The Age of STEM

Educational policy and practice across the world in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics

Brigid Freeman, Simon Marginson, Russell Tytler, Brigid Freeman, Simon Marginson, Russell Tytler

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317663669
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Higher Education

Across the world STEM (learning and work in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) has taken central importance in education and the economy in a way that few other disciplines have. STEM competence has become seen as key to higher productivity, technological adaptation and research-based innovation. No area of educational provision has a greater current importance than the STEM disciplines yet there is a surprising dearth of comprehensive and world-wide information about STEM policy, participation, programs and practice.

The Age of STEM is a state of the art survey of the global trends and major country initiatives in STEM. It gives an international overview of issues such as:

• STEM strategy and coordination

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• curricula, teaching and assessment

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• women in STEM

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• indigenous students

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• research training

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• STEM in the graduate labour markets

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• STEM breadth and STEM depth

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The individual chapters give comparative international analysis as well as a global overview, particularly focusing on the growing number of policies and practices in mobilising and developing talent in the STEM fields. The book will be of particular interest to anyone involved in educational policy, those in education management and leaders in both schooling and tertiary education. It will have a wider resonance among practitioners in the STEM disciplines, particularly at university level, and for those interested in contemporary public policy.

1 Widening and deepening the STEM effect

Brigid Freeman, Simon Marginson and Russell Tytler

Introduction

This book began as a policy research project instigated in 2012 by the Australian government’s Chief Scientist Professor Ian Chubb, working through the structure of the Australian Council of Learned Academies (ACOLA). The four academies cover scholar-researchers in Australia in science, engineering and technology, social science and humanities. The project was titled ‘STEM: Country comparisons’. Its goal was to critically examine and compare approaches, in countries and regions across the world, to capacity building in education in the STEM disciplines: science, technology, engineering and mathematics. The project also focused on the take-up of STEM skills in the labour market.

The wheels of policy advice can turn slowly but not in this case. Within six months the project had generated a main report (Marginson et al. 2013) and 24 appendixes, mostly in the form of reports by individual consultants prepared especially for the project. These were STEM country and region reports, covering most members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and other nations in Europe, Asia, Latin America and Africa. STEM programmes are active in almost all nations. In governments around the world it is believed there is a relationship between, on the one hand, national investment in STEM-related skills, and the quality and quantity of the national skill base, and, on the other hand, the economic productivity of the workforce. With reason, it is also believed there is a relationship between the quantity and quality of high-level STEM skills and knowledge, and research-based innovations in industry. There is no contemporary nation with an economy both vigorous and well integrated that is not also strong in STEM.

Research conducted for the project investigated all levels of education except early childhood learning, with emphasis on the senior secondary and tertiary years, including doctoral education. It covered both academic education and technical/vocational training, and the interface of each with employers, occupations/professions, the workplace and other education sectors. Special attention was given to the participation of girls and women in STEM, and students from social groups under-represented in STEM learning or STEM-related work. Indigenous participation was the subject of separate reports in two countries and discussed in other national reports. In summary, the work focused on:

• trends in STEM enrolments in all educational domains;

• access of STEM graduates to the labour market;

• the perceived relevance of STEM to economic growth and well-being;

• what countries are doing to address declining STEM uptake and its impact on the workforce, and/or lifting national performance – the strategies, policies and programmes used to enhance STEM at all levels of education; and judgements concerning the outcomes of those programmes: whether the measures were successful and how this was evaluated;

• whether the measures used by different countries could become translated effectively across borders and where policy and professional practice might need to be modified to enable such policy borrowing and adaptation.

The emphasis on policy and strategy meant that the main focus was on national and provincial government programmes dealing with STEM. Nevertheless, strategies and programmes developed by education institutions and some non-government organizations were also considered to be relevant (for example, foundations in the United States), and the potential of joint industry-education bodies was seen as significant.

