Importance of STEM Education

   Importance of STEM Education

   If a family member of friend of mine asked me to describe STEM education, I would start by defining the acronym STEM. STEM stands for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. STEM education therefore emphasizes the content knowledge of these domains in addition to the habits of mind occupied by members of these fields. For example, STEM education encourages students to be creative, empathic, sceptical, and persistent. 

    I think STEM education is important because it encourages the mindsets we want students to adopt for their lives after school. For instance, we want students to be sceptical of things they hear and read. In this age of the Internet, anyone can post a “fact” online or say something on television and have many people believe them. With a STEM mindset, however, students will be curious enough to do research from reputable sources, compare multiple sources of information, and formulate their own beliefs based on data and expert opinions. Furthermore, we want our students to be creative problem solvers, another trait encouraged by STEM education. STEM encourages students to ask questions, conduct experiments, seek answers, and repeat the process as necessary to solve real-world problems. The content knowledge students learn in school might eventually be forgotten, but the habits and mindsets encouraged by STEM will last much longer.

    The value of incorporating STEM in public education is the sheer number of students who can benefit from it. The students we teach today are future voters, policymakers, and parents. They are the ones who will be making decisions regarding laws related to climate change, genetic testing, new technologies, and more. Why wouldn’t we want them to understand those concepts and be able to make informed decisions based on them? Additionally, STEM jobs are among the fastest growing workplaces, and as teachers we are obligated to prepare our students for their lives post-graduation as best as possible. In this regard, the implementation of STEM education is crucial. 

Importance of STEM Education- Revisited

   After writing my previous blog post about the importance of STEM, I searched the Internet to see what others thought. I started by exploring our course’s LiveBinder and followed with a search through twitter using the hashtag “#whystem” among other similar searches. Many of the sources I found supplied information that reinforced the initial thoughts I expressed in my previous post. First, an article from Wired in LiveBinder stated that STEM education prepares students for any job, including those outside the STEM fields. This is because STEM education promotes the development of skills and mindsets necessary to succeed in all areas of the workforce, including problem solving, critical thinking, curiosity, and creativity. Many Twitter users agreed with this sentiment. When I searched using “#whySTEM,” people in the science fields claimed to pursue STEM because it teaches people to solve their own problems, satisfies their curiosity, and better prepares them for the 21st Century workforce that has many more opportunities for STEM workers than ever.

    In my initial blog post, I mentioned that STEM education is important because STEM fields are among the fastest growing career paths, providing many potential job opportunities for students to consider. My research online confirmed this trend, but provided additional career-related reasons to incorporate STEM education into my planning that I neglected to mention in my first post. According to a U.S. News article, the current STEM workforce is aging, and the percentage growth of young workers joining the field is not keeping pace with the percentage loss of workers due to retirement. The job opportunities are there, but interest in those jobs is much lower than it was in the past. This issue is exacerbated in minority populations, who are significantly underrepresented in STEM majors and fields. Research done by the American Association of University Women (AAUW) suggests that part of this issue, at least for women, is stereotype threat, while the U.S. News article adds that lack of access to STEM programs in schools for all minority groups is another. STEM education is beneficial for all students, but may be especially efficacious for minority students who might otherwise be steered away from science fields and majors. An additional benefit of STEM education is that it promotes the use of technologies to assist learning. In an age in which new technologies are created every day, it is important for our students to be able to constantly adapt to these new tools and be open-minded towards change. This willingness to learn new things is another habit that will benefit our students in whatever fields they choose.

    It seems clear that STEM education is important for developing the 21st Century skills necessary for students to succeed post-graduation. Furthermore, the number of STEM career options is already quite large and is projected to increase. Additional searches on social media led me to articles suggesting that graduates with STEM degrees also earn more money than their non-STEM peers, even outside of STEM fields. As teachers, we owe it to our students to incorporate STEM into our planning, and there are many ways we can do this. For one, promoting a growth mindset is key to helping all learners believe they can succeed through effort. Minority students, including women and African-American students, may be underrepresented in STEM because they consciously or unconsciously believe in stereotypes, which are fueled by fixed mindsets. By encouraging growth mindsets in our students, we can help make STEM more accessible and improve the diversity of STEM classes and careers. The Edutopia blog in LiveBinder adds that we can get more girls into STEM by correcting negative perceptions at young ages, encouraging participation in special programs, serving as positive mentors, and supporting learning opportunities in the community. Making some small, but significant, changes to our instruction will help bridge the ethnic and gender gaps seen in STEM fields, better prepare our students for their careers, and help the United States as a whole catch up and keep up with other world leaders.