Feille, KellyNeill, Tiffany2022-12-192022-12-192022-12-17https://shareok.org/handle/11244/336968While STEM education is recognized as a critical priority for national security, health, and economic prosperity, its various and often conflicting meanings, coupled with excessive use of the acronym as a super discipline, render it increasingly meaningless for many. Without a common and consistent understanding of the STEM acronym from which policy makers, community members, educational administrators, informal educators, and classroom teachers understand STEM education, it is unlikely that common goals for STEM education will be achieved. This study, examined the impact a STEM explanatory model, grounded in the content and practices of STEM discipline, might have on diverse STEM-education stakeholders’ conceptions of STEM and STEM integration. A basic qualitative research design was utilized to carry out the study leveraging the voices of participants to understand their conceptions of STEM and STEM integration before, during, and after the use of a STEM explanatory model. The study took place during a workshop offered by a regional STEM alliance center in a large city in a midwestern state. Thirteen diverse STEM-education stakeholders participated in the study representing elementary and middle school STEM teachers, informal STEM educators, and a government official. Data collected through a chronological sequence design with open-ended pre- and-post-survey questions, recorded discussions, and researcher memos were utilized as evidence for the study. Findings show that participants exhibited a narrowing of their understanding of STEM and STEM integration that was more centered on STEM disciplines, stronger coherence among participants in their identification of the STEM components that comprised a classroom activity, and a lack of deep understanding of disciplines that comprise the STEM acronym. Through this study participants adopted terminology associated with the STEM explanatory model introduced as an intervention in the study. Recorded conversations among participants during the use of the explanatory model indicated that participants constructed new meanings of STEM and STEM integration not possessed prior to exposure to the explanatory model. As a result, participants exhibited shifts in their understanding of STEM and STEM integration by the end of the study.STEM EducationSTEM Explanatory ModelSTEM CoherenceUnderstanding STEM