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STEM

ThE STEM jobS pErSpEcTivE What is STEM? The answer depends on who you ask.

From the typical labor market perspective, STEM is 5 to 6 percent of jobs or approximately 8 million jobs in the U.S. economy, according to the Department of Labor. When it comes to jobs, the STEM acronym is not very specific. Federal reports vary in definition of STEM jobs; hence, there is no standard definition for what constitutes a STEM job.

Typically, STEM jobs are defined by the Labor Department as professional and technical support occupations in the fields of computer science and mathematics, engineering, and life and physical sci-ences. The largest group of STEM jobs lies within the computer and math fields, accounting for 46 percent of all STEM employment. Second are engineering and surveying occupations with one-third of STEM employment. Thirteen percent of STEM jobs are in the physical and life sciences, and 9 percent are manage-ment occupations. These jobs are expected to grow by 1 million jobs by 2022, while contributing significantly to economic wealth creation and national security.

Jobs that are not generally included in STEM in-clude medical, education, accounting, social science, high-skill technical (less than a four-year degree), and commercial arts fields. A quandary for the National Endowment for the Arts is that many professional arts-based jobs contribute significantly to gross domestic product and are associated with a high degree of STEM knowledge. Yet arts-based professions—architects, video game designers, special effects artists, video postproduction editors, sound engineers, and digital artists, among others—are generally not associated with STEM.

With rare exceptions, middle-skill jobs, or jobs that require at least a technical certificate or a two-year technical degree, are not included in the federal defi-nition of STEM jobs. By Brookings Institution esti-mates, if technical high-skill jobs are counted as part of STEM jobs, 20 percent of the American workforce is employed in fields that require considerable STEM knowledge. The irony is that many of the high-skill jobs that require at least a two-year degree are tech-nology-based jobs, while most states and metropolitan service areas have a shortage of these workers.

K-12 STEM EducaTion pracTicE and ThE Way ahEadDominant practice in K-12 education in 2016

focuses on STEM as: (1) Math and science literacy; (2) Technology as a tool for instruction; and, (3) Engi-neering as informal education competitions, and in some cases, a form of Career and Technical Education (CTE). Over the past eight years, most states have created STEM academies, professional development centers, informal education competitions, and net-works designed to improve instruction and academic performance in science- and mathematics-related subjects at secondary schools. The opportunity missed for many STEM proponents is to connect college and career readiness by integrating academics and CTE.

In this view, STEM and CTE integration present an opportunity to enhance academic performance by exposing students to rigorous studies across courses. In 2011, Bill Symonds and colleagues at the Harvard Graduate School made this argument to connect career preparation and college preparation in the pub-lication, Pathways to Prosperity: Meeting the Challenge of Preparing Young Americans for the 21st Century. While CTE has gained some momentum under the auspices of STEM in pockets of innovation, CTE suffers from a stigma associated with courses for students not headed to college or university.

The National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) has made excellent strides in defining the way ahead for STEM. According to the NSTA, STEM is “an integration of disciplines that removes the tradition-al barriers among science, technology, engineering, and mathematics and instead focuses on innovation and the applied process of addressing questions and designing solutions to complex contextual problems using current tools and technologies.”

NSTA is ahead of post-secondary teachers in defin-ing STEM in terms of interdisciplinary studies, solving unstructured problems with no predetermined an-swers, and innovation. This definition is ideal because it creates a platform for integration of knowledge- and skill-based instructional techniques—transcending the tired debate between content and process in K-12 education.

Ever since the beginning of the Progressive ed-ucation movement at the turn of the 20th century

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(rooted in John Dewey’s Laboratory Schools), the debate between teaching and testing for factual recall vs. procedural fluency has limited real and meaningful progress related to increasing K-12 student retention, performance, graduation, and matriculation. It is time for education practitioners and policymakers to transcend the progressive and conservative political ideologies that effectively divide the worlds of classical and contemporary education.

