Investigating how subject teachers transition to integrated STEM education: A hybrid qualitative study on primary and middle school teachers

Integrated STEM education combines science, technology, engineering, and mathematics to cultivate problem-solving and innovative thinking. Globally, STEM is prioritized as a driver of educational reform, yet a key implementation challenge is the shortage of highly qualified STEM teachers. Professional development initiatives have attempted to upskill teachers, but short-term programs often cannot address the complex mix of beliefs, knowledge, and skills that underpin teaching expertise. Viewing the issue through the lens of teacher identity transformation offers a novel framework: teacher identity is dynamic, evolving through interaction of personal and professional characteristics with new experiences. This study addresses gaps in understanding how teachers transition from subject-based teaching to integrated STEM, examining how their understanding and practice evolve during identity transformation. The study aims to explore the developmental stages of identity change, whether teachers follow similar pathways, and how internal and external factors shape these processes.

The review defines integrated STEM education as learning disciplinary content and practices through integration of engineering and technology practices. STEM offers authentic, iterative problem solving that helps students learn to think and invent. In China, integrated STEM was introduced in 2014 and is now central to K-12 reform, but subject-centered traditions and limited technology/engineering curricula pose obstacles. Teacher training, curricula, and talent development are still nascent, requiring shifts in perceptions, attitudes, and self-efficacy, amid financial and management constraints. Teacher identity is a dynamic, socially situated process characterized by multiplicity, discontinuity, and sociality. Studies point to diverse factors influencing identity transformation, yet little work details how subject teachers transition into STEM. STEM teachers enact multiple roles—learners, explorers, investigators, curriculum developers, negotiators, collaborators; some are designers, implementers, and disseminators—creating tensions and challenges across their trajectories. Identity formation involves emotional phases that mix positive and negative emotions. Factors affecting STEM teacher identity include gender, professional background, school type, and location. Female teachers may show greater enthusiasm and collaboration; teachers integrate STEM in ways aligned with their prior expertise; urban schools often provide more development opportunities, while rural settings offer distinctive opportunities linked to local life and community engagement; primary teachers often have more flexibility in curriculum and resources, whereas secondary schools emphasize career awareness and competitions. The review motivates a systematic analysis of the dynamic process of teacher identity transformation and poses three research questions about stages, pathways, and the role of internal/external factors.

Design: Hybrid qualitative study integrating Grounded Theory with Epistemic Network Analysis (ENA). Participants: 10 in-service STEM teachers from 6 regions in Zhejiang Province, China, recruited via the Zhejiang Province Master Teachers Network Workshop. Inclusion criteria: over 10 years teaching experience; currently implementing integrated STEM with over 3 years of STEM experience; publicly verifiable records of leading STEM activities. Sample characteristics (Table 1): Gender mixed (5 male, 5 female), professional backgrounds include physics, mathematics, Chinese, English, history; primary and middle school levels; urban and rural locations; teaching experience 10–24 years; STEM experience 2–4 years. Data collection: Semi-structured, in-depth interviews via video/telephone (Oct–Dec 2022), average duration 50 minutes. Interview protocol covered understanding of STEM education, self-development, teaching practices, and reflection, with five core prompts about motivations, conceptual change, capacity building, project examples/challenges, and advice for novices. Ethical procedures: informed consent obtained; ethics approval ZSRT2023068 (25 April 2023). Grounded Theory analysis: NVivo 11 used. Two experienced researchers independently conducted open coding (Cohen's Kappa = 0.712). Through iterative saturation, 155 concept labels were identified and consolidated into 24 open codes. Axial coding organized these into eight categories: understanding of STEM concept (UC), knowledge learning (KL), curriculum design (CD), project development (PD), teaching practice (TP), teacher role (TRo), teaching reflection (TRe), and developmental reflection (DR). Selective coding produced four core categories: cognition, instructional design, instructional practice, and instructional reflection. Epistemic Network Analysis: ENA 1.5.2 Web Tool used to model co-occurrence structures. Units: teacher groups by gender, professional background, school type, and region. Sections: sentences from interview responses. Coding: presence of elements in a section coded as 1, absence as 0. ENA visualized and compared group network structures across the three identity stages to trace dynamic relations among coded elements.

