Content Summary
Over the last decade, the word STEM has become increasingly relevant across the world, and it has come to symbolize a solution to a variety of problems. This development has evidently affected the ongoing trends in curriculum design on all educational levels. STEM is being seen in education as an interdisciplinary and skills-focused curriculum organizer that has the potential to engage and retain pupils. The focus of this article is on the STEM curriculum, and it examines the factors that have led to the present understanding of STEM, as well as the epistemological questions, conflicts, and dilemmas that this curriculum creates. With the recent surge in the number of academic papers on STEM education, evaluations of the state and trends in STEM education research throughout the world are helping to advance the subject. It is therefore highly likely that the future development of curriculum design trends will continue to prioritize the intersectionality of STEM subjects to improve the likelihood of their easy implementation.
Response
In my opinion, the prioritization of flexible and easily implementable STEM education is an understandable and justified trend. As innovation is currently flourishing in any major area of life, technological literacy is now inseparable from any occupation one might choose, including the most artistic ones. With proper support in their curriculum, young people may now go from being passive users to becoming designers of computer systems and applications through STEM education. I believe that schools can promote the advantages of learning and thinking by better understanding and enhancing education, and therefore build more effective integrated computer science and STEM experiences. Beyond ensuring that society has enough qualified specialists, creativity, problem-solving, and computational thinking have become important skills in life. A better understanding of the current prospects and issues within STEM education at school and beyond opens the door for discussing the potential improvements.
As modern STEM education becomes progressively innovation-focused, it evolves quickly, together with the field it aims to cover. As a result of this evolution, I feel like internal inconsistencies and dilemmas are almost a given, which should not be discouraging any enthusiast from teaching or studying STEM. However, an objective analysis of the existing environment and the pre-requisites to its biggest problems may lead, in perspective, to a better outcome for everyone involved. In particular, research in the areas of optimizing the STEM educational practices and increasing the field’s attractiveness is vastly needed. Considering the substantial and consistent advancements in each of the STEM areas, new employment opportunities are rapidly emerging. In recent years, numerous areas of the world have experienced a lack of well-trained STEM workers. While the need for qualified students grows by the day, the number of students interested in pursuing a STEM profession is rapidly decreasing.
The decrease is likely to be caused by prevalent misconceptions of STEM subjects being unavoidably disproportionally intellectually demanding and boring to study at the same time. When combined, they result in students giving up prior to fully trying their best in understanding an initially challenging topic they encounter. This tendency is a general negative within the education field in general, and research projects that touch on the increasing attractiveness of STEM might overlap with the potential solutions to this larger issue.
Bibliographical Information
Millar, V. (2020). Trends, Issues and Possibilities for an Interdisciplinary STEM Curriculum. Science & Education, 29(4), 929-948. Web.