We are now witnessing an era of accelerating social, political, and economic change driven by STEM. This transformation of social institutions—from education to work to family and individuality—creates a mandate to prepare students for their future, rather than our past. The history of education during the last period of radical technology change, the Space Age, provides some lessons for the way ahead.

innovaTion Through cLaSSicaL and conTEMporary EducaTionSince the fall of 2008, President Obama and his cab-inet have trumpeted a “Sputnik Moment” to declare that American innovation depends on increasing STEM literacy in K-12 and post-secondary education. While K-12 schools and students need to increase STEM literacy, it is equally important to emphasize the connection among STEM and non-STEM disciplines. During the summer of 2008, I wrote an essay for the National School Board Association, offering histori-cal precedence for the need to connect classical and contemporary learning subjects rather than focusing on STEM alone to achieve innovation:

When our predecessors stood at the edge of the world and gazed at Sputnik orbiting, they did not respond with a narrow focus on science and technol-ogy education. Brigadier Gen. Robert F. McDermott, the founding dean of the U.S. Air Force Academy, redefined military training and set a precedent for the transformation of all military academies by connect-ing the humanities and social science to STEM to prepare leaders for the uncertainty of a high technol-ogy world.

Based on his experience as a K-12 student at the Boston Latin School (the oldest school in America), McDermott designed the new Air Force Academy. The

academy’s success in preparing military officers would later be the catalyst for changing all military service academies—connecting classical and contemporary education. The lesson here for K-12 education is that a world characterized by increasing STEM complexity requires expanding human development to include a broad range of disciplines and subjects to enable critical thinking, creativity, innovation, and ultimately cultural sustainability.

A rapidly changing world also requires the con-nection of knowledge-based and procedural-based learning techniques. An historical example illustrat-ing this lesson is found in David Thornburg’s STEM Education: From Sputnik to the 22nd Century. According to Thornburg, one of the key transformational meth-ods of teaching in K-12 education during the Space Age was the Eisenhower administration’s adoption of the MIT Physical Sciences Study Committee (PSSC) introductory courses in physics.

PSSC courses shifted physics education from rote learning to learning by doing. The MIT Institute Archives and Special Collections tells the story and has reference examples online from the original text: PSSC’s first edition of the new high school textbook, Physics, appeared in 1960. The teacher’s guide explains the shift in pedagogy engendered by this new approach to teaching physics as a shift from “axiomatic” (self-ev-ident truth) to “inductive” (using observation to move from specific to broader conclusions) presentation of the curriculum. Thornburg calls this form of instruc-tion “inquiry-driven project-based learning.”

Similar to PSSC, modern K-12 STEM education practice should teach STEM subjects by connecting knowledge, process, and mentorship.

Doing science is important, according to Murat Tanik from the University of Alabama at Birming-ham and the Society for Design and Process Science, because: “The scientific world-view simply says we know very little and the little we know is subject to change and not fully reliable. This little sentence took thousands of years of human efforts to develop.”

The scientific thought process teaches a type of thinking which has its roots in curiosity, skepticism, and rationality. This process is necessary for early and ongoing education of all students because it models

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thinking for understanding—naturally challenging factual understanding with inquiry and dissent.

ThE cLaSSicaL conTEMporary ModELToday, our strategy for education, workforce, and economic innovation requires an approach to K-12 education that helps students connect classical and contemporary knowledge and tools to innovate. A general model for classical contemporary education includes:

• Using STEM as a contemporary bridge to connect academic, arts, CTE, and health education in addi-tion to specific specialized science and mathematics studies (STEM and civics for example);

• Framing learning through inquiry-driven proj-ect-based learning incorporating innovation and failure as feedback to the learning process;

• Integrating CTE and academics to enhance learn-ing outcomes for students by exposing rigor across subjects;

• Teaching digital information and communications technology (ICT) across the subjects and grades (including programming, computational thinking, and ICT as a transformative force in society);

