of all I have a question in in your teacher professional development program suppose for example taking your example if if the student is asking the traffic question to a biology teacher who doesn't know much about the gates so like what is the nature of the content training like I understood that your model provides like a winner is selected and further opportunities and avenues are provided for the teacher to improve his or her scholarship but are there like specifically focused training programs for example taking problems which are of this nature complex interdisciplinary problems and in a workshop like sitting they are trying to tackle it like that are there such components in your workshop yes so um that's a really good question one of the things that we do is like take the traffic light that we have in a STEM quartet instructional framework we advocate for a lead discipline meaning that the lead discipline would be the teacher leading the team so the traffic light problem would typically be led by a physics trained teacher a physics trained teacher will take the lead in convening the team and in developing the resources together so in the development process everybody learns the content I'm a biology teacher I will learn from my colleagues so this idea of a peer peer teaching comes in and we build our knowledge base together so if I have another problem that say diabetes which is a more biology based content knowledge required I'm a biology teacher I will be the lead teacher I will lead the team there's the lead discipline to help my teachers my team come together and learn the content so that way we we avoid the oh I know I don't know anything about this I can't do this so we the teams become very important so in this kind of collaborative meetings you develop modules around this kind of something that is the okay that's right that's right I think I see some questions on the chat yeah we have the first question from just need are you want me to read it out um I think uh how do industries in I can I can do it um how do industries intervene in this STEM professional all right so um what we do is for each year we will invite some of our partners from the industry to give professional development talks and workshops for our teachers for teachers who might be interested to be part of the program so they come in they this is part of their community outreach program so they work with the teachers to uh equip them with um some knowledge of um that particular you know let's say for instance last year we had clean energy we got our partners from Exxon Mobil to come in to talk about petroleum to talk about the ubiquitous use of petroleum in all in in plastics in making um more um you know different distillates of petroleum in how it's being used in the industry not just of fuel to run what are some of the difficulties that we face when we want to talk about moving away from fossil fuels so this would be what the industry partners would share with the teachers the knowledge that they have the current knowledge and they will work with the teachers on that so I hope that gives you an idea of how industries intervene with the particular program um the second question is to end um end up co-teaching causes as a result of their work with the program not just splitting the cost pun 10 but being in the classroom together for all lessons and that's actually a really good question Sumitra um different schools actually uh operate slightly differently so um what they do actually is um many schools have co-teachers but they don't go into the classroom together but rather they have a unit of work so for instance the science teacher let's say this this week we decided the math teacher and the science teacher will all talk about diabetes the biology teachers talk about um insulin and the hormones related to the diabetes the math teacher talks about how do we compute and measure and model um uh with the data provided somebody who might be pre-diabetic all right so the theme the problem is the same different teachers uh will cover the same thing cover the same theme within their lessons and at the end of uh a week or two then they will come together and solve a problem so there will be individual disciplinary knowledge development and then finally come late to a week where the teachers come together in the same classroom with the students to solve the problem now that's not an easy thing to do because in terms of logistics it's it's quite challenging and that's where the leadership needs to come in the leadership needs to come in and say look we are ready to disrupt what we what we do uh are very well now in in silos all right can we create this space for for the teachers to all come together uh to solve the problem yeah the next question is quite close to that uh regarding opportunities for making mistakes uh like how do you create spaces for failure particularly in nation countries where there is immense societal pressure to achieve success yeah that's uh I don't have the answer to that um how do we this is where the evaluation component needs to come in can leadership uh I agree totally um how do we create spaces to make mistakes uh it's it's a tough thing it's a tough thing um Manu Manu Kapu in his research talks about productive failure how do we actually create spaces deliberately and intentionally for students to make mistakes so that they can learn from their mistakes um uh trial and error it's expected that definitely um so one of the things with STEM education at least in Singapore is that um our ministry of education made sure that STEM integrated STEM is not an examinable subject all right it is not it there will be no exams but rather the students will learn uh in a manner that is non-treatening all right so it's a more sincere also raised his hands uh do you want to speak like in the wind Chaitanya it was his question yeah uh am I audible yes yes hi yeah hi Prof Tan uh thank yeah so I actually I wanted to uh also get some idea about parents responses to this because uh for students uh I think it might be they might be okay with making mistakes but I think it's the parents responses which play a huge role when where this idea of success and failure is concerned so if you could speak a little bit about that thank you thank you thank you for that question um I think one of the things right now we are at the stage we're at crossroads where um we are positioning STEM learning not so much as a subject that you need to pass or you where you need to take an exam before you can move up to a level another level of school but rather STEM learning or STEM projects are positioned as part of an important portfolio building for the students and so um they they students can make mistakes but rather because they keep a track of their learning uh they want to see we want to see we value progress progress in students ideas progress in uh how their ideas have developed through time um so so right now we don't have a lot of pressure from from parents yet because as long as it's not a national exam accountability