Teaching integrated STEM, both within STEM domains – or with other domains like literacy or social studies has many benefits. Benefits include meeting demands of teacher preparation and evaluations, saving time, represent content authenticity, and promoting powerful learning. Below, we describe each benefit in more detail.

Important Part of Teacher Preparation

First, many teaching proficiency exams require that students demonstrate that they can create an implement an integrated lesson plan that has clear learning objectives. For example, this is a part of the early childhood edTPA, which preservice teacher candidates must pass as a part of acquiring a state teaching license. So, it is important to understand integration more broadly, and it is also a benefit of building competence in teaching in an integrated way.

Maximize Instructional Time During the School Day

Second, we can meet two or more learning objectives within one or more planned experiences when we pay attention to how the domains are integrated. This may save time when done well, for school days that are increasingly packed with demands. For example, first grade reading experiences that require practice reading informational texts, students must read about something. The content could be science! An Earth science standard related to, “Earth’s Place in the Universe, 1-ESS1-1. Use observations of the sun, moon, and stars to describe patterns that can be predicted” and an ELA standard “1RL.KID.2 Retell stories, including key details and demonstrate understanding of the message or lesson” could be addressed in an experience that involves researching the phases of the moon, reading an informational text or researching in others ways (e.g., Google moon), then creating a model to represent and label the phases and then describe the cause of the phases (see NASA for a lesson plan for moon phases). What other educational standards could be met here?

Authentic Representations of the Real World

Third, the content across and between STEM disciplines, as well as with areas such as language and literacy, are actually connected to one another, naturally in our world, in everyday life, and in our minds. We may focus on one specific content area separate from others sometimes for a variety of reasons in the context of teaching, such as teaching and assessing a specific skill in math. For example, we may want to know if our kindergarteners understand 1-1 correspondence in math, so we do a small group activity in which we ask children to count a set of toy cars so we can assess that skill. In another example, we may want to check if students understand the meaning of vocabulary words related to density, so we ask students to take all the objects out of the water tub that are sinking. However, content across domains is very much intertwined. As educators, we are preparing students to solve problems in their personal and professional lives, problems which will require students to draw on their knowledge from multiple domains simultaneously.

Promote Powerful Learning

Finally, seeing how disciplines are connected can bring them to life, help students make connections to their real lives, and enhance engagement (NRC, 2014). Consider a case in which a 3rd grade teacher identifies a real problem in the classroom: the bins for the classroom’s books are old and there are now more books than they have space for in the room. Can the students come up with a solution within some given parameters or constraints, such as that the solution must be at low or no cost, fit within the limited space, be strong enough to hold the books, be easy to move around if needed, and allow specific books to be easily found? What opportunities for STEM learning might this challenge offer? How is this challenge and the resulting experience integrated? Do you think the students would be interested and motivated to engage with this? What might they learn from it?

That said, note that it is imperative that we pay attention to each domain such that students have opportunities to master content as well as abstract concepts (e.g., students have to learn the number sequence in counting, which will require memorizing the number names, in the correct order). Research suggests that it is especially powerful when students have opportunities for both.