• Including fine arts, performing arts, cultural arts, and creativity as foundational and necessary to school culture and outcomes;

• Delivering integrated programs of study connect-ing K-12 subjects into coherent course sequences dovetailing to post-secondary schools (community college and university);

• Integrating professional development across faculty communities of practice and subjects in addition to specialized learning time; and,

• Cultivating a culture of innovation as fundamental to education practice and student learning by engag-ing teachers, students, and school stakeholders to innovate from within—rather than only prescribing solutions from the top down.A movement toward this unification of classical and

contemporary education is demonstrated in pockets

of educational innovation practice today. Two schools using the classical contemporary model across the education spectrum are the String Theory Schools in Philadelphia (stringtheoryschools.com) and the Clark Magnet School in La Crescenta, California (clarkmag-net.net).

The vital change we need to make in America is to see STEM as two constituent parts that are fundamen-tally dependent on all education subjects. STEM is a force changing and shaping the individual and social institutions (family, education, work, government, etc.), and STEM is human design and the unintended consequences of our design choices. STEM is not a force outside of the individual acting on society. In the end, we are the proponents of STEM and the resulting world we live in. This is why STEM is so important across the disciplines and subjects of education rather than a specialized topic of interest to a small segment of students and education practitioners.

Jim Brodie Brazell is a technology forecaster specializing in science, technology, and society. Since 2004, he has delivered keynote speeches and workshops on topics related to innovation and change reaching approximately 50,000 education, workforce, and economic development practi-tioners. Learn more about Brazell at www.ventureramp.com or contact him at [email protected].

STEM


InsIde adam Burwell’s classroom at the Barbara Morgan STEM Academy in Meridian, Idaho, students construct catapults out of craft sticks and try to figure out the most efficient way to sail cotton balls across the room.

At this kindergarten through fifth grade school, project-based learning is the norm, not the excep-tion. Teachers answer questions with more questions. Students post queries to classroom “wonder walls” and try to figure out the answers. They learn the scientific method in kindergarten, and they follow the WISE way—Wonder, Investigate, Share, Extend.

“In traditional school, if they look at another’s work, you are cheating,” says Burwell. “But not in the real world. They have to learn from each other.

The 500-student Barbara Morgan Academy, now in its third year, is named after the Idaho educator-turned astronaut who traveled aboard Space Shuttle Endeavor in 2007. (Read ASBJ’s profile of Morgan at http://bit.ly/20GScSi.)

The academy is a magnet or school of choice in the West Ada School District. Students who live in the attendance area can automatically enroll in the STEM program or transfer to another neighborhood school. Other students apply to attend.

The school’s inquiry-based learning approach sets it apart from traditional schools, says Principal Ryan Wilhite.

“Kids are naturally curious, but they have to be taught to persevere and see failures as opportunities. Our goal is to give them lots of opportunities to fail. It gets them to a point where, when they fail, they say, “that’s interesting. Why didn’t it work?” then they approach the problem from another angle.”

A common misperception about the academy is that the children are academically advanced. In fact, Wilhite says, students are from all ability levels, including some who qualify for special education and are English language learners. The school does not use an advanced curriculum either, he says. “We teach the district science curriculum.”

The academy has a dedicated STEM teacher Lynnea Shafter, who works with classroom teachers to focus instruction through a STEM lens.

The practice of having teachers answer questions with questions was frustrating to students at first, Shafter says. She noticed a shift during the second year.

“The kids ask, ‘What will we try now?’” she says. “It’s really been neat to watch them evolve and perse-vere through it.”


Wonder WallIdaho elementary school uses an inquiry-based

learning approach through STEM

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hIghland park mIddle school In Beaverton, Oregon, has embraced the bold new world of STEAM education or “Science and Technology, interpreted through Engineering and the Arts, based in Mathematical elements.”

Like STEM, STEAM encourages students to work at problem solving, discovery, and explor-atory learning, says David Nieslanik, principal of the 900-student sixth- to eighth-grade school in the Beaverton School District.

