A Study of Determination of Benchmarks during the New Formation of Integrated STEM Leader Preparation Program
Authors: Yilmaz Halit Satilmis 
Published: November 2022

<b>Background: </b>Integrated STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) education is crucial for teacher preparation programs that provide effective teaching in an interdisciplinary approach to teacher training. There is a need for a novel program to train pre-and in-service STEM teachers as STEM leaders who’s moving a passive STEM teacher into an active STEM leader in their schools. The professional development of new STEM leaders in schools is critical so that the benchmarks of a new school program called STEM-LPP can be met. This program is intended to help develop existing STEM teachers to become more experienced and innovative in their usage of interdisciplinary ideas and team-working. An iSTEM approach (Rosicka, 2016) is more than just the skills, competencies, and knowledge of the four (STEM) domains.<br />
<b>Methods: </b>A content analysis method was conducted by benchmarking the top five university master programs and academic committee meetings. The survey method was applied to design a new STEM preparation program for pre-and in-service teachers. This paper reports the benchmark collection and evaluation as a form of meta-analysis by academic meeting processes and views from existing STEM teachers from various schools how do the top five university master programs factor into your considerations? Data was collected by benchmarking and investigating STEM frameworks, models, and principles called benchmarks. Data were discussed and evaluated with academic meeting members, including two experts, two specialists in the department of curriculum development, three STEM teachers, three stakeholders, three staff professors, and two STEM master students from Suleyman Demirel University located in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Besides, 14 STEM teachers participated in evaluating in various schools. Findings: benchmarks and obtained courses were correlated to determine the relations.<br />
<b>Results:</b> The six benchmarks: educational leadership, engineering/project design and integration, technology integration, multiple discipline integration, research-oriented instruction, and practice/experience-based teaching, were determined. Under these benchmarks, courses, competencies, and learning outcomes were also generated. The developing process of STEM-LPP was also confirmed by analyzing the findings from top university master programs with academic meeting studies and STEM teachers’ evaluations. The correlations among the benchmarks and between benchmarks and courses were shown to have a strong correlation and their sufficiency for the criteria of LPP was displayed in the data.<br />
<b>Implications:</b> This type of teacher preparation program has two crucial purposes: at first, providing a way of determining benchmarks during the formation of the teacher preparation program for STEM education program designers and developers. Secondly, it was informative on integrating STEM disciplines with STEM student projects and activity work to develop teachers’ knowledge and skills. This study contributed to the construction of teacher preparation programs in universities and assisted STEM teachers in developing their teaching skills in the educational sphere. In future, such studies should be re-analyzed and evaluated by a large sample size of STEM teachers, partners, and other contributors.