STEM Activities are Ideal for Social Emotional Learning

For an educator who may feel strong in their skill for integrating social emotional learning, but less confident in their ability to lead a science experiment, there’s good news: STEM activities are an exceptional opportunity to practice social emotional learning.

By Tania Dearden and Lindsey Childers

Photo by Tengyart on Unsplash

Although most educators see the value in incorporating STEM activities into their elementary curriculum, many fear that they don’t have the knowledge or skill set to do it well. They forget that young children are quick to forgive our imperfections and are naturally drawn to the hands-on, open-ended nature of STEM activities. For an educator who may feel strong in their skill for integrating social emotional learning, but less confident in their ability to lead a science experiment, there’s good news: STEM activities are an exceptional opportunity to practice social emotional learning.

Before Tania Dearden joined foundry10 as a STEM Program developer, she witnessed this first hand as a program facilitator with Techbridge Girls, a nonprofit organization that runs afterschool STEM programs for girls. “I ran one afterschool program in partnership with a fifth grade teacher, Katryn. I had a strong STEM background, but little youth development experience, and she had an incredible SEL background but didn’t feel confident to lead the STEM activities independently,” Tania recounts.

Over the course of the school year, Tania witnessed Katryn’s confidence in her STEM facilitation skill grow and learned from how she seamlessly intertwined SEL lessons into the STEM activities. “Team dynamics are often the source of most frustration during STEM activities. In one program, two girls were arguing over which of their ideas they would include in their design. Katryn calmly went over and started to ask a series of questions to help the girls empathize with each other.”

Some examples of questions that Katryn asked were “How does it feel when your ideas aren’t listened to? What do you think she is feeling right now? What could you do right now so that you both feel like your ideas are valued?” Ultimately, she guided the girls to choose one part from each of their ideas to include in their final design. This was an excellent example of how educators can naturally develop social awareness skills (empathizing and perspective taking) and social management skills (resolving interpersonal conflict) during a STEM lesson.

STEM education has become a growing trend over the last decade as rapid growth of science, technology, engineering and math sectors have highlighted the need to prepare the next generation of workers. This heavy focus on career exposure and technical skill development has overshadowed the incredible potential for STEM as an avenue for social emotional learning (SEL). Social emotional skills include a wide variety of what have commonly been called “soft skills,” such as self-awareness, emotion regulation, and relationship management. These skills are essential for every child to develop, no matter what career field they end up pursuing.

Here we demonstrate how 5 common social emotional learning constructs show up in different parts of STEM activities, and provide a few examples of how to support student learning and skill development for each.

Social Emotional Skill #1: Self-Awareness in STEM

Students demonstrate self-awareness when they are able to identify their emotions and are aware of their personal strengths and areas of growth. Emotions can run high during STEM activities when students are stretched to compromise their ideas, experience failure, and persevere through challenging tasks. Having students pause to reflect on their emotions, both in stressful situations and in times of joy, helps them to develop self-awareness skills. Self reflection can also help students identify their strengths and areas of growth.

Here are a few common situations in which students might benefit from pausing and reflecting about their feelings:

• Brainstorming: Once you explain the activity and set your students to work, it is common for some students to feel a sense of paralysis because they don’t know where to start. One common reaction from students is “But how do you do it?” This simple question indicates that many students are used to situations where there is only one right answer or that they are often shown how to do something instead of having to figure it out on their own. It can therefore feel very uncomfortable for students to delve into an open-ended challenge where there is no one right answer. This manifests in silence in some students, and anger in others. It is important to check-in with students who are struggling to work through these feelings.
• Testing Solutions: Students will often be super excited to test out their design. This can lead to emotional highs if their design succeeds and devastating lows if their design fails. In times of disappointment, some kids may shut down and others may lash out. These feelings can be further exacerbated by comparing their results to others, which is one reason to work hard to develop a collaborative, rather than competitive, community environment. When strong emotions are running high, it is important to pause and encourage students to reflect on these feelings.

Strategies

When students show strong emotions, this is a good time to pause for self-reflection. Ways you can guide students to identify their emotions are:

• Ask Reflective Questions: The easiest thing you can do is to simply ask students how they are feeling in the moment. If you used a check-in question centered around identifying emotions, you can continue to refer back to the same questions throughout an activity. This gives students familiarity and practice by using the same self-reflection tool. Example questions include:

“If you could describe how you are feeling as a color, what color would it be?”

