![]() Certainly material under the STEM label on Pinterest, a popular source of inspiration for teachers, tends to be STEM-Ed.Ī screenshot of some STEM tasks found on Pinterest Education in STEM subjects It seems that when primary/elementary school teachers talk about STEM, it is usually STEM-Ed they are referring to. A STEM project should also engage students in communicating, remove the fear of failure, appeal equally to boys and girls and promote authentic assessment. The makerspace movement ties in with STEM-Ed.Ī good STEM-Ed project is described by Anne Jolly in her post Perfect STEM lessons. Anne Jolly suggests that a “perfect” STEM lesson uses an engineering approach as a framework, applies maths and science content through authentic experiences, deals with real world issues, involves hands-on and open-ended exploration with multiple right answers for students working in teams with the teacher in a facilitator role. STEM-Ed lessons use a wide range of materials, including Lego bricks, spaghetti, marshmallows, masking tape, newspaper, recycled materials – just about anything you can think of. These include tower and bridge building, making boats to carry certain weights, creating a mechanism that will protect an egg from a fall or launching projectiles a maximum or specified distance. Pinterest is full of attractive STEM-Ed lessons based around engineering and the design process. There has been a move towards specific STEM-based lessons or projects, particularly at middle-school or older primary level. It is believed that one way to encourage children and young people to continue in STEM subjects, is to embed STEM into the curriculum. One category is specific STEM Projects which I refer to as STEM-Ed, and another is education in STEM subjects, as they currently exist in the school curriculum. There are multiple ways of viewing STEM Education. This graphic illustrates the analogy of a STEM pipeline. A consequence of the higher demand and pay for people with STEM skills and qualifications is that there is often a shortage of teachers in STEM subjects. There are also identified equity issues, as STEM jobs tend to be higher-paying, and also tend to be dominated by white males. Industrialised nations need people with STEM skills, so need to ensure there are enough people entering and staying in the pipeline in order to fill future demand. A common (engineering?) analogy is that of a pipeline. From a careers perspective, the focus is on making sure that there are enough skilled workers in the STEM areas for future development. There seems to be no universally agreed-upon definition of STEM. The term, STEM, originated in the USA in the late 1990s to describe specific careers and education for these careers. In this post I suggest that there are two related uses of STEM as a description. Though most know that the four letters stand for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, it can be difficult to pin down what exactly it means. ![]() STEM is a popular acronym in educational circles and is used to refer to careers and educational tasks.
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