Social Emotional Learning through STEM Education: Educators? Perspectives

In an increasingly competitive world which is ruled by technology and innovation, the indispensable need for humanistic skills has never lost its charm. A society high on social and emotional intelligence along with an acumen for science technology is sought after. To promote STEM Education in India, ATAL TINKERING LABs (ATLs) have been established in more than 5000 Government as well as Private schools in India. These Labs have been established with a objective to encourage innovation, critical thinking, creativity, problem solving etc. skills among the students. In addition to all these skills, one of the objectives of ATLs is to improve Social Emotional skills of students. For success in life, Social Emotional learning is an integral skill a person must have. ATLs provide the space for ?Do it yourself? culture for mass manufacturing in the hands of young entrepreneurs and independent thinkers. Here the goal is to understand the effectiveness of ATLs. Teachers play an important role in the development of skills and bring out talent in the students and effective implementation of a program. In this paper an attempt has been made to understand Educators? perception about STEM Education and Social Emotional learning. For this purpose, research was carried out on educators who are in-charge teachers of ATLs, in Government schools of Haryana. After establishing content validity a questionnaire was administered to explore educators? perception. Based on the responses, face to face interviews with participating educators were conducted, it was revealed that most educators are of the view that students working in ATAL Tinkering labs have improved learning outcomes and better social personal qualities. However, educators find some challenges while working with students in ATLs, such as difficulty in developing interdisciplinary problems related to day-to-day life and to find their solutions. Lack of proper timetable for ATL classes during school hours, transfer of educators in other schools, where there are no ATLs. Trainings of educators are required on coding, artificial intelligence, machine learning etc for proper utilization of Atal Tinkering Labs.