“If you could describe how you are feeling as a weather pattern, what weather pattern would it be?”

“What emoji most describes how you are feeling right now?”

• Validate Students’ Emotions: Once students identify their emotions, the next thing you can do is to validate these feelings. You can say things like:

“I notice that you are feeling…That’s a really natural thing to feel when….”

“I often feel that way when …”

“It’s really common to feel… What other situations make you feel like that?”

Social Emotional Skill #2: Self-Management in STEM

Once students are aware of their emotions, you can help them manage their feelings so they can continue on with the activity. Students who demonstrate strong self-management skills can regulate their emotions, manage stress, control their impulses, and motivate themselves.

Strategies

When students demonstrate signs of stress, often during the situations described in the Self-Awareness section above, you can use the following strategies to help them practice self-management.

• Teach and Model Self-Management Practices Throughout the Program: You can preemptively teach self-management practices by leading your group through various exercises throughout your program. You can also work one-on-one with individuals who need more self-management practice. Common self-management strategies include:
• Deep Breathing: Place your hand on your stomach. Breathe in, pushing your hand out with your stomach. Breathe out, pulling your stomach in. You can add counting: Breathe in, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Breathe out, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
• Reflect on Positive Experiences: Close your eyes and think about a time when you felt really joyful. Think about where you were, what you were doing, and how that made you feel. This can help recenter positive emotions.
• Create Individual Self-Management Spaces: Sometimes a student needs to step away from an activity in order to manage their stress and control their emotions. You can create a space in the corner of the room where a student can step away to do one of the self-management practices described above, or to take a break by reading or drawing.
• Reinforce Positive Self-Management: When you notice when a student persevere through a challenging situation, you can give that student positive feedback by saying things like:

“I noticed that was challenging for you, but you stuck with it and didn’t give up. I’m proud of you and you should be proud of yourself.”

“I noticed how frustrated … made you, but you stayed calm and worked through that frustration. That must have been hard, but I’m proud of you for working through it.”

Social Emotional Skill #3: Social Awareness in STEM

Being aware of and empathizing with other people’s perspectives and experiences is a crucial part of STEM for two reasons. First, STEM workers often need to put themselves in other people’s shoes to understand the problems that they face; this process also helps STEM workers ensure that the solutions they create will work for the people they are trying to help. Second, everybody in STEM works in teams. Collaborative teamwork requires students to recognize other perspectives and empathize with others.

Common STEM Scenarios

Below are common scenarios when you can encourage your students to consider other peoples’ experiences and feelings:

• Introducing the Activity: Most STEM activities begin by introducing a new problem or challenge. This is an excellent opportunity for students to consider what other people might feel during different situations; this is especially beneficial if the experience is unique to the students’ own lives.
• Team Conflict: Managing team dynamics is one of the most common challenges in facilitating a STEM activity. Students often have very strong opinions for how they want to create their designs, and many are unwilling to compromise their ideas. This is an opportunity to have students empathize with other people’s feelings and perspectives.

Strategies

Below are strategies you can use to help students consider other peoples’ perspectives and build empathy skills.

• Develop Group Norms to Create a Collaborative Environment: Lead a conversation early in the program about how to show respect to others. During this conversation, have students consider how they would feel if their ideas were not listened to by their group members. Encourage students to develop Group Norms that will ensure that everybody’s ideas will be heard. You may need to revisit and add to the Group Norms as new group challenges arise.).
• Lead Activities to Promote Perspective Taking: When a STEM activity introduces a problem or scenario that may be unique to your students’ own experiences, lead additional activities that have them imagine what these situations might be like.
• Lead Team Reflections: Have teams pause during an activity and reflect on how they think others are feeling in the moment. You can ask questions like:

“How do you think everybody is feeling right now? Is everyone contributing right now? Is anybody being left out? ”

“How do you think it feels to have your ideas listened to? Not listened to?”

Social Emotional Skill #4: Building Positive Relationships in STEM

Building positive relationships is an essential skill for anybody working in STEM. First, STEM workers always work in teams, which means they need to be able to communicate their ideas with collaborators, listen to others, and navigate conflict. Additionally, people in STEM fields must be able to communicate their ideas to the broader community. Without being able to communicate the importance of their creations, brilliant ideas are left to collect dust.

