How do we think of STEM? 

It wasn’t too long ago that the idea of STEM didn’t exist. While you might think the meaning of STEM is obvious, it used to mean a lot of things. At its simplest, STEM is just a grouping of the disciplines of  Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. These fields have a number of similarities and so sometimes it makes sense to group them in the same way we often group the “Arts.” However, if you think about it, each of these disciplines is enormous and has a huge amount of diversity in terms of topics and approaches to research. For example, just within the area of Science there are fields like Biology, Psychology, Geology, Chemistry, Astronomy and Physics. And each of those fields has numerous subfields! The same goes for Technology, Engineering and Mathematics too.

Not only are there similarities in the focus of these disciplines that make it useful to group them, but they are often interrelated in the knowledge, strategies or tools used to investigate topics. For example, there might be an Engineering researcher who is studying the strength of Spider silk. In her research her team might have a lot of knowledge of the chemistry of the silk and an understanding of the physics of how it can tolerate high forces. They might need to use advanced computers and technologies to make precise measurements of how the silk can hold lots of weight. From this, they can calculate its strength and use those values to compare it to other materials like steel and nylon.

There is also a strong overlap in the types of strategies researchers in STEM use to understand aspects of how the world works and this is another reason they are often grouped together. STEM professionals are often trying to solve problems that exist and they do this by considering the various factors that are involved, collecting data through direct or indirect observation, and then trying to use those data to make conclusions.

Additionally, there is often a lot of sharing of information across these fields which lead to the benefit of a wider audience. Often this happens through publishing results in journals and sharing at meetings, but there are other ways ideas get shared that can spread the learning. For example, a company in China may create a new type of sensor. An engineering company in Kenya learns about this and incorporates this sensor into a piece of equipment they are building for use by medical researchers in Rome ro detect cancer. Those researchers share the results at a medical conference in Chicago and doctors from Riley Children’s Hospital hear about the results and are intrigued. Within a few weeks, they order a machine which makes it from South Africa to the United States where doctors begin using it to screen children for cancer. Not many fields share information as openly as is done in STEM and this has enormous ramifications for how quickly we can learn from one another.

From the above it may not be clear how you might teach STEM in schools. Do we go about just teaching the subjects separately as has been tradition for 100+ years? We do not think this is the way to go. Instead, when we think about teaching STEM we think about helping learners to develop an understanding of how to explore the world and strategies for solving problems. The best way to do this is to use inquiry-based approaches to get learners to explore topics that are interesting to them and to support them to learn about those topics as they work the goals you set.

If done well, this should lead to learners to investigate topics that integrate knowledge and ideas across some combination of the STEM disciplines. We do not think every project needs to involve all aspects of STEM but that the types and depth of projects should be varied across a course so that learners get different mixes of these disciplines based on what it is they’re investigating.

Let’s say a biologist is trying to research an issue about how the pH level of rainfall is impacting plants. No ‘chemistry police’ shows up to block them from learning more about pH and how the chemistry of rain impacts its acidity. Similarly, in a classroom, projects can go in many directions and supporting learners to investigate those in a meaningful way is what’s most important, regardless of what disciplinary boundaries they might cross. In our STEM for Educators class we will do our best to develop your knowledge across STEM so you feel comfortable doing this with your learners and we will do our best to model this frequently so that you can get a feel for what this looks like in practice.