STEM Education 🧪🧬

      “Technology within education continues to expand as the demand and interest levels of students and prospective students steadily increase. Within various educational environments, the concepts evolving around STEAM, Robots, Codes, and Maker’s Spaces are integrated into the curriculum as a means of technical exposure, proactive training, and differentiated instruction. Present day, students are at an advantage, given that these concepts are already built within the curriculum”, says Andrews (2022).  According to Puckett (2021), “in the past 10-15 years, the educational landscape has changed considerably due to the explosive growth of technology and computing in our society, dominant business and industry tools. Student exposure to STEM, robots, coding, and maker spaces provide authentic learning experiences is vitally important for students to learn how science, technology, engineering, and mathematics are interrelated” (para.2).   

What is STEM?  What is STEAM?

            According to Schrum and Sumerfield (2018), “STEM-typically Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics-has become a guiding star for education. STEM is a curriculum based on the idea of educating students in these four specific disciplines using an interdisciplinary, hands-on approach that relates to real-world applications” (p.8). Wigmore adds, "STEAM is an educational approach that incorporates the arts into the more-familiar STEM model, which includes science, technology, engineering and mathematics. STEAM programs can include any of the visual or performing arts, such as dance, design, painting, photography and writing" (para.1).

Why is it significant?

       “STEM is important because it teaches critical thinking skills and instills a passion for innovation. Beyond the benefit of learning science, technology, engineering, and math, STEM assists in the problem-solving and exploratory learning that fuel success across a variety of tasks and disciplines” (Barone, 2018).

What are the downsides and/or barriers and how might these be overcome?

       Some of the downsides of STEM include, first, not all students can fully understand or catch up with the STEM curriculum. Teachers should make accommodations to meet individual student’s needs. Second, it can be very expensive to purchase the equipment and materials for STEM classes, such as the parts of making a boat. More funding for STEM is needed. Last but not least, most teachers across the curriculum lack the knowledge and experience to collaborate with STEM teachers. The professional training of integrated STEM instructions across the curriculum is needed.

What ethical considerations and best practices for implementation have been identified?        

       Raupp (2020) addresses the ethical consideration and best practices implementations as “ Promotes the common good; Allows for independent thought; Commits to equity and inclusion, and Provides training to engage ethically with rapidly changing technology”.  

Where is it going in the future?

       According to the National Science Foundation (2020), “the STEM Education of the Future will harness technology in ways that provide equitable access to all learners and ensure that all learners thrive. Skillful instruction aided by technological advances can overcome structural barriers such as cost, distance, opportunity, socioeconomic background, or prior STEM preparation, and allow all STEM learners to overcome stereotypes and biases with the support of their learning communities” (p.27). 

How to find the resources in the surrounding area. 

       Students may participate in various STEM activities in schools, district, libraries, and communities. Participants could interact with current individuals who are employed in the field of Engineering, Medicine and Technology. Students could also attend field trips to local agencies focused on STEM.  

References

Andrews, M.(2022). STEM, robots, codes, and maker spaces. 

       https://rdene915.com/2022/06/07/stem-robots-codes-and-makers-spaces/

Puckett, M. (2021). An overview of STEM, robotics, coding, and maker spaces. TRC Edu.

       https://www.trceducation.com/stem-robotics-coding-and-maker-spaces

Raupp, A. (2020). Ethics in STEM Education: Going Beyond the Classroom. The Journal.           

       https://thejournal.com/articles/2020/02/12/ethics-in-stem-education-going- beyond-the-        

      classroom.aspx

Shahzad B, Saleem K. (2018). Benefits of establishing maker-spaces in distributed   

       development environment. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing book  

       series AISC, 738, p. 621–625. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-77028-4_79

Schrum, L., Sumerfield, S. (2018). Learning supercharged. Digital age strategies and 

       insights  from edtech frontier. International society for technology in education. 

Wigmore, I. STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics). 

        https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/definition/STEAM-science-technology-engineering-arts-and-  

       mathematics