STEM Education for the Twenty-First Century

STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) has become an increasingly important policy imperative globally. This paper reviews the growth of STEM Education as a key focus for curriculum change, the forms STEM Education takes in different countries, and the drivers that shape the concern for STEM Education internationally. A key feature of concern for STEM in schools is the prospect of a vastly changing world of work that current students will enter into, the need to consider the STEM competencies that will prepare students for productive futures. The paper outlines a framework of STEM knowledge and skills that flow from these concerns. Increasingly, STEM is becoming aligned with advocacy of interdisciplinary approaches to teaching and learning. The paper describes the different ways in which this is conceived of and pursued, and considers the implications for framing learning in the disciplinary subjects of mathematics and science in particular, arguing the need for a productive alignment of disciplinary knowledge with interdisciplinary contexts.