Highland Park is also one of seven schools in the Portland Metro STEM Partnership, a regional collaboration of public and private organizations with a shared goal of transforming science, technology, engineering, and mathe-matics education for K-12 students.

In laying the ground work for STEM integra-tion, the parent and staff site council concluded that one of the school’s key assets—its strong arts and humanities (language arts and social students) teachers and programs—should not be omitted.

“Once we made that decision, we began to

create with everything in mind. And that incor-porated the arts,” Nieslanik says.

The ultimate goal, he says, is to integrate the arts into the core classes so students can see the connections across the different subject areas and also use core concepts, such as critical thinking, math problem-solving skills, and crit-ical reading skills in the arts classes to support that learning as well.

For example, this spring, eighth-graders studying climate change in their science class are also working with Wisdom of the Elders, a Native American cultural awareness organiza-tion, to learn about the arts, music and oral his-tory of native peoples, and how climate change has impacted their culture.

In another lesson, students studying the challenges of climbing Mount Everest and the Tibet and Nepal cultures, design a bridge, study temperature, and design a coat that would help them survive the elements.

In November, Highland Park was one of eight schools from across the country recog-

Full STEaM aheadAn oregon middle school incorporates the arts into core classes

Michelle Healy

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Like STEM, STEAM encourages students to work at problem solving, discovery, and exploratory learning.

nized for using the arts “to make STEM subjects more accessible and engaging to students” and “mutually strengthen arts and STEM learning.” The award from the Ovation Foundation, the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities, and Ameri-cans for the Arts came with a $10,000 grant.

Nieslanik believes there are already measure-able signs that STEM integration is impacting his students’ learning.

He points to an annual assessment examining academic resiliency that shows in three years the percentage of students who said they stop attempt-ing school work if they don’t understand it, won’t

ask questions, or aren’t engaged, dropped from 68 percent to 34 percent. And an assessment exam-ining student happiness and connectedness with the school showed improvement over the last four years.

“In every classroom we’ve provided professional development around critical thinking, questioning, integration, and creating those partnerships across curricular areas, so yes, I credit those improvements to STEM,” says Nieslanik. “It’s been the key focus.”

Michelle Healy ([email protected]) is ASBJ’s staff writer.

STEM

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Manor new Tech high School eMphaSizeS project-based learning with real world relevance to sup-port its STEM curriculum. This way of learning provides “an authentic context to STEM education and education in general,” says interim principal Bobby Garcia. “A big part of the success of this school , particularly with the demographics we’ve got and the community that we serve, is that we’ve been able to contextualize education by giving the kids projects that they are interested in, that affect their lives, and that they want to learn more about.”

As a classroom teacher, Garcia assigned an ethics project to his engineering students that examined how engineering and design decisions can and do fail and the resulting consequences in dollars, legal actions, and, sometimes, injuries and death.

The responsibility that engineers and designers have to their users and clients really hit home with his stu-dents, says Garcia.

Opened in 2007, Manor New Tech is part of the rap-idly growing Manor Independent School District located northeast of Austin, Texas. Two-thirds of the school’s nearly 400 students come from families where they

would be the first generation to attend college. More than 50 percent qualify for free and reduced-price lunch, a rate that has been has high as 65 percent in recent years.

“Giving all kids equal access and exposing them to STEM education and the opportunities it can afford is a big part of who we are,” says Garcia.

The school is one of 128 high schools in 26 states and Australia that are part of the New Tech Network, a non-profit that works with districts and schools to transform education by emphasizing project-based learning, access to technology, and developing a positive and empowering school culture.

Applicants apply through a blind, non-selective lottery. Academic history, discipline records and attendance are not considered. Roughly half of currently enrolled stu-dents are Hispanic and 20 percent are black, both groups that are typically underrepresented in traditional high school STEM programs and in STEM careers.

