Research demonstrates that STEM disciplines perpetuate a history of exclusion, particularly for students with marginalized identities. This poses problems particularly when science permeates every aspect of contemporary American life. Institutions’ repeated failures to disrupt systemic oppression in STEM has led to a mostly white, cisgender, and male scientific workforce replete with implicit and/or explicit biases. Education holds one pathway to disrupt systemic linkages of STEM oppression from society to the classroom. Maintaining views on science as inherently objective isolates it from the world in which it is performed. STEM education must move beyond the transactional approaches to transformative environments manifesting respect for students’ social and educational capital. We must create a STEM environment in which students with marginalized identities feel respected, listened to, and valued. We must assist students in understanding how their positionality, privilege, and power both historically and currently impacts their meaning making and understanding of STEM.

In the face of complex local and global problems, there is a critical need to prepare PK-12 students to be innovative, resilient problem-solvers and well-equipped STEM-literate citizens. With focus upon integrated content, college and career readiness, authentic problems, and action-oriented pedagogies, integrative STEM education provides a promising approach to address this challenge. Integrative STEM programming with its fusion of science, mathematics, engineering, and technology content and practices may manifest in a variety of ways: Teachers co-plan an engineering design experience within a social studies class. A community business partner offers a job-shadowing experience. Students engage in an after-school program at a makerspace. Educators collaboratively re-envision and interweave STEM across the curriculum. And more... Current and future educational leaders striving to improve STEM programming will find this book to be a useful resource. Its introduction offers an orientation to the fundamental goals, principles, and practices of integrative STEM education. While later chapters delve into the facets of STEM programming and the competencies of STEM leadership which form the foundation of a coherent program. These evidence-based strategies, examples, and resources may provide inspiration to leaders as they initiate and enhance an equitable integrative STEM culture within their school.

Bringing together a diverse cohort of experts, STEM in Early Childhood Education explores the ways STEM can be integrated into early childhood curricula, highlighting recent research and innovations in the field, and implications for both practice and policy. Based on the argument that high-quality STEM education needs to start early, this book emphasizes that early childhood education must include science, technology, engineering, and mathematics in developmentally appropriate ways based on the latest research and theories. Experienced chapter authors address the theoretical underpinnings of teaching STEM in the early years, while contextualizing these ideas for the real world using illustrative examples from the classroom. This cutting-edge collection also looks beyond the classroom to how STEM learning can be facilitated in museums, nature-based learning outdoors, and after-school programs. STEM in Early Childhood Education is an excellent resource for aspiring and veteran educators alike, exploring the latest research, providing inspiration, and advancing best practices for teaching STEM in the early years.

Reconceptualizing STEM Education explores and maps out research and development ideas and issues around five central practice themes: Systems Thinking; Model-Based Reasoning; Quantitative Reasoning; Equity, Epistemic, and Ethical Outcomes; and STEM Communication and Outreach. These themes are aligned with the comprehensive agenda for the reform of science and engineering education set out by the 2015 PISA Framework, the US Next Generation Science Standards and the US National Research Council’s A Framework for K-12 Science Education. The new practice-focused agenda has implications for the redesign of preK-12 education for alignment of curriculum-instruction-assessment; STEM teacher education and professional development; postsecondary, further, and graduate studies; and out-of-school informal education. In each section, experts set out powerful ideas followed by two eminent discussant responses that both respond to and provoke additional ideas from the lead papers. In the associated website highly distinguished, nationally recognized STEM education scholars and policymakers engage in deep conversations and considerations addressing core practices that guide STEM education.

The Handbook of Research on STEM Education represents a groundbreaking and comprehensive synthesis of research and presentation of policy within the realm of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. What distinguishes this Handbook from others is the nature of integration of the disciplines that is the founding premise for the work – all chapters in this book speak directly to the integration of STEM, rather than discussion of research within the individual content areas. The Handbook of Research on STEM Education explores the most pressing areas of STEM within an international context. Divided into six sections, the authors cover topics including: the nature of STEM, STEM learning, STEM pedagogy, curriculum and assessment, critical issues in STEM, STEM teacher education, and STEM policy and reform. The Handbook utilizes the lens of equity and access by focusing on STEM literacy, early childhood STEM, learners with disabilities, informal STEM, socio-scientific issues, race-related factors, gender equity, cultural-relevancy, and parental involvement. Additionally, discussion of STEM education policy in a variety of countries is included, as well as a focus on engaging business/industry and teachers in advocacy for STEM education. The Handbook’s 37 chapters provide a deep and meaningful landscape of the implementation of STEM over the past two decades. As such, the findings that are presented within provide the reader with clear directions for future research into effective practice and supports for integrated STEM, which are grounded in the literature to date.

What students learn about the science disciplines, technology, engineering, and mathematics during their K-12 schooling shapes their intellectual development, opportunities for future study and work, and choices of career, as well as their capacity to make informed decisions about political and civic issues and about their own lives. Most people share the vision that a highly capable STEM workforce and a population that understands and supports the scientific enterprise are key to the future place of the United States in global economics and politics and to the well-being of the nation. Indeed, the solutions to some of the most daunting problems facing the nation will require not only the expertise of top STEM professionals but also the wisdom and understanding of its citizens. Although much is known about why schools may not succeed, it is far less clear what makes STEM education effective. Successful STEM Education: A Workshop Summary discusses the importance of STEM education. The report describes the primary types of K-12 schools and programs that can support successful education in the STEM disciplines and examines data and research that demonstrate the effectiveness of these school types. It also summarizes research that helps to identify both the elements that make such programs effective and what is needed to implement these elements.

Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) permeate the modern world. The jobs people do, the foods they eat, the vehicles in which they travel, the information they receive, the medicines they take, and many other facets of modern life are constantly changing as STEM knowledge steadily accumulates. Yet STEM education in the United States, despite the importance of these subjects, is consistently falling short. Many students are not graduating from high school with the knowledge and capacities they will need to pursue STEM careers or understand STEM-related issues in the workforce or in their roles as citizens. For decades, efforts to improve STEM education have focused largely on the formal education system. Learning standards for STEM subjects have been developed, teachers have participated in STEM-related professional development, and assessments of various kinds have sought to measure STEM learning. But students do not learn about STEM subjects just in school. Much STEM learning occurs out of school-in organized activities such as afterschool and summer programs, in institutions such as museums and zoos, from the things students watch or read on television and online, and during interactions with peers, parents, mentors, and role models. To explore how connections among the formal education system, afterschool programs, and the informal education sector could improve STEM learning, a committee of experts from these communities and under the auspices of the Teacher Advisory Council of the National Research Council, in association with the California Teacher Advisory Council organized a convocation that was held in February 2014. Entitled "STEM Learning Is Everywhere: Engaging Schools and Empowering Teachers to Integrate Formal, Informal, and Afterschool Education to Enhance Teaching and Learning in Grades K-8," the convocation brought together more than 100 representatives of all three sectors, along with researchers, policy makers, advocates, and others, to explore a topic that could have far-reaching implications for how students learn about STEM subjects and how educational activities are organized and interact. This report is the summary of that meeting. STEM Learning is Everywhere explores how engaging representatives from the formal, afterschool, and informal education sectors in California and from across the United States could foster more seamless learning of STEM subjects for students in the elementary and middle grades. The report also discusses opportunities for STEM that may result from the new expectations of the Next Generation Science Standards and the Common Core Standards for Mathematics and Language Arts.