What is STEM?

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1. How would you describe STEM education to a friend or family member in informal conversation?

STEM education is an integration of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. There is often a misconception that each subject is a separate entity; however, STEM is a paradigm of crosscutting concepts that can be applied in the real world to solve problems. It reinforces critical thinking and common practices that are used in science, technology, engineering, and math classrooms. With that, STEM education creates critical thinkers, sets the pathway for the new generation of inventors, and increases science literacy. The world is becoming technology-dependent and STEM has an impact on technological advances especially with things like artificial intelligence, or AI. We have a duty, as teachers, to cultivate creative and innovative minds to help lead advances.

2. Why do you think STEM education is (or is not) important?

There is a current push for increasing awareness in STEM education to make it more suitable for all students. The United States is known as a top world force, but compared to other leading countries, we’re not producing as many master individuals in the field which results in employers recruiting people from other countries. To increase mastery in our own population, we need to continue to push forth with the STEM movement and hire teachers who have enough background knowledge to effectively teach students in these subjects. STEM education is important to continue to mold future scientists, mathematicians, and engineers. Students will gain valuable skills that they will be able to use in life and help solve real-world problems.

3. What is the value of incorporating or enhancing STEM in public education?

STEM needs to be incorporated in public education and equal opportunities need to be provided for students who may or may not want to pursue STEM. With that being said, STEM education needs to be enhanced so it’s appealing to the general public. There are many advantages of STEM education because not only are students’ critical thinking and problem solving skills strengthened, but so do their literacy skills. As stated before, STEM education allows students to interpret the world around them, ask questions, and solve problems.

*Upon my initial post, I further researched STEM education. LiveBinder contained a variety of resources that spanned from US News, Huffington Post, Wired, to Edutopia. Each article was informative and  helped reinforce my initial thoughts about STEM education. I even did a quick Google search about STEM education and I found Live Science to be incredibly helpful as it had an initial overview of what it was and did a breakdown of why it’s important. Twitter is also a helpful resource as I follow various STEM related people/groups so I can see what they post and they often post interesting articles or videos that I can further look into. The classes I’ve taken at Stevenson so far have engrained the value of what STEM education is and because of that, I had a good understanding of STEM and its hardships early on. I found that the videos were also helpful in talking about how minorities and girls don’t have a strong presence in the fields and talked what we can do to increase diversity and empower women. The statistics for STEM Education in the US is alarming considering that the numbers are staggering low compared to students in other countries.

As a top world force, we need to cultivate a culture that can apply the scientific method to think critically and solve problems. By incorporating the scientific method early on in STEM education, it will help students develop the skills needed to be successful later on. Having a growth mindset and teaching students that effort is way more important than getting the right answer is another critical practice to incorporate into STEM education. In science, not everything is what it seems at first. For example, experiments can fail multiple times but by making adjustments, experiments can be successful. It’s all about effort and not giving up.

Since this will be my first year in the classroom as a student teacher, I will want to incorporate STEM education in my lessons. Zoology is a new elective students can take at my school so I’m starting with a blank slate. It will be a great way for me to incorporate fun lab activities with my students to get them thinking and seeing how science is all around them. I will also want to find a way to incorporate art so that STEM is more of STEAM to reach my artistic students. By doing so, it will allow me to be more in tune with my students. Overall, STEM education is important and we need to enhance it for students  by creating a positive environment, having qualified educators, and making it innovative so students can be successful.

Comments

  1. UnknownSeptember 1, 2018 at 8:22 AM

    I like that you are willing to incorporate art into your classroom. I like the idea of STEAM rather than STEM, I think that it helps widen the stigma that only 'nerdy' or 'sciency' kids are interested in STEM. In each category, you need an artistic mind to come up with 'out of the box' ideas and have that extra piece of perspective. I am excited (and jealous) that you get to teach a Zoology course this year, I can't wait to see what it brings you!

    ReplyDelete
  2. CMSeptember 1, 2018 at 3:13 PM

    Hi Rechelle!

    I liked what you said about the importance of learning the scientific method and how that can carry over to many things throughout students' lives. I think this holds true for a lot of things in STEM, especially for those students who may not follow a STEM career path. STEM encourages a certain way of thinking and those kinds of skills are useful for all people in all fields.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Austin SanchezSeptember 2, 2018 at 7:21 PM

    Rechelle,

    I liked how you brought up the fact of making STEM education accessible to everyone. I think a lot of people hear about STEM and they think it is only for the private schools that are expensive and that not everyone can have access too. That is not the case. STEM, or STEAM, can be implemented in every school. There are some additional resources that are needed, but if a school wants to build a reputation of having excellent academics, then implementing STEAM would be highly beneficial.

    ReplyDelete

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