A Literature Review of Science and Mathematics Integration

Integrated curricula has gained a great deal of acceptance among educators. Many educators provide testimonials about the effectiveness of units they teach, and many professional organizations stress integration across the curriculum. However, few empirical studies exist to support the notion that an integrated curriculum is any better than a well-designed traditional curriculum. Some educators question integration across the curriculum, because in the effort to integrate topics, science and mathematics content becomes superficial and trivial. This paper presents a review of the literature on integrated curricula. It concludes with a call to action for members of School Science and Mathematics Association.     

Integration of Science and Mathematics: A Theoretical Model

Interest in interdisciplinary, integrated curriculum development continues to increase. However, teachers, who have been given primary responsibility for developing these materials, are often working with little guidance. At present there exists no clear definition of the meaning of integration of mathematics and science. A continuum model of integration is proposed as a useful tool for curriculum developers as they create new integrated mathematics and science curricula or adapt commercially prepared materials. On the continuum, activities range from mathematics or science involving no integration to those activities including balanced mathematics and science concepts. Several examples are given to illustrate the utility of the continuum model for analyzing integrated curricula. The continuum model is intended to be used by curriculum developers to clarify the relationship between the mathematics and science activities and concepts and to guide the modification of lessons.     

Mathematics and Science Integration: Models and Characterizations

The squeeze on instructional time and other factors increasingly leads educators to consider mathematics and science integration in an effort to be more efficient and effective. Unfortunately, the need for common understandings for what it means to integrate these disciplines, as well as the need for improving disciplinary knowledge, appears to continue to be significant obstacles to an integrated approach to instruction. In this study we report the results of a survey containing six instructional scenarios administered to thirty-three middle grades science and math teachers. Analysis of teacher responses revealed that while teachers applied similar criteria in their reasoning, they did not possess common characterizations for integration. Furthermore, analysis suggested that content knowledge serves as a barrier to recognizing integrated examples. Implications for professional development planners include the need to develop and provide teachers with constructs and parameters for what constitutes mathematics and science integration. Continued emphasis on improving teacher content knowledge in both mathematics and science is also a prerequisite to enabling teachers to integrate content.     

Location Science Research: A Review

This document presents a broad review of facility location and location science research. The goal of this report is not to provide an exhaustive list of location science topics (an undertaking far beyond the scope of a single journal article), but rather to provide the reader with a more general review of the location science research landscape. This document starts with a short introduction to some of the more germane aspects of all location science research.     

Stepping into iSMART: Understanding Science–Mathematics Integration for Middle School Science and Mathematics Teachers

This paper is based on an online graduate program for middle school science and mathematics teachers in Texas titled Integration of Science, Mathematics and Reflective Teaching (iSMART). Launching the program for its first cohort in fall 2010, the authors attempted to answer the following two questions in this paper: (a) How do the members of the iSMART design team and the first cohort of teacher participants define science and mathematics integration with similar and different emphases? and (b) How would these definitions and concerns impact the ongoing design of the program? The iSMART design team members and the participating cohort teachers had a shared view regarding the importance of integration and its possible impact on student motivation. The findings also revealed that the two groups showed some different points of emphasis in their definitions of integration. These issues will be addressed in the ongoing design of the program in the following three areas: (a) design of the second summer meeting activities, (b) greater emphasis on teacher as researcher and action research, and (c) administrative support for teacher collaboration.     

Examining Instructional Practices of Elementary Science Teachers for Mathematics and Literacy Integration

Integration of content in core disciplines is viewed as an important curricular component in promoting scientific literacy. This study characterized the current practices of a group of elementary teachers relative to their development of interdisciplinary links between science, mathematics, and literacy. A qualitative analysis of survey data showed that there were substantial differences in the use of a well‐developed process for integrating instruction. Teachers also lacked a conceptual connection to integration, showed contradictions in the importance placed on hands‐on experiences, used measurement as the primary interdisciplinary connection between mathematics and science, and did not use instructional strategies designed specifically for nonfiction/expository text. The findings underscore the need for professional development that assists teachers in changing their conceptual perspectives to integration while also building pedagogical knowledge related to integration of science, mathematics, and literacy.     

What Does Integration of Science and Mathematics Really Mean?

In this era of curriculum reconstruction, considerable attention is being focused on curriculum integration. The integration of science and mathematics continues to be interpreted in different ways. In this article, five different meanings of integration of science and mathematics–discipline specific, content specific, process, methodological and thematic–are investigated along with instructional implications of these different approaches to integration.     

Mathematics and Science Teachers' Use of and Confidence in Empirical Reasoning: Implications for STEM Teacher Preparation

The recent trend to unite mathematically related disciplines (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) under the broader umbrella of STEM education has advantages. In this new educational context of integration, however, STEM teachers need to be able to distinguish between sufficient proof and reasoning across different disciplines, particularly between the status of inductive and deductive modes of reasoning in mathematics. Through a specific set of mathematical conjectures, researchers explored differences between mathematics (n = 24) and science (n = 23) teachers' reasoning schemes, as well as the confidence they had in their justifications. Results from the study indicate differences between the two groups in terms of their levels of mathematical proof, as well as correlational trends that inform their confidence across these levels. Implications particularly for teacher training and preparation within the context of an integrated STEM education model are discussed.