Mathematics for and from STEM: Conceptualising successful mathematics integration in STEM education

The pace of STEM policy and curricular change in Ireland gives impetus to exploring more integrated approaches to STEM education. In turn, it challenges traditional, disciplinary approaches to teacher education, forcing us to reimagine how we prepare our future teachers for integrated STEM. This paper presents an effort to support 27 pre-service primary teachers in unearthing productive mathematical learning opportunities within integrated STEM tasks. It reports on pre-service teachers' experiences across two modules over two years. We outline the challenges experienced by both the pre-service teachers and teacher educators, before suggesting and trialling a framework for meaningful mathematics integration in STEM tasks. Preliminary findings suggest that the framework has potential to capitalise on mathematical opportunities across a STEM inquiry cycle. This study has implications for mathematics education in initial teacher education, where recent developments demand a balance of both disciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches.