Join the Center for Advanced Studies in Global Education at Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College to meet international scholars as they present their international perspectives on STEM and special education.
Geovana Lunardi and Nayif Awad
International Perspectives on STEM and Special Education
Friday, November 15, 2019
2–3:30 p.m.
Payne Hall, suite 129, Tempe campus [map]
About the speakers
Geovana Lunardi, professor in the graduate education program at Santa Catarina State University in Florianópolis, Brazil, is a researcher in special education and curriculum studies. Her work focuses on curriculum and school practices, particularly issues related to changes, new technologies and innovations within the school environment, and on curricular practices aimed at inclusion of disabled people.
Nayif Awad is a lecturer and head of the Information and Communication Technology Center at Israel’s Sakhnin College for Teacher Education. He has extensive experience in curriculum development and evaluation in STEM areas including sound waves and communication systems, robotics, image processing, programming and coding, and teacher training.
About Awad’s talk
Science education in schools is still being criticized for several reasons: teaching subjects that are disconnected from the students’ world; teaching concepts in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) separately; and the broad use of the traditional teaching method based on the passive transfer of knowledge from teachers to students. In order to address these issues and make science learning suitable for the digital culture, an innovative curriculum about sound, waves and communication systems (SWCS) in the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) environment was developed, implemented and evaluated. The accompanying research aimed at exploring how learning by junior high school students, in-service teachers and pre-service teachers affected learners’ materialization of knowledge, higher-order learning skills and motivation in learning in advanced scientific and technological subjects. The research outcomes and suggestions for further research will be presented and discussed.
