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The Challenges of STEM Education

Stephen Portz
2013-2014 Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellow

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The Challenges of STEM Education
By Stephen Portz

2013-2014 Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellow

Presented to the 43rd Space Congress, Cape Canaveral, Florida, April 29, 2015

STEM’s Identity Crisis

In the 1990s the National Science Foundation moved to identify critical subject
areas which most directly impacted the economic development in our nation.
Science, math, engineering, and technology were recognized and combined to
form the acronym - SMET; unfortunately, SMET sounded too much like smut, so
the NSF wisely decided to find a better acronym, and STEM was born. So since
inception it would seem, STEM has struggled with its identity. As a result, the first
and most pressing challenge of STEM Education is recognizing what STEM is and
what it is not.

STEM’s identity crisis is evidenced by its many variations: There is STEM, STEMC –
because computer science and coding are really important for our future
technological development; there is STEAM – add an ‘A’ for the arts because no
great products were ever created without artistic sensibilities, just ask Apple;
STREAM – add the ‘R’ for reading because no one can be successful without
knowing how to read. It would seem that everything in the curriculum is
important and wants to be included, but the problem is when everything is
important, essentially nothing is.

This identity problem is further evidenced by the misunderstanding that so many

have in thinking STEM is about emphasizing certain subjects at the exclusion of
others. I do not believe that was ever the intent. The purpose of STEM was to
take advantage of the effectiveness that these critical subjects can have when
they are integrated in real world applications by modeling the way they are used
in industry.

Districts and states are really struggling with “what STEM is” to the detriment of
the movement. Well said one wise person, “If the trumpet give an uncertain
sound, who shall prepare themselves for the battle?” If the purpose of STEM is not
understood, implementation will unavoidably suffer. The reason for this struggle
is that clearly, districts have no idea what the technology and engineering pieces
are supposed to look like. Science they know, math they know, but engineering
and technology because they are applied, are elusive subjects for academically
minded people without an industrial background. The biggest difficulty then with
enacting STEM Education programs, is that many professional teachers do not
know how engineering skills are used in industry, so they cannot relate them to
their students or deploy them properly as part of an effective STEM strategy.

For example, many believe that if they give their students iPads to use in a science
or math class they have covered the technology piece of the STEM equation. So
some background instruction is in order: Technologies are the products of
engineers. The work of scientists is to make discoveries in their questioning of
WHY. The work of engineers is HOW to take scientific discoveries and design them
into products (technologies) for economic and societal benefits. Technology and
engineering are not just additional subjects to be added to the academic mix, they
must be integrated members of the strategy - they are in fact, the
context. Technologies are the product of engineering design activity. It goes
without saying that if a STEM strategy is not making the requirement that
students design, iterate, and create technologies as part of their program of
study, they are simply not engaging in STEM.

Poor leadership in education perpetuates these misunderstandings and the status

quo. “Educational institutions unfortunately have little incentive to produce more
and better STEM graduates, especially graduates with the kinds of skills needed by
industry. It’s not a failure of imagination or knowledge; it’s a failure of will on the
part of institutions.” (Atkinson, Mayo, 2012). Without direct ties to industry there
is little incentive in education to change these attitudes despite our President
identifying the STEM initiative as a critical National Security Issue – “if we do not
improve the quality and quantity of science, engineering and math students as
well as the general technological literacy of our workers, our country will lose
significant quality of life and world leadership standing.” (Moravec, 2010).

The STEM movement requires systemic change and a fundamental upheaval in

the way we view our purpose and our methods in educating. “For over a century,
science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education have established
and steadfastly defended their sovereign territory [and] it will take a lot more than
a four letter word to bring them together.” (Sanders, 2009)
The Essential Importance of Integration

The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) speaks highly of the importance of
content integration in STEM learning. The NGSS refers to content that spills over
into multiple subjects as “crosscutting concepts.” The fact that a major portion of
the standards address the need to recognize crosscutting concepts is both
affirming and condemning. It is affirming in that it recognizes how powerful it is
when our students make connections with other concepts, applications, and
disciplines. It is condemning in that by raising the notion of crosscutting concepts
to such a level of importance in the standards, it is an admission that it previously
was not being done. NGSS gives further encouragement for the ideas of subject
area integration: “Students should not be presented with instruction leading to
one performance expectation in isolation, rather bundles of performances provide
greater coherence…also allow(s) students to see the connected nature of science
and the practices.” (NGSS, Volume 1, 2013)

