Teachers’ perceptions on stem teaching with digital technologies in the lower secondary school

Scientific knowledge and skills are key aspects needed to be active citizens able to make informed decisions regarding scientific questions that may arise from everyday life. Formal education plays a fundamental role to develop the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) literacy and promote a scientific culture among the new generation (Fallon et al., 2020). However, the Italian context showed a low level of scientific competence and knowledge in students of secondary schools (e.g., PISA 2018). An appropriate integration of digital technologies into STEM teaching practice may help face this issue for the several affordances of ICT for STEM education as a positive impact on motivation and interest towards the disciplines and on the learning gains (Roffi, Cuomo, Ranieri, 2021). In particular, the possibility to take advantage of the visual component for teaching scientific concepts or phenomena not easily explored in the classroom provides an added value (Arici et al., 2019; Garcia, Conesa & Perez-Navarro, 2022). Unfortunately, the use of technologies presents some hurdles, due to the difficulties for teachers in using the digital tools and integrating them in their teaching activities, as emerged during the pandemic period (Carretero Gomez et al., 2020) and documented in previous reports as Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) 2018 (OECD, 2019; OECD, 2020). Also teachers’ attitudes and beliefs towards technologies are relevant for pedagogical innovation (Margot & Kettler, 2019), including the STEM area, therefore a better understanding of STEM teachers’ point of view may help in designing improved training practices.