The school boasts a 99 percent graduation rate and 100 percent of seniors are accepted into a two- or four-year college. The school’s direct-to-college enrollment rate (percentage of college enrollment within 18 months

Context MattersA Texas high school shows students relevance through STEM

Michelle Healy


post-graduation) and its persistence rate (percentage of degree completion within six years) are upwards of 70 percent and 80 percent, respectively, exceeding national averages.

“It’s not just that our kids are getting accepted, they are going to college and sticking with it,” Garcia says.

A key goal of a STEM educator, he says, is providing students the opportunity and the access to understand how STEM professionals solve problems and how they approach the world.

“If we can expose them to that, and encourage their participation, especially students who come from backgrounds that don’t have a high level of representation, then I will consider us successful.”

He stresses that building a school culture that empowers students, as well as teachers, is as important as project-based-learning and the use of technology in his school’s ability to offer a rigorous STEM curriculum and supporting students to succeed.

“We pride ourselves on first having strong relationships with students,” he says. “By building those relationships, we get to know our students better and can design more relevant projects for them. If they’re interested in what you’re doing and they trust you, then it’s easy to bring in the academic rigor.”


STEM

"Giving all kids equal access and exposing them to STEM education and the opportunities it can afford is a big part of who we are," says principal Bobby Garcia.

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when It fIrst opened In 2006, Metro Early College High School was tagged “the small STEM school with the big footprint.” More than nine years later, it’s a description the school still proudly embraces.

“It’s quite an endearing term, one we truly believe in and is based on the tenets of who we are and why we are,” says Anthony Alston, assistant principal.

Approximately 400 students from throughout central Ohio attend the public, independent school situated on the edge of The Ohio State University campus in Columbus. It was created through a collaboration between the Educational Council, a coalition of pub-lic school districts in Franklin County, Ohio; the Battelle Memorial Institute, a nonprofi t science and technology devel-opment company; and The Ohio State University.

Metro is a platform or model school for the Ohio STEM Learning Network, a public-private collaborative that helps build and spread successful STEM teaching and programs across the state and the nation.

Central to Metro’s mission is provid-ing a high quality, personalized, rigorous STEM education with an emphasis on

learning outside school walls to students from diverse backgrounds and levels of academic preparation, says Alston. Thirty percent of Metro’s enrollment is classi-fi ed as economically disadvantaged; 13 percent have special education needs.

Admission is via lottery and is non-selective; previous coursework and ac-ademic performance is not considered. Currently, students from 26 diff erent school districts in seven counties attend with the largest number (typically half) coming from Columbus City Schools.

The school’s accelerated curriculum is built around hands-on, project-based learning and emphasizes a mastery sys-tem that requires a grade of 90 percent or higher in a course to earn credit

“We want to ensure that student have a deep understanding and grasp of the curriculum,” Alston says, adding that there are multiple opportunities for re-mediation, re-teaching, and alternative assignments to help students when they have not yet mastered coursework.

Metro has a very fl exible schedule and committed staff that works ex-tremely hard “to best meet the needs of students,” he says.

Once students have successfully earned mastery in the majority of their


Michelle Healy

highEr Ed juMpSTarTAn ohio high school mixes STEM with early college

STEM

core requirements, they transition to a curriculum focused on early col-lege access, internships, and research opportunities. The curriculum is built around a subject that they may want to study in college or pursue as a career, including health care, energy resources and engineering. They must also give a “Gateway” presentation defending their readiness for college

Nearly half of the schools’ fourth-year students are able to take a full-time college course load (12 or more semes-ter credits) enabling them to jumpstart work toward a college degree.

Metro’s approach to STEM education has been so successful that this academ-ic year it opened the Metro Institute of Technology. The fi ve-year program off ers graduates options for an associate’s degree, industry-certifi ed credentials, and certifi cates that will get them a head start on a bachelor’s degree and or enter the job market right out of high school. And to better prepare future applicants for the METRO high school experience, the school recently launched the Metro Early College Middle School.


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