1. Open coding of description (analysis activities):
fairly natural, personal experience/background,
STEM integration, and who I am.
2. Aim: personal experience/background vs STEM
integration
3. Question (issue): personal experience/background
may contribute to the difficulties/doubts of STEM
integration.
4. Result: Because the interviewee has personal background/experience highly relevant to STEM subjects,
STEM integration to this interviewee is 1) not a new
idea, 2) fairly natural, and 3) not a struggle.
After identifying the open codes and results from each
case, we used cross-comparison to dissect and array the
evidence across the three cases to generalize teachers’
perceptions about STEM integration (Yin, 2003). For
example, an open code, STEM subjects are related,
occurred for all three teachers. The following are excerpts
from their interviews in which this code was present:
Nate: Science is a framework to approach problem
solving by using scientific methods, and engineering brings
them all together.
Kathy: When I think about math in science, I think about
problem solving as part of math … and engineering is like
inquiry with problem solving.