parents are less edgy about it so um we are positioning this as um they will make mistakes because that's how science is made that's how metametricians are worked that's that's those are the epistemic practices of this particular field of knowledge or field of learning and so communication with the parents is yet another thing that we are trying to work on as well okay next thank you next question is from Sarita have you found that the teachers who participate in the competition also take up these STEM problems with their students over and above the regular curriculum yes yes um what what happened was that the teachers in this particular competition really learned a lot um they they actually use these ideas with their students um sometimes some of them use it within their their core main curriculum others do it outside um their core curriculum so we are seeing these teachers trying to experiment with these ideas because they truly believe in the value of integrated STEM so in Singapore there is a centralized curriculum everyone has to follow like yes yes we do have a standardized curriculum okay the next one is from Zinath could you please elaborate on user-centric STEM okay right so maybe i can share screen just share screen yeah okay let me let me share a screen on a user-centric STEM right so so these are the three STEM so we started out with a problem problem at the center where we have STE and M and the problem solving around it then we talk about um solution-centric STEM which is solution at the center within the context of a problem multiple iterations of a solution to make it better and better and the last one is actually the user as a center this has got resemblance of this has got certain characteristic of design thinking coming in where we we look at what's the need of a user the difference between the user-centric STEM and design thinking is that um design thinking talks about empathy with a larger population in user-centric STEM we identify the needs of individual user so it can be a problem oh sorry a bit further it can be a solution a solution that works for most people but this solution is not good for that specific user because of a certain unique need of that user so one of the things we wanted our students to do is to understand the specific need of the user and then try to think of how you can improvise new solutions for this specific user so for instance we had our students design a car plate tracking system for their school and then the state they were supposed to implement it with the security personnel tracking car cars going in and out of the school so this group of students were really good with uh uh coding you know python etc and they created a solution really really well and they were very excited so they they handed it over to the security personnel but after a week the security personnel didn't use the system and then they were disappointed so one of the so the teacher very skillfully told the the kids to say you know what let me arrange for a meeting with the security personnel to get them to to have a dialogue with you and they did and so they asked them what are you using the system that we created and the security personnel said well you know what we are old many of our security people are old elderly the phones are so small we had no idea what to click it was as simple as that this the the kids went back and they said oh dear what should we do so they start to create this big icon you know this red big red button and they numbered it one two three and so they told they they went back and they they told the security personnel you click one then you click two and then you click three you just need to look at this big number and so um when they did that they started to use the system and when we interviewed the students afterwards and asked them what was the most impactful part of this learning process they said it was the dialogue with the security personnel so they understand that user experience is important right they don't a solution it's not a solution unless the user uses it the user knows so you need to first understand what are the issues with the user so that's a user-centric stem that we are talking about in short hope that thank you thank you i have one last question in a centralized system there are different layers of leadership right for example i mean it the situation gets complex as the size of the country increases so for example in for in a country like india what the decision taken by uh at the central at the upper most uh in the hierarchy that has the most constraining impact on the whole system but they are the uh father's away from the ground reality of classroom so this kind of uh lack of connection between different layers of leadership and how how does your model take into account that even though the teacher decides there may be other factors that definitely i i think that's an excellent question what our model tries to do is um it tries to uh i don't think our model can account for the highest level of leadership and how it cuts gate downwards it will not be able to explain that but rather what we hope our model does is add a more we cannot change the exam system right we cannot change the exam system so that is something we cannot consider and we we will not uh but rather what we can do is can we create other spaces outside the exam okay so um uh that's that's something we can continue to consider with with our leadership thing with with um bigger systems how does it work yeah okay uh we will uh there's one more comment from bishal and with that we can uh close the session uh we want to understand how industries like exxon mobile uh mobile who are active funders in climate change denial and one of the major polluters can be invited to talk on clean energy when climate change and clean energy are one of the biggest scientific problems to be solved thank you for that i think that's uh that's a contentious uh a debate that we are having as well even within our local community um when we wanted to work with exxon mobile uh within ourselves we also had a lot of debates whether or not to to be uh to invite them as partners one of my colleagues that you know what we shouldn't we shouldn't do that they are greenwashing you know um these sort of debates um but i think at the end of the day we decided that there still needs to be a dialogue demonizing um demonizing um industries uh fuel industries uh it does not mean that um the problem will go away but rather how can we make use of what they are doing to seek to better understand why they are doing that and how we can play our part as active citizens um to use less energy etc um so i think a dialogue is the way forward and so uh that's why we have them coming in as partners thank you okay thank you thank you professor pan for the nice talk and patiently answering all our questions uh let's join our hands together to uh thank professor pan for the nice talk she has given and for the time thank you thank you very much and uh appreciate this opportunity have a wonderful conference thank you