NOVA K-20 STEM Education Outreach Coordinator for Arlington Public Schools, Alexandria City Public Schools, and Falls Church City Public Schools, 2015.
"What is STEM?" continues to be a surprisingly common question.
Until recently, STEM was simply a focus or emphasis on any of the disciplines that make up the acronym.
Science - the process for answering questions using observation and/or experimentation, identifying variables and their effects, and making inferences; and the body of knowledge derived from that process.
Technology - any purposeful modification of the natural world, based on design. Technology is both a part of engineering and a product of engineering design processes, and therefore technology (tools or products) and engineering (processes) are often conflated.
Engineering - processes using design-based solutions to solve problems.
Mathematics (or Math or Maths) - the study of relationships between things, real or imagined, based on logic, and often quantified with numbers.
The acronym STEM was established by Judith Ramaley in 2001, when she served as an NSF Program Director in Arlington, Virginia. She suggested STEM as an alternate to the initialism SMET. Increasingly, STEM and particularly STEM Education have emphasized the intentional, interdisciplinary integration of the disciplines with each other (Sanders, 2009) and with other traditional disciplines of social studies, reading and other language arts, world languages, health and physical education, and the visual and performing arts.
A frequently cited definition was provided by Tsupros, Kohler, and Hallinen (2009), although it does not actually appear in the cited report:
Integrative STEM Education is often accomplished through Project-based Learning (PjBL), Problem-based Learning (PbBL), and other forms of inquiry-driven investigation. Authentic or "real-world" scenarios or problems, or the use of real data complement these strategies to enable teachers to facilitate learning activities that exercise the whole student. Student work often results in real products or tangible outcomes that can be shared beyond the classroom, with the community or the whole world through the Internet. These strategies also allow for collaborations between students, and between students, teachers and the community, and thereby develop important skills for the workplace, further study, and enhanced citizenship.
Curriculum Mapping is an important part of integrating STEM education in both STEM and non-STEM curricula to provide teachers with a rationale for trying ambitious new or alternative approaches to important concepts. Learning activities are aligned with or "mapped" to established Curriculum Standards from multiple disciplines, including Visual and Performing Arts, Social Studies, English Language Arts, World (Foreign) Languages, Physical Education, or "Profile of a Graduate" standards.
Competency-Based Education or Assessment is a teaching and assessment strategy that is designed to emphasize what a student can do with or without assistance. This is prominent in career and technical education (CTE), in which students are enrolled in skills-based courses leading to certifications. An assessment tool developed for CTE called Can-Do was created in Arlington, Virginia to provide a competency-based assessment tool aligned with a 0 to 4.0 grading scale:
0 = No exposure
1 = Student is exposed to a skill, but cannot do it.
2 = Student can do the skill with supervision or support
3 = Student is proficient; can do the skill without supervision;
4 = student can teach others, or work is demonstration quality
5 (optional) = student work is demonstration quality, and student can teach others.
Inquiry-Based Education is a student-focused pedagogical strategy or approach that emphasizes students' authentic questions or curiosity. Two common forms of inquiry-based learning or inquiry-driven investigation in often accomplished through project-based learning or its subset, problem-based learning.
Project-based Learning (PjBL) is curriculum and instruction that emphasizes in-depth inquiry driven by relevant, driving questions, student autonomy, opportunities for revision and reflection, and student autonomy with a public audience for the products of student projects. Problem-based learning (PbBL) is a subset of PjBL in which students try to solve a problem, emphasizing innovation and design-processes. Increasingly, teachers implement project-based and problem-based similarly or simultaneously, and the only distinction is whether student projects are explicitly solving a problem.
Invention Education, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship are increasingly common pedagogical strategies popular with both students and observers to encourage other STEM Habits of Mind, which include:
Both project-based learning and problem-based learning rely on key components (PBL Works, 2023):
1. a challenging problem or question;
2. sustained inquiry;
3. student voice and choice;
4. authentic approaches and meaning;
5. reflective practices;
6. critical review and revisions; and
7. publicly shared products.
Invention Education, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship are increasingly common pedagogical strategies popular with both students and observers to encourage other STEM Habits of Mind, which include:
- Background research
- Critical thinking
- Predictions
- Using data
- Analysis and evaluation
- Real-world applications
- Observation
- Creative or innovative processes or solutions
- Communication and documentation
- Collaboration
- Reflection
- Problem-solving
- Comfort with risk of mistakes and failure
