What is STEM education?
How about STEAM education?
What is STEM Education?
STEM education is an interdisciplinary and integrated teaching approach that focuses on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, with the later addition of Art and Reading, also known as STEAM education.
STEM or STEAM education is different from the conventional learning and emphasizes guiding students to think, integrate knowledge and skills, and solve real-world problems. It aims to cultivate the next generation of proactive and enthusiastic learners.
The essence of STEM education is to use engineering design, production, and refinement as the core activity to address real-life problems, and integrate science exploration, mathematics thinking, and technology and tools to generate products and solve practical problems.
STEM education in the United States emphasizes interdisciplinary diversity, gender and socio-economic equality, and encourages children to explore and find answers to problems.
The Origin of STEM Education
In 1986, the National Science Board (NSB) in the United States proposed a set of education recommendations that integrated science (S), mathematics (M), engineering (E), and technology (T), which was then abbreviated as SMET and considered the ancestor of STEM education. Ten years later in 1996, the National Science Foundation (NSF) in the United States proposed more explicit policy recommendations and changed the acronym from SMET to STEM. In 2006, President Bush of the United States, in the "American Competitiveness Initiative," set the goal of cultivating individuals with STEM qualities in the knowledge-based economy era, and referred to STEM education as a key element of competitiveness in the globalized world. The United States is the source of STEM education, with the aim of using interdisciplinary theory and practice to change the traditional teacher-centered classroom model in education. More information on the origin and development of STEM education in the United States can be found in "The Development and Experience of STEM Education in the United States: A Case Study of Ohio" (Zhang Renjia, Lin Guimiao, 2019).
Below are some video that will be used in the course.
The Differences Between STEAM Education and Conventional Education
What is STEM?
Project Base Learning (PBL)
A Day Made of Glass
The 3 Trends for STEM/STEAM Education
1. STEM will gain prominence in early childhood education: This trend is expected to continue as studies demonstrate how STEM education at an early age positively impacts educational outcomes.
2. The T in STEM gains prominence: Technology proficiency as a core life skill. Students need hard and soft skills in technology, and they also need digital literacy and technological competency. More programmes are focusing on digital literacy as part of teacher preparation, along with ways to help educators evolve their use of technology in classrooms.
3. STEM education will lead the way in authentic and applied learning practices: Students need to build real-world skills while they're still in school in order to succeed in a global economy.
References: 1.www.indiatoday.in 2.100kin10.org
The Rise of a New Generation of Educators
We’ve seen teachers elevated to local heroes. And we’re hearing from large and small, local and national teacher preparation progams that interest in teaching is up and teacher recruitment is on the rise. Across our network of leading STEM teacher preparers, more people are choosing teaching now than did 2-3 years ago. -Forbes, 2021.3
Research shows that students engage and learn more when the learning is relevant to their lives and interests. As a result, we predict that teachers will continue evolving their roles to provide more personally relevant educational experiences for their students and will do that in no small part as master curators of learning opportunities in and out of the classroom. This might mean that teachers coordinate lesson plans and develop relationships with diverse STEM- and career-relevant partners to create engaging and relevant learning opportunities. To that end, we’ve seen a renewed interest in career and technical education as a means to help students connect the dots between classroom learning and future career opportunities. - 100Kin10