LED2All : A Socio-technical Approach to STEAM Toolkit Adoption in Schools

May 22, 2026

This thesis explores the challenges of implementing STEAM educational toolkits in real school settings, particularly their integration into everyday practice and the extent of teachers’ technical capacity and support. While initiatives such as the Portuguese Laboratórios de Educação Digital (LED) aim to support digital and hands-on learning, their effective adoption in schools remains limited. This research investigates how the STEAM resources provided by the LED kit are currently being used across different school contexts, including curricular, extracurricular and special needs classes, and more creative exploratory spaces. It also explores the associated challenges, aiming to understand how access to these resources can be more effectively democratized within the school community and how their sustainability and autonomous use can be supported. To overcome these challenges, this research adopts a Participatory Action Research (PAR) approach, involving students, teachers, and other stakeholders across three schools in Portugal through five PAR cycles. The findings show that student engagement increases when learners are given autonomy to explore STEAM kits independently, but sustained adoption depends strongly on teacher support and adaptable socio-technical infrastructures across different school contexts. The contributions of this research include insights into the challenges and opportunities in the adoption of educational STEAM kits, the role of socio-technical infrastructure in supporting their use, and a web platform with materials designed to support long-term sustainability.

Authors in the community:

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  A

  Ana Margarida Barros Figueiredo Moreira dos Reis

  ist186529

Supervisors of this institution:

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  H

  Hugo Nicolau

  ist153934

electrical-engineering-electronic-engineering-information-engineering - Electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering

eng - English

Instituto Superior Técnico