Stages of identity transformation: Teachers progressed through three stages—Imitation, Exploration, and Innovation—marked by shifts in cognition, design, practice, and reflection (Table 3). Imitation: teachers acted as apprentices, imitated exemplars, equated STEM with making artifacts, began stepping beyond subject comfort zones. Exploration: recognition of cross-disciplinary applications, adoption of PBL for design, increased collaboration, and continuous learning needs. Innovation: integration of local cultural resources, emphasis on equity of access, leveraging partnerships (school–enterprise, home–school), and mentoring roles. Pathways: Three distinct paths were identified. Path 1: Imitation to Exploration, catalyzed by exposure to new concepts and mentorship. Path 2: Imitation and Exploration to Innovation, involving overcoming design, collaboration, and assessment challenges, creative localized curricula, and leadership. Path 3: Leap from Imitation directly to Innovation (observed in two veteran physics teachers, T6 and T8), where STEM served as a framework consolidating long-standing interdisciplinary practices. Internal and external factors (ENA results): Gender differences: Imitation stage showed significant difference (male M=0.21; female M=0.12; u=1.00; p=0.03; R=0.91), with males showing stronger links among TRo, KL, TRe. Exploration stage differed significantly (male M=0.34; female M=0.12; u=1.00; p=0.03; R=0.92); males emphasized TP, PD, DR; females emphasized TRe linked with TP, TRo, CD. Innovation stage contrast (male M=-0.33; female M=0.34; u=1.00; p=0.01; R=0.95); males focused on CD–PD and TRo–DR connections, females emphasized reflecting on teaching practices. Professional background: Group 1 (physics/maths) vs Group 2 (Chinese/English/history). Imitation stage significant (G1 M=0.20; G2 M=-0.21; u=1.00; p=0.02; R=0.92). Exploration stage significant (G1 M=0.25; G2 M=0.34; u=24.00; p=0.01; R=-1.00); G1 emphasized TP, PD, DR; G2 emphasized TP and TRe. Innovation stage significant (G1 M=0.25; G2 M=-0.34; u≥4.00; p=0.01; R=-1.00); G1 strengthened CD–PD and UC; G2 focused on TP linked to TRe, PD, UC. School type: Primary vs Secondary. Imitation stage not significant (Primary M=-0.30; Secondary M=0.22; u=33.00; p=0.06; R=0.76) but primary showed stronger TP–KL; secondary emphasized DR, TRe, KL, TRo. Exploration stage significant (Primary M=-0.25; Secondary M=0.20; u=1.00; p=0.02; R=0.97); primary showed CD–TRo linkage, secondary CD–TP. Innovation stage significant (Primary M=-0.27; Secondary M=0.33; u=0.00; p=0.01; R=1.00); primary emphasized TP–DR; secondary emphasized TP with CD and TRe. Region: Urban vs Rural. Imitation stage significant (Urban M=-0.48; Rural M=0.17; u=20.00; p=0.03; R=-0.90); urban emphasized KL–TRo; rural emphasized UC and links among KL, TP, TRe. Exploration stage significant (Urban M=-0.38; Rural M=0.19; u=1.00; p=0.03; R=0.90); urban focused on CD, rural on TP. Innovation stage significant (Urban M=-0.44; Rural M=0.07; u=10.00; p=0.02; R=1.00); both prioritized TRe, but urban linked TRe–DR, rural linked TRe–CD. Overall patterns: Male and physics/maths teachers tended to emphasize project development and curriculum integration; female and non-STEM-background teachers showed stronger orientation to reflective practice. Primary teachers prioritized practice and reflection; secondary teachers emphasized design. Urban teachers focused on curriculum design; rural teachers leveraged practice and community resources while reflecting to consolidate STEM understanding.

Findings indicate that subject teachers’ transition to STEM aligns with stage theories of teacher professional development, yet with unique features due to their prior expertise. Teachers adopt multiple identities—learner, collaborator, designer, developer, leader—through iterative cycles of cognition, design, practice, and reflection. The proposed model articulates three stages and multiple non-linear pathways, including cases of direct progression to innovation, underscoring that professional growth is not strictly linear. These insights inform professional development: novices benefit from observation and modeling to build conceptual understanding and confidence; teachers in exploration benefit from supports for integrated curriculum design, interdisciplinary collaboration, and assessment; subject experts benefit from theoretical framing and design training to reflect on and reorganize prior practices, accelerating transformation. ENA-based analyses highlight how gender, professional background, school level, and region shape emphases and connections among cognition, design, practice, and reflection. Such differences suggest tailoring supports: e.g., leveraging mathematics/physics teachers’ comparative advantages in PD/CD while bolstering reflective practices, and supporting teachers from non-STEM backgrounds with content integration and design tools; primary teachers may need structured pathways to design, while secondary teachers may need supports for reflective practice; urban contexts can capitalize on resource-rich curriculum design networks, whereas rural contexts can scaffold community partnerships and practice-based reflection.

The study contributes a three-stage model—imitation, exploration, innovation—of subject teachers’ identity transformation into integrated STEM educators, identifies three developmental pathways, and demonstrates how internal (gender, professional background) and external (school level, region) factors shape these trajectories. Practical implications include designing stage-sensitive professional development, leveraging teachers’ strengths associated with gender and disciplinary background, and mobilizing contextual advantages of schools and regions to build regional STEM education communities and localize STEM curricula. These targeted strategies can improve training effectiveness and support sustainable growth of the STEM teacher workforce.

The sample is small and skewed toward physics backgrounds, limiting representativeness. Data rely on interviews, which can introduce self-report bias and constrain triangulation. Future work should expand sample size, diversify disciplinary backgrounds, and incorporate additional data sources such as curriculum artifacts and classroom videos to enhance validity and provide a more comprehensive picture of identity transformation.