BITARA-STEMTM TRAINING OF TRAINERS’ PROGRAMME: IMPACT ON TRAINERS’ KNOWLEDGE, BELIEFS, ATTITUDES AND EFFICACY TOWARDS INTEGRATED STEM TEACHING

The Bitara-STEMTM Training of Trainer Programme is a short-term professional development programme aimed to increase STEM teachers or facilitators' abilities to teach integrated STEM education and to increase their efficacy, beliefs and attitudes of integrated STEM teaching. The programme involves 35 facilitators, representing a broad spectrum of STEM fields. Pre- and post-test results of the participants' beliefs, attitudes, perceived efficacy and content knowledge in the context of integrated STEM teaching revealed significant changes. The findings also revealed (i) knowledge of integrated STEM teaching to be related to facilitators' efficacy for teaching integrated STEM and (ii) facilitators' attitudes to be related to beliefs of integrated STEM teaching. The outcomes of this study provide evidence that a relatively short-term professional development can have a significant impact on facilitators' beliefs, attitudes, efficacy and knowledge of integrated STEM teaching and STEM concepts.