While the government-generated policy research project was primarily focused on whether the solutions developed in other countries could be usefully applied to STEM provision in Australian education, and maintenance of a STEM-skilled workforce in that country, on perusal of the country reports it was quickly apparent that the material had a larger meaning – that it would be of interest in all countries, not just Australia.

Not only are many countries doing new and interesting things in STEM at school and university level, not only are some government programmes very effective, the country tales about barriers, difficulties and dilemmas also provide valuable insights. We can all learn much from each other. There are significant parallels and similarities between countries, in the educational and policy issues involved in STEM, which has become strategically important to all. At the same time, when STEM programmes work their way through the national and local contexts of each system they encounter different traditions, customs and assumptions about professional roles and responsibilities. The consultants to the STEM project created a rich set of individual cases from which general lessons can be drawn. This raised the question of how best to communicate those lessons to the world.

The pick of the consultants’ reports for the policy research project have now been turned into country chapters for this book. The result is a rich description of the country sites, across the broad range of educational stages and the education/labour market interface. The country chapters can also be compared with each other, and aggregated into a global picture. This broad and comparative approach allows much data to be considered together, constituting what we know of ‘the age of STEM’. At the same time, as we have been aware throughout this work, the inclusive and comparative approach precludes detailed analysis of the highly diversified, stratified, hierarchical and culturally specific character of STEM policy and practice in each country. Much more could be said about each national system and each deserves books in its own right. We hope though that the broad and inclusive overview provided in this book will trigger more detailed inquiries and deeper learning.

Unfortunately we were unable to include all countries on a full-length basis as the book would have been much too long for the publisher. We are indebted to the project consultants for so quickly and so capably preparing their work in short form for a wider readership. We are also indebted to ACOLA for its encouragement and support for the publication of this material.

Definition of STEM

STEM is here defined as learning and/or work in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, including preliminary learning at school prior to entry into the specific disciplines. The discipline grouping, and the term itself, are not used uniformly in international educational policy or practice. For example, STEM might or might not be held to include the health professions, agriculture, environment and related fields, computing, and psychology. However, it appears that in most jurisdictions, science, engineering and related technologies, and mathematics, are the de facto core. The focus of this book is largely on learning and student choice-making in relation to that core.

STEM in society

Attitudes to STEM

A number of the country chapters point to evidence of public awareness of the value of STEM – though often the same countries are concerned about inadequate numbers of students going on with high-value STEM programmes at senior secondary or the tertiary stage.

In Korea, poll data suggest that public interest in science and technology has increased, driven by interest in new scientific discoveries and awareness of the relevance of science and technology in daily life. The media has been important in popularizing science. In the United States, awareness of the benefits of science and technology is particularly high among young people. Generally it is stronger among men than women. Attitudes can vary between countries. For example, in response to the survey proposition ‘Because of science and technology there will be more opportunities for the next generation’, there was 91 per cent agreement in the United States, 84 per cent in Korea, 82 per cent in China, 75 per cent in the European Union but 66 per cent in Japan (Marginson et al. 2013).

The family

A positive attitude to science and technology does not always translate into engagement in STEM learning and aspirations for STEM-based work. For example, as explored in the chapter on Korea, while Koreans consider STEM important for Korean society, they do not necessarily prefer STEM-related professions for themselves. Doctors, government officials and teachers enjoy higher prestige than STEM workers. There are widespread perceptions that STEM careers are relatively insecure and do not pay well. This might explain the partial retreat of too many high-quality students from STEM studies, and it probably undercuts the credibility of the STEM disciplines with many other students. The answer here is not necessarily to make STEM more entertaining or reduce content demands. In Japan, where mandatory hours and standards in STEM were successively lowered for two decades and PISA (Programme of International Student Assessment) performance declined, since 2008 there has been a return to stronger content requirements and less open choice. This change has public and family support and seems to be associated with a consolidation of STEM enrolments.

In many, if not all, countries parents are seen as key – often it is they who will decide whether socially positive attitudes to STEM lead to STEM study and work.

The family is especially important in East Asia and Singapore, through out of school tutorials and extra classes. This additional learning helps to explain the spectacular performance of the Post-Confucian systems (see Marginson 2014) in the tests of 15-year-old achievement in mathematics, science and reading that are conducted through the OECD’s PISA (OECD 2013). The United Kingdom focuses on informal education links with more broadly based initiatives on public engagement with science, acknowledging the role of families in influencing children through participation in informal science and mathematics activities. A number of STEM initiatives in Europe involve schools linking with local communities, again acknowledging the importance of families. The research literature on STEM achievement suggests that conjoint keys to student achievement in STEM are (1) family cultural capital, and (2) student self-efficacy.

At the same time, not all students have family support. Not all have families. Here the role of institutional education, including teachers, is not just important but all-important.

Students

Regardless of family support, the attitude of students themselves can be crucial. Research in Australia suggests that students’ experience and developing intentions in primary education and the lower secondary years determine their intentions to continue or not with STEM-related subjects and careers.

Research in many countries shows that there is a pattern of declining interest in STEM in the middle secondary years and that girls are more likely to lose interest than boys – though gender factors vary from country to country. There is also a shift from pure science to a growing awareness of the science-based professions such as engineering. In these years programmes designed to link students to STEM professionals can be decisive.

Work and society

The STEM disciplines create direct economic benefits in that they help to form skilled labour. Nevertheless it is doubtful if labour market demand, or rates of return to STEM graduates, constitute sufficiently powerful arguments alone to justify expansion of STEM capabilities in the population; and in any case the economic and social rationale for STEM is larger than this. The STEM disciplines generate many benefits, individual and collective.

Even more than its role in science-based occupations, STEM has a generic role in fostering productivity, technological innovation and workplace understanding and flexibility. The widespread emphasis on universal STEM acquisition, throughout the world’s schooling systems, reflects the ubiquitous role of science and technology in work and living. Preparing students in STEM helps to prepare them to be good citizens and persons able to shape the course of their own lives. Many human activities and problems require at least a basic scientific and technological knowledge and confidence, such as global warming, ecological transformation and changing energy patterns; issues related to health and medical care; and the use of communications and other digital technologies, especially their use as modes of production and creativity. Design skills, underpinned by digital and quantitative capacities, are required in many domains. A growing proportion of the workforce needs quantitative and symbolic skills and basic scientific knowledge.

The line between the spreading role of STEM in employment, and the larger formative role of STEM learning for individual and social capabilities, has become blurred. However, the broadening of STEM’s social and economic role towards ‘STEM for all’ does not mean that the required standard of STEM learning is lower. The key to all STEM contributions is disciplinary content. There are no short-cuts. Students need to acquire STEM in solid programmes of study taught by teachers qualified in the specific discipline.

How wide and how deep?

The consensus of nearly all of the country chapters is that: (1) it is essential to foster scientific and mathematical literacy in all students to middle school level; (2) it is desirable to persuade all students to maintain some STEM programmes for as long as possible; and (3) more students in higher education should be persuaded to aspire to STEM learning and STEM-based careers, for example by shifting from professional programmes in finance or law to STEM studies and professions. Learning in STEM is not only economically and socially useful, and intrinsically worthwhile, it is a powerful intellectual formation that is foundational to many different kinds of individual achievement.

Some countries make mathematics compulsory to the end of schooling. In others this conflicts with a high emphasis on student/family choice of subjects or the use of mathematics and the hard sciences as the principal selector for high-achievement tracks and hard to enter university programmes (not always in STEM) in elite institutions. These are difficult issues. Another difficult issue is the impact of extended STEM work on other disciplines. In principle lifting participation and performance in STEM should not be seen as conflicting with other educational goals such as improving reading, literacy, language acquisition, knowledge of history, society and culture. STEM learning and non-STEM learning are complementary. For example, reading skills underlie all scientific work.

These issues are handled differently from country to country because they invoke deep-seated cultural norms and long historical practices. For example, STEM-competent individuals are seen in varying ways. In China it is believed that excellence comes through effort rather than innate talent. The process of s...