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STEM Integration in K-12 Education

Status, prospects, and an agenda for research.

STEM Integration in K-12 Education examines current efforts to connect the STEM disciplines in K-12 education. This report identifies and characterizes existing approaches to integrated STEM education, both in formal and after- and out-of-school settings. The report reviews the evidence for the impact of integrated approaches on various student outcomes, and it proposes a set of priority research questions to advance the understanding of integrated STEM education. STEM Integration in K-12 Education proposes a framework to provide a common perspective and vocabulary for researchers, practitioners, and others to identify, discuss, and investigate specific integrated STEM initiatives within the K-12 education system of the United States.

STEM Integration in K-12 Education makes recommendations for designers of integrated STEM experiences, assessment developers, and researchers to design and document effective integrated STEM education. This report will help to further their work and improve the chances that some forms of integrated STEM education will make a positive difference in student learning and interest and other valued outcomes.

Winner of ITEEA 's Council on Technology and Engineering Teacher Education 2015 Outstanding Research Award

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• Press Release
• Report Brief

• Education — Math and Science Education
• Education — K-12 Education
• Engineering and Technology — Engineering Education

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National Academy of Engineering and National Research Council. 2014. STEM Integration in K-12 Education: Status, Prospects, and an Agenda for Research . Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/18612. Import this citation to: Bibtex EndNote Reference Manager

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What is STEM? It's the acronym for science, technology, engineering and mathematics. But while kindergarten through 12th grade education usually focuses on science or mathematics in isolation, all four of these disciplines are closely intertwined in the real world. Imagine if K-12 students were taught in ways that highlighted these connections, making their education more relevant to their lives and opening doors to new and exciting careers. Watch this video and tell us what you think!

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• Open access
• Published: 19 July 2016

A conceptual framework for integrated STEM education

• Todd R. Kelley 1 &
• J. Geoff Knowles 2  

International Journal of STEM Education volume  3 , Article number:  11 ( 2016 ) Cite this article

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The global urgency to improve STEM education may be driven by environmental and social impacts of the twenty-first century which in turn jeopardizes global security and economic stability. The complexity of these global factors reach beyond just helping students achieve high scores in math and science assessments. Friedman (The world is flat: A brief history of the twenty-first century, 2005) helped illustrate the complexity of a global society, and educators must help students prepare for this global shift. In response to these challenges, the USA experienced massive STEM educational reforms in the last two decades. In practice, STEM educators lack cohesive understanding of STEM education. Therefore, they could benefit from a STEM education conceptual framework. The process of integrating science, technology, engineering, and mathematics in authentic contexts can be as complex as the global challenges that demand a new generation of STEM experts. Educational researchers indicate that teachers struggle to make connections across the STEM disciplines. Consequently, students are often disinterested in science and math when they learn in an isolated and disjoined manner missing connections to crosscutting concepts and real-world applications. The following paper will operationalize STEM education key concepts and blend learning theories to build an integrated STEM education framework to assist in further researching integrated STEM education.

Many global challenges including “climate change, overpopulation, resource management, agricultural production, health, biodiversity, and declining energy and water sources” need an international approach supported by further development in science and technology to adequately address these challenges (Thomas and Watters 2015 , p. 42). Yet numerous educational research studies have indicated that students’ interest and motivation toward STEM learning has declined especially in western countries and more prosperous Asian nations (Thomas and Watters). Concern for improving STEM education in many nations continues to grow as demand for STEM skills to meet economic challenges increasingly becomes acute (English 2016 ; Marginson et al. 2013 ; NAE and NRC 2014 ). Driven by genuine or perceived current and future shortages in the STEM workforce, many education systems and policy makers around the globe are preoccupied with advancing competencies in STEM domains. However, the views on the nature and development of proficiencies in STEM education are diverse, and increased focus on integration raises new concerns and needs for further research (English 2016 ; Marginson et al. 2013 ).

Although the idea of STEM education has been contemplated since the 1990s in the USA, few teachers seemed to know how to operationalize STEM education several decades later. Americans realized the country may fall behind in the global economy and began to heavily focus on STEM education and careers (Friedman 2005 ). STEM funding for research and education then increased significantly in the USA (Sanders 2009 ). The urgency to improve achievement in American Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics education is evident by the massive educational reforms that have occurred in the last two decades within these STEM education disciplines (AAAS 1989 , 1993 ; ABET 2004 ; ITEA 1996 , 2000, 2002, 2007 ; NCTM 1989 , 2000 ; NRC 1989 , 1994 , 1996 , 2012 ). Although these various documents seek to leverage best practices in education informed by research on how people learn (NRC 2000a , 2000b ), competing theories and agendas may have added confusion to the complexity of integrating STEM subjects. Recent reforms such as Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) (NGSS Lead States 2013 ) and Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSSM) (National Governors Association Center for Best Practices & Council of Chief State School Officers 2010 ) advocate for purposefully integrating STEM by providing deeper connections among the STEM domains. One of the most recent NAE and NRC ( 2014 ) documents, STEM Integration in K - 12 Education : Status , Prospects , and an Agenda for Research , recognize problems with competing agendas, lack of coherent effort, and locating and teaching intersections for STEM integration. The Committee on Integrated STEM Education was charged to assist STEM education stakeholders by (a) carefully identifying and characterizing existing approaches to integrated STEM education, (b) review evidence of impact on student learning, and (c) help determine priorities for research on integrated STEM education. This report was created as a way to move STEM educators forward by creating a common language of STEM integration for research and practice. This effort indicates that further work remains to improve STEM integration in practice and establishes a need to conduct more research on integrated STEM education (NAE and NRC 2014 ).

One outcome of improving achievement in STEM education in many countries is preparing a workforce that will improve national economies and sustain leadership within the constantly shifting and expanding globalized economy. Wang, Moore, Roehrig, and Park ( 2011 ) stated that:

Growing concern about developing America’s future scientists, technologists, engineers, and mathematicians to remain viable and competitive in the global economy has re-energized attention to STEM education. To remain competitive in a growing global economy, it is imperative that we raise student’s achievement in STEM subjects. (p. 1)

European STEM educators and industrialists have identified a widening STEM skills gap among the workforce. Improving STEM education is driven increasingly by economic concerns in developing and emerging countries as well (Kennedy and Odell 2014 ). While STEM student enrollment and motivation has declined in many western countries, various studies have