Educar para comprender y actuar: STEM+H en la enseñanza de ciencias sociales

Abstract

This project aims at the design and implementation of a didactic tool based on the STEM+H approach —science, technology, engineering, mathematics and humanities— to strengthen citizenship competencies in eighth-grade students at Colegio Ave María in Bogotá. The relevance of the study is supported by the institutional diagnosis that evidenced a significant decline in the Citizenship Competencies component, from 75.6 % to 55.7 %, and in Reflective and Systemic Thinking, from 64.8 % to 44.4 %, according to the comparative results of the Instruimos external tests applied to the school's 2024-2025 cohort. These findings reveal a disarticulation between normative citizenship knowledge and its practical exercise, which justifies the urgency of a disruptive pedagogical intervention. Methodologically, the study adopts a qualitative applied-research approach with an Action Research design, actively involving teachers and students in the identification of needs, the design of the didactic tool and the reflexive assessment of its results. The tool, called Citizenship in Action, is structured in five sequential phases —Exploration, Investigation, Solutions Design, Implementation and Validation, Reflection and Dissemination—, articulated under the logic of the Kemmis and McTaggart (1988) Action Research cycle and the steps of Challenge-Based Learning. The triangulation between qualitative and quantitative techniques —participant observation, semi-structured interviews, focus groups, Likert-type surveys, reflective portfolios and analytical rubrics— allows assessing the progressive development of the cognitive, emotional, communicative and integrative competencies established by the Ministry of National Education, as well as the competencies evaluated by ICFES in Social Sciences and Citizenship. The expected results include the consolidation of a transferable pedagogical device, measurable improvement of citizenship performance and the construction of sustainable collective commitments beyond the intervention.