Changing STEM and entrepreneurial thinking teaching practices and pedagogy through a professional learning program

With the recent endorsement of STEM education as part of the National Innova-tion and Science Agenda by the Australian Government, the challenge facing educa-tors is how to meaningfully embed STEM-related knowledge, skills, and dispositions in all levels of schooling. Educators and researchers are becoming increasingly inter-ested in investigating how to support students’ learning in STEM and what teaching approaches are most conducive for developing investigative, design, and reasoning skills. Such consideration of STEM in education acknowledges a proliferation of mul-tiple understandings of STEM education and the emerging diversity of approaches to STEM teaching. Teachers need to be supported to develop their own approach with-in the contexts of their own school and learning needs. This chapter reports on teachers from primary schools in Victoria who were involved in a professional learn-ing program specifically designed to build their confidence and capacity for teaching STEM through inquiry-based approaches. Frameworks relating to STEM curriculum development and teacher and school change provided structure and focus for the program. This chapter draws on data of changing teacher STEM pedagogy to gener-ate insight into the diverse responses that schools can have to professional learning in STEM and entrepreneurial thinking. The findings of the study indicate the im-portance of research-informed frameworks that are flexible enough to be applied to schools at different stages of STEM implementation.