Training in the Primary Education Teacher Degree in STEM disciplines: Analysis before its reform in Spain

Abstract

The new Law of Education in Spain, known as LOMLOE, includes for the first time the STEM competence with its own entity, among other changes. Accordingly, a reform of the curricula of the Primary Education Teaching Degrees is proposed, for which a deep and global analysis of this initial training is essential. Thus, the objectives that guided this study included the following: i) to compare the distribution of credits among STEM disciplines and their didactics; ii) to check whether scientific-mathematical or didactic content predominates; iii) to analyse the contents of Technology and Engineering; and iv) to compare these aspects between public and private universities. To that end, the study plans of the 37 public and 22 private universities that offer the Primary Education Teaching Degree in the 2020-2021 academic year are analysed. The teaching guides of the 342 compulsory subjects of the associated disciplines are evaluated, considering their contents and their timing, and a descriptive and inferential study is carried out. The results show that public universities devote more credits to training in STEM disciplines, especially to the disciplinary contents of mathematics and science, while there is a significant dispersion in the data. In public universities there is a major focus on disciplinary content, especially in science. Regarding technology, the contents are specific to Information and Communication Technologies, and not to technology understood from the STEM perspective. In addition, Engineering and the global STEM approach itself are absent. This analysis reveals the need to renew the curricula with contents that are more adapted to what the LOMLOE demands and, above all, explicitly including aspects of Technology and Engineering with a STEM approach.

Keywords: STEM, LOMLOE, pre-service primary teacher training, science, mathematics, technology, engineering, public universities, private universities