Kaylyn Woods loves science.
Ever since taking her first STEM class in 8th grade, she’s enjoyed learning about cells, DNA, and anatomy.
Now, Kaylyn is a junior in the biomanufacturing pathway at the Davies Career and Technical High School in Lincoln, R.I. After high school, she plans to go to a four-year college, and then medical school to become a neurosurgeon.
But even as motivated as she is, sometimes she comes upon a topic she can’t quite wrap her head around, and she needs a teacher to explain it in a more relevant and relatable way to help keep her engaged.
Kaylyn isn’t alone in that. Having math and science concepts explained in understandable and accessible ways is an important source of motivation for middle and high school students.
But that is easier said than done, teachers and experts say. Teachers might not always have the training and support they need to know how to explain a topic in a way that sparks an “aha” moment.
Teachers are passionate about what they do, but that isn’t necessarily enough, said Christine Girtain, the 2023 New Jersey State Teacher of the Year and a high school science teacher for the Toms River district.
“They want to be doing all these things in the classroom,” but the system isn’t always set up to support those ambitions, she said.
How students want topics to be explained
In a nationally representative EdWeek Research Center survey of 1,058 teens conducted in March, nearly half of respondents said that having teachers who explain things so they understand them would have a major impact on their level of motivation in science, technology, engineering, and math classes.
And educators agree. A majority of middle and high school teachers of STEM subjects (59%) also said that having teachers who explain things so students can understand them would have a major impact on students’ motivation in STEM classes. That’s according to a separate nationally representative EdWeek Research Center survey of 605 teachers conducted in March and April.
Students say it helps them grasp the subject better when teachers explain the topics using everyday terms, real-life examples, pop culture, and other things that interest them.
Kaylyn, who at the time she spoke with Education Week was studying for her Advanced Placement Biology exam, said she and her classmates often work together to create analogies between the topics they are studying and pop culture.
For example, when they were talking about positive and negative feedback loops, they related it back to rappers Drake and Kendrick Lamar’s feud. In biological processes, a positive feedback loop stimulates more production, while a negative feedback loop turns the loop off. So, when Drake released his album dissing Lamar, “it decreased the amount of supporters he had, which meant it was more negative,” Kaylyn said. When Lamar came out with his diss track, “it increased his supporters” and was more positive.
“That’s just the surface of what analogies we make, but it’s funny analogies that you’ll remember a lot more,” she said.
It would be great if teachers could draw connections like that, Kaylyn said, so it’s “a lot more helpful for memorization and even just understanding the content on a deeper level.”
Teachers might not fully understand the content themselves
One potential reason teachers struggle to explain topics in ways students can understand is they might not have a firm understanding of the content themselves, experts say.
“Every teacher has had one of those days or one of those topics,” where no matter how many different ways they’ve explained it, students still didn’t understand it, said Christine Royce, a professor at Shippensburg University’s teacher education department, and a past president of the National Science Teaching Association.
“You have to actually know [the subject and the content] to understand the application of it,” she said.
The lack of deeper subject knowledge is usually more of an issue for elementary school teachers, who are often not required to be an expert in a specific subject but instead have more general knowledge of one or all the core subjects, experts say. (Though in some elementary schools, there are STEM specialists who move from classroom to classroom to teach that subject.)
“What I’m probably going to do as an elementary teacher is I’m going to drift deeper into the areas of my interest,” said Tonya Clarke, a secondary mathematics coordinator for Clayton County public schools in Georgia. That elementary teacher might not have an interest in math or science or might not know math or science deep enough to be able to break down processes in ways students can better understand.
For instance, teachers today probably memorized multiplication tables when they were students and didn’t always have to think about the components that support multiplication and how it builds off of addition, said Clarke, a 2023 EdWeek Leaders to Learn From honoree. If someone asked a teacher what 5 times 3 is, they’d know to say 15. But if a student doesn’t understand why 5 times 3 is 15, the teacher might not know to use addition to give them another way to understand that 5 times 3 is the same as adding 5 three times.
“An elementary teacher who has not necessarily been drawn to math may not have built those structures themselves in an education program because the program is so broad,” Clarke said.
On the other hand, secondary teachers, who typically have degrees in the subjects they’re teaching, and others who moved into teaching after working in other professions, might not have gotten enough training on teaching practices and pedagogy, making it difficult to break down concepts into bite-sized pieces for students, Clarke said.
Students are coming in with unfinished learning
Another reason explaining topics in ways students can understand might be challenging for teachers is that students are coming into their classrooms without having learned all the basics in earlier grades.
Nearly 70% of middle and high school teachers said that a major barrier for students to learn STEM subjects is that they “didn’t learn all the basics in earlier grades,” according to the EdWeek Research Center survey.
“Students are coming with unfinished learning,” said Michelle Stie, the vice president of program design and innovation for the National Math and Science Initiative, a nonprofit that works with educators to help students become successful in STEM. “Sometimes, they’re not ready for what you are trying to present.”
On one benchmark of U.S. students’ academic achievement, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, 4th and 8th grade students’ math scores continue to be below their performance before the COVID pandemic.
Teachers, then, have to know how to accelerate students through those gaps in their content knowledge, Stie said. But that takes training and support, as well as an understanding of what students were supposed to have learned in earlier grades.
What teachers need to be able to explain concepts better
Students might also be coming in with misconceptions about a certain topic, Royce said.
“You’re [a teacher with] the perfect example [for a concept], and it might have worked last year, or it might have worked last period, and all of a sudden, you just have a couple of students who have some kind of disconnect with what you’re trying to explain,” she said. “That often goes back to a student’s prior misconceptions. Something in their mind is not helping them connect those pieces together. A teacher has to uncover what that is when that happens.”
For instance, if a science teacher has a lesson on stars and asks their students what color star is the hottest, it’s likely that students will say red, even though the answer is blue or blue-white. That’s because people have been preconditioned to think the color red means hot, Royce said.
So, what do teachers need in order to overcome these challenges to motivating and engaging students? Educators and experts had common answers: Time and money.
Teachers need time to build relationships with students and figure out what interests them enough to know what real-world connections would work for them. Teachers also need time to collaborate with each other and share strategies that work, especially when it comes to finding new and approachable ways to explain complex STEM concepts. And finally, teachers need both time and money for more professional development to hone these skills.
Districts should ensure that teachers have the time to observe their peers teaching, said Girtain, the teacher from New Jersey.
“All teachers benefit from watching each other teach,” she said. “There were always techniques that teachers were using that I hadn’t thought of or hadn’t thought I could apply in science but worked really well.”
Data analysis for this article was provided by the EdWeek Research Center. Learn more about the center’s work.
