Advancing Elementary and Middle School STEM Education

Navigating the current STEM agendas and debates is complex and challenging. Perspectives on the nature of STEM education and how it should be implemented without losing discipline integrity, approaches to incorporating the arts (STEAM) and how equity in access to STEM education can be increased are...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inInternational journal of science and mathematics education Vol. 15; no. Suppl 1; pp. 5 - 24
Main Author English, Lyn D.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Dordrecht Springer Netherlands 01.05.2017
Springer
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects
Access to Education
Affordances
Arenas
Art Education
Design
Design engineering
Education
Educational Attitudes
Elementary Education
Engineering
Equal Education
Integrated Activities
Intellectual Disciplines
Mathematics Education
Middle Schools
Program Implementation
Science Education
Secondary Education
STEM Education
Technical education
Technology education
STEAM education
Engineering design
STEM access
Pedagogical affordances
STEM integration
STEM education
Modelling
Programming and computational thinking
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Summary:Navigating the current STEM agendas and debates is complex and challenging. Perspectives on the nature of STEM education and how it should be implemented without losing discipline integrity, approaches to incorporating the arts (STEAM) and how equity in access to STEM education can be increased are just a few of the many issues faced by researchers and educators. There are no straightforward answers. Opinions on how STEM education should be advanced vary across school contexts, curricula and political arenas. This position paper addresses five core issues: (a) perspectives on STEM education, (b) approaches to STEM integration, (c) STEM discipline representation, (d) equity in access to STEM education and (e) extending STEM to STEAM. A number of pedagogical affordances inherent in integrated STEM activities are examined, with the integration of modelling and engineering design presented as an example of how such learning affordances can be capitalized on.
ISSN:1571-0068
1573-1774
DOI:10.1007/s10763-017-9802-x