Common STEM Scenarios

Below are situations in which relationship skills are often put to the test during STEM activities.

• Team Conflict: As described previously, students often experience challenges in compromising their design ideas. Conflicts over design decisions can arise throughout an activity, during the planning, creating, testing, and redesign phases. Navigating this conflict through clear communication and active listening is essential in successful team collaboration.
• Presenting Designs to the Broader Group: Presentations are great opportunities for youth to practice communicating their ideas to a large group. They also provide structured opportunities for students to practice active listening and feedback skills.

Strategies

Below are strategies to foster relationship skills throughout a STEM activity.

• Assign Team Roles: Sometimes having clearly defined roles can help students work together on a team. You can choose the roles, or have students help develop them. You can also have students rotate in different roles during or between activities so they can try each type of role. Example roles include: Leader, Builder, Recorder, Sharer.
• Brainstorm Individually, Then Share: When students begin a challenge by brainstorming together, it is common for softer spoken students’ ideas to go unheard. To ensure that everyone has a chance to share their ideas, have students brainstorm design ideas individually. Then, separate students into groups and have each individual share their ideas.
• Guide Conflict Resolution Conversations: You may need to pause a team’s building to have a conflict resolution conversation. Encourage students to use “I” statements to share how they are feeling and consider how others might be feeling. For example, you could ask:

“How are you feeling in this moment? Why are you feeling this way?”

“How do you think … makes [student] feel?”

“What is one thing you could do resolve this conflict?”

• Celebrate Team Success: Celebrating team success can help emphasize the benefits of collaboration. You can encourage teams to celebrate their accomplishments by saying and asking things like:

“Wow, your team collaborated so well to make a super creative design. I’m proud of you, and you should be proud of each other?”

“Do you think your design would have been as successful if you had all worked alone?

“What did each person contribute to the team?”

• Have Students Deliver Structured Presentations: Structured presentations helps students develop public speaking skills and give students the opportunity to practice active listening and giving constructive feedback. Here are strategies to help with structured presentations:
• Show Examples: Have students watch an example of a design pitch. Common examples can be found from the TV show Shark Tank. As a group, make a list of what made the presentation successful, and what the presenter could have done better. Have students choose one skill to focus on and practice during their own presentation.
• Model Constructive Feedback: Before having students give constructive feedback, model it yourself. Encourage everyone to share one thing that they liked about the presentation/design, and one thing that the presentation/design could do to improve.

Social Emotional Skill #5: Responsible Decision Making

Students who are able to make responsible decisions are able to identify a problem, evaluate solutions and consider their possible consequences, and reflect on how well their solution worked. This process essentially mirrors the Engineering Design Process that students will use throughout engineering challenges . Teaching the Engineering Design Process gives students a tool they can use to make decisions and solve problems that arise in any aspect of their lives.

Strategies

Below are strategies to help you incorporate the Engineering Design Process into your students’ learning.

• Have Students Practice Each Step of the Engineering Design Process: It can be tempting to merge or skip some steps of the Engineering Design Process. While this is very common, typically due to shortage of time, we highly recommend that you do have students complete each step of the process at least a few times throughout your program. Each step helps students develop specific skills, so having students work systematically through each step of the Engineering Design Process gives them practice developing each valuable skill set.
• Have Students Reflect on the Engineering Design Process: Refer to the steps of the Engineering Design Process often, and have students reflect on their experiences with it. You can say and ask things like:

“I notice you brainstormed a lot of different ideas. That’s a great way to be creative about all the different ways you can solve this problem.”

“I see that you redesigned your solution. Engineers always keep making their designs better. Great work!”

“What step of the Engineering Design Process did you enjoy the most? What step(s) were the most challenging for you?”

• Incorporate the Engineering Design Process into other Parts of Your Program: Post the Engineering Design Process in your space and refer to it when any problem arises in your program. You can guide students through each step to help them solve problems that they are experiencing.

As you can see, there are a plethora of opportunities to incorporate social emotional learning into everyday STEM activities. If this list seems daunting to you, start by thinking about which constructs your students could benefit from the most and focus on those first. Or just choose one SEL construct to focus on in each STEM activity you run. And remember, you don’t have to be the expert in everything. Even you can use the Engineering Design Process to brainstorm ideas, try them out, and revise them to make it even better!

Learn more about STEM learning at foundry10 here.