Founding Chair's Message | AAES STEM Education

A message from Hsiang-Yu Wang, founding chair of AAES, on the present and future of STEM education in Asia.

Chairman's Message

STEM Education — Today and Tomorrow

Hsiang-Yu Wang / Founding Chair, AAES

My involvement in STEM education began in 2017, when there was a surge of interest in the toy and educational industry. Many products were marketed as STEM education tools, which left me overwhelmed with choices due to my lack of understanding of STEM education itself. That motivated me to study what STEM education really is, the reasons for its development, its core concepts, and specific implementation methods. The deeper I went, the more I realized the impact STEM education has had on the past, the present, and the future world. As my research grew, so did my journey of sharing and promoting STEM education.

From 2017 to the end of 2021, I continuously shared the core concepts of STEM education and how to integrate them into teaching and curriculum design through training sessions, seminars, and workshops for kindergarten teachers and publishers. The more I shared, the more I felt the urgent need to rally more people to join this effort.

In recent years, with Taiwan's 108 Curriculum Guidelines and growing emphasis on interdisciplinary and technology education, STEM has become a popular keyword across publishing, toy design, and education-related products. We are glad to see this attention, but we have also noticed misconceptions spreading: robotics, coding, and conventional science experiments are sometimes labeled as STEM simply because they share keywords.

These observations made us increasingly concerned about whether organizations, units, or individuals offering teaching truly have sufficient and correct understanding of STEM education — whether they grasp its core concepts rather than focusing only on tools and techniques, and whether they preserve what matters most: interdisciplinary thinking, real-life application, and authentic connection to lived experience.

AAES was founded with the goal of conveying the correct concept of STEM education through curriculum and sharing. After undergoing training and practice through our courses, individuals and groups can take on the responsibility of conveying the right concepts and implementing them in their work and daily lives. The association has introduced professional certification from STEM.org — a credible organization with over 20 years of development in the United States — to cultivate STEM curriculum-promotion capabilities across Asia Pacific. We sincerely welcome you to join us in this effort.

Become an AAES Member