Additionally, “…advocates of a more connected approach argue that teaching

STEM subjects in a more integrated way, especially in the context of real-world
issues, can make these fields more relevant to students and ultimately increase
their motivation and achievement. Integration should be made explicit. Students
do not spontaneously integrate concepts across different representations and
materials on their own. The people who design integrated STEM experiences
should provide intentional and explicit support to help students build knowledge
and skills within and across disciplines; currently, such supports are often missing
or implicit. In addition, programs that prepare educators to deliver integrated
STEM instruction need to help these educators make the connections among the
disciplines explicit to their students.” (National Academies Press, 2014)

In education we try to provide for lower achieving students by finding methods

which are especially effective to these populations of students. Often this is done
at the expense of the other students. A compelling finding from teaching using an
integrated model is that not only low performing students improve learning gains;
it is being shown that all students in fact benefit. According to the National
Science Foundation, “…raising academic achievement levels for all students is a
top priority for education reform at all levels across the United States.
Interdisciplinary education can increase learning gains among low achieving
minority students while increasing engagement and problem solving skills for all
levels of students. Interdisciplinary education has the potential to increase STEM
literacy levels among all students.” (Mehalik, Doppelt & Schunn, 2005).

Are Science Teachers Qualified to Teach Engineering?

While the NGSS recognizes the prominence that engineering must have in the
curriculum to satisfy the President’s charge, its solution is to have science
teachers teach engineering in addition to their science curriculum: “Science and
engineering are integrated into science education by raising engineering design to
the same level as scientific inquiry in science classroom instruction at all levels and
by emphasizing the core ideas of engineering design and technology applications.”
(NGSS, Volume 2, 2013)

As far as this model goes to support STEM, the fact remains that science teachers
are very poorly equipped to teach engineering: “Few science teachers have had
even one engineering course. The faculty members who prepare future
teachers…have limited experience with engineering education. Thus the current
generation of teachers has not been prepared to incorporate engineering into
science teaching”… and, “Even if science teachers did have appropriate
preparation in engineering education…the science curriculum is already filled.
There is insufficient time to do justice to current science topics, much less add a
new layer of new requirements.” (Bull and Slykhuis, 2013).

Another concern with the “have science teachers teach engineering” model is the
imperative that whoever conducts engineering instruction have a background in
the requirements of industry – how is engineering used in the workplace?
“Studies are converging on a view of engineering education that not only requires
student to develop a grasp of traditional engineering fundamentals, such as
mechanics, dynamics, mathematics, and technology, but also to develop the skills
associated with learning to imbed this knowledge in real-world situations.”(NGSS,
Volume 2, 2013, p. 16)

Since a traditional science educator would have gone through the typical teacher
preparation program in college, it is unlikely that many have had any industrial
work related experience. How is a science teacher in this situation going to be
able to effectively model and explain the work of an engineer when they do not
understand it and have never done it themselves?
Overcoming Barriers with Essential Industry Ties

Engineers understand the worlds of math and science because they had to go
through those worlds to get to engineering. The same cannot be said of scientists
and mathematicians – there is no engineering requirement in their programs of
study. This speaks to the essential need of our academic teachers having
experience and understanding in the means and methods of industry. “They need
to have more access to experiences within real organizations where technology is
being developed and used. Clearly, industry appears willing to be part of this
process, if permitted. A large number of U.S. technology companies from a variety
of industry sectors have active programs to help improve STEM education…but if
STEM education is to be… effective, partnerships with industry need to be more
systemic and deeper [and we need to] shift accountability measures for high
schools from a content-based to a skills-based paradigm.” (Atkinson, Mayo, 2012).

Another barrier which prevents effective STEM implementation in the US is not a

problem with our global rival China: “Chinese officials recognize that STEM is
more important than other subjects because the overall societal contribution from
a STEM graduate exceeds that of a social sciences or humanities major. Such a
view is rejected in elite policy circles in Washington (which coincidently, are
populated largely by individuals with law degrees).” (Atkinson, Mayo, 2012).
Understanding and overcoming this bias is essential for us to make headway on
the STEM front.

As previously mentioned, a significant barrier to the integration of engineering

and technology in math and science classes can be with the math and science
instructors themselves - if they cannot communicate to their students how the
skills they are teaching are utilized in the world of work. This is where industries
can help with teacher externing, inservices, and industrial fellowships. A
vocational business exchange program (VIBE) matches teachers with industry and
grants a number of hours paid placement with a local industry. In another
example, STEM teachers are provided with industrial work experiences during
their summer break. This model provides a win, win, win, solution as businesses
and industry does its part to enhance education and provide for a strong pipeline
of future talent; Teachers benefit by better understanding how academic skills are
used in the workplace and they realize enhanced credibility with their students as
they relate the experience to classroom practice; but the real beneficiary are the
students who can then make better connections between the classrooms skills
and future jobs.
In Conclusion

It is very likely that the STEM crisis in our educational system did not happen
despite our best efforts at educating students, but was more likely caused by the
way we educate students.

