**2. Teacher workshop of STEM literacy**

STEM-based learning is in line with the breadth of the current science curriculum [7]. The 2013 curriculum places subject matter more as a vehicle to develop a variety of skills, creative thinking, awareness of technology, the environment, awareness of the existence of a masterful regulator other than humans, and the values of life where the students are. With another understanding, the 2013 curriculum of all subjects accommodates the achievement of national education goals in a holistic, nonfragmented, and proportional manner. For science education, this is of course very encouraging and is expected to be able to increase the relevance of science learning, bearing in mind the essence of science learning always places science as a vehicle for building students' skills and attitudes/values. In addition, the new curriculum, if implemented properly, will increase the popularity of science [8].

However, we realized that we are facing challenges in preparing the teacher [5]. Teachers in Indonesia were produced at education-based universities such as UPI. Based on the new ministry policy, not only UPI that can produce teachers but also other educational college or universities. These facts triggered UPI to create professional and qualified teachers so that the graduate could compete well. On the other hand, Japan has different policy. Teachers in Japan were produced from two institutions for different levels of teachers [9]. Elementary teachers come from normal universities, while the secondary-level teachers come from higher normal universities and universities level. They were well prepared in their bachelor studies so that most of teachers in Japan have only bachelor degree. In fact, for the past several decades, Japan's students have consistently ranked among the world's top performing in science, mathematics, and reading. This achievement is one proof of the good quality of teachers in Japan.

The good quality of teacher leads a good quality of learning. They plan learning as a medium to transfer knowledge to students. They consider the main aspects of learning processes— students and instructions. Professional development program is needed to produce qualified teachers [10–12]. Therefore, we design workshop activities for teachers that focused on creating STEM literacy assessment.

Here are some considerations of workshop and the detailed activities.

What does teacher need?


What should researcher do?


Workshop on STEM literacy introduction for middle school teachers will be conducted to limited participants. They come from three region: Bandung, Bogor, and Semarang. Each region will choose nine in-services science and math teachers. They got lectures from several keynote speakers, developed lesson plans, and STEM literacy instruments.

**Figure 1** showed the lecture session from Prof. Yoshisuke Kumano, Ph.D. who shared STEM/STEAM education implementation in Japan. He talked about one of STEM activities that conducted as afterschool activities. It showed students' activity in investigating the Earth's climate using Dagik Earth. Students discuss issues that gave by instructors. They try to find the best solution. On the second day, teachers presented lesson plan that included the STEM education activities. They share ideas and discuss about the challenges. In the third day, they got lecture of STEM literacy assessment and created it based on the lesson plan topic.

STEM literacy instruments were developed by considering four aspects of its disciplines. Bybee [13] defines STEM literacy, which refers to an individual's STEM-related

**Figure 1.** *Lecture from STEM expert.*

issues competencies, ability in identify STEM disciplines characteristics as forms of human knowledge, inquiry, and design, STEM awareness, and willingness to engage in STEM-related issues.

On the other hand, Tang & Williams, [14] defined STEM literacy based on its discipline literacy definition (**Table 1**).

From those definitions, we develop the indicators of STEM literacy as follows (**Table 2**).

**Table 3** shows the results of lesson plans and instruments that develop by teachers. Each region picked one level and content based on curriculum. They plan around 3–4 meetings of learning implementation and created 25 STEM literacy items. Some teachers from Semarang never have experience in developing or implementing STEMbased lesson plan and assessment. They face difficulty and asked more time to learn about STEM.


#### **Table 1.**

*STEM literacy definition at each discipline [14].*


#### **Table 2.**

*STEM literacy assessment aspects and indicators.*


**Table 3.**

*Workshop results.*

## **3. STEM literacy assessment**

#### **3.1 Blueprint of STEM literacy assessment**

During the workshop, teachers guided to build the items. Most of them face difficulties in creating technology, engineering, and mathematics literacy items. They said it is hard to find the technology that refers the concept of core discipline ideas. They thought that students will hard to understanding the technology principle. Therefore, it should be integrated in the learning processes. It would be easy for students if the technology is used as learning media (Meryl [17], Burnett [18], Grabe & Grabe [19]). They can understand the application of scientific concepts from the technology that brought to the class. Furthermore, they can understand how it is created by experiencing the engineering practices in the class [20, 21]. They triggered to find solution ideas and test those ideas, which are best to solve the problem by creating innovative technology.

Engineering literacy items are related to the solution ideas based on the problem. In this study, the problems are related to technology of reproductivity, temperature, and digestion system. Teachers started to find the related problems. They identified the global, regional, or local problems around students daily life. Contextual problems will help students to perceive the problems and generating solution ideas. **Table 4** showed the example of engineering literacy items that created by teachers.

Based on the interview, teachers face difficulties on creating engineering literacy items. It need more time than science literacy items. The number of engineering items is smaller than that science literacy items. Most of them created 10 science literacy items, 8 mathematics literacy, 4 technology literacy, and 3 engineering literacy. They said it is hard to find ideas of technology and its engineering processes that can be a stimulus in the items. It might be caused by the lack of teacher's information literacy in finding out technological resources or engineering problem items. Margaret and Dave [22] wrote that information literacy is an important aspect in engineering programs. On the other side, Correia and Bozutti [23] study that an ideal teaching methodology for engineering nowadays is conducting practices, followed by the frequent use of technological resources. Kelley and Wicklein [24] also investigated teacher difficulties in engineering class assessment. He found that the teacher indicated difficulties in locating and integrating appropriate levels of mathematics and science for engineering design.

The mathematics literacy items that developed by teachers also reach smaller number than the science literacy items. Gattie & Wicklein [25] conducted research to find out the instructional needs of high school technology educators regarding engineering design instruction. It is noticed that more than 90% of the in-service teachers indicated that engineering design was a suitable focus to be integrated in the instructional activities. However, the teachers in this sample also indicated some demand to properly include engineering design in technology education. Several indications



#### **Table 4.** *STEM literacy in engineering literacy aspect.*

described that 93% of the teachers need to learn how to integrate the appropriate levels of mathematics and science into instructional content and 87% realized the need to develop additional analytical (mathematics) skills.