Our silo thinking philosophy of academic instruction, which leaves many students
behind, is not founded in research in how students learn best or in the
requirement of real-world application. Continuing to use an academic model with
discrete educational “silos” as the solution to a problem that was most likely
caused by this mindset is not acceptable. Clearly, if the challenge to effectively
teach engineering education along with an integrated math and science content is
beyond the scope of what teachers are qualified to perform, what should be
done?

The T and E of STEM are the applied portions. Just as in college, many science
courses cannot be adequately covered without the lab course which is taken
concurrently with the academic course; so to, for STEM to work it must include
opportunities for hands on engineering design work creating technologies. One
way to do this would be require a T and E lab course concurrent with math and
science offerings. By having a dedicated engineering course of study along with
their academic courses, students learn to ply their academic and technological
skills in the context of how they will be used in the world of work.

Similarly, career academies with an engineering or technology focus gather

student cohorts and establish a school within a school small learning community.
History has shown that if you desire to build and accelerate growth and capacity
in an area, one of the best ways to do it is to gather it as a community. STEM
career academies accomplish this by attracting students with similar career
interests and structuring their academic program around the interest. STEM
academy students share common academic teachers along with an engineering or
technology teacher. This teaching team coordinates curriculum and instruction to
align with the students shared career interests to focus the instruction where it
will be of the most usefulness and interest to the academy students. Some
examples of how STEM career academy teams can do this are with thematic units
that are cross curricular. Students studying Greek and Roman civilizations in
history class can find intersections with the literature of those times in language
arts class as well as the civil engineering, warfare, and weapons technologies in
their CTE class.

There are very successful models across the nation that integrate academic
instruction with an engineering CTE program to create effective STEM instruction.
Such programs replicate engineering design activity through the use of project
based learning (PBL) which naturally integrate STEM subjects: “…the STEM PBL
challenges provide students with authentic real-world problems captured and re-
enacted in a multi-media format designed to emulate the real-world context in
which the problems were encountered and solved.” (Massa, DeLaura, Dischino,
Donnelly, Hanes, 2012).

Anytime a teacher makes a requirement for students to learn, collaborate, or

produce a project using the appropriate technology, they leverage the learning
gains by not only providing learning content in a compelling way, but in the
context of how it is used in the world. As we do this, we provide our students
with the skill set for tomorrow’s workplace. To be sure, the secret of an effective
STEM program is understanding STEM Education is really a euphemism for
WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT. Teaching our students necessary workplace skills,
integrated, applied, and contextual, just as they are used in the real world, is the
greatest possible outcome of the STEM Movement.

Stephen Portz is a nationally recognized leader in STEM Education and is a Triangle Coalition for STEM
Education Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellow. He is an engineering and technology teacher
for Brevard Public Schools where he has taught for the past 26 years. He can be reached for comment
at: [email protected]

References:

Atkinson, R and Mayo, M. (2012). “Refueling the U.S. innovation economy: Fresh
Approaches to Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM)
Education” ITIF – Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.

Bull, G. and Slykhuis, D. (2013). NTLS Design Challenge: Science & Engineering
Strand.
Katehi, L., Pearson, G., & Feder, M. (2009). Engineering in K-12 Education.
Washington, DC: National Academies Press.

Massa, N., DeLaura, J., A., Dischino, M., Donnelly, J. F., Hanes, F., D. (2012).
Problem Based Learning in a Pre-Service Technology and Engineering Course.
American Society of Engineering Education.

Moravec (2010) “Obama: Education is a National Security Issue.” Educational

Futures. Jan 7, 2010.

Next Generation Science Standards: For States, By States. 2013. Volume 1: The
Standards. Achieve Press Inc., Washington DC.

Next Generation Science Standards: For States, By States. 2013. Volume 2:

Appendixes. Achieve Press Inc., Washington DC.

Sanders, M. (2009). “STEM, STEM Education, STEMmania.” The Technology

Teacher Dec/Jan 2009.

“STEM INTEGRATION IN K-12 EDUCATION STATUS, PROSPECTS, AND AN AGENDA

FOR RESEARCH” Report Brief 2014 National Research Council, National Academies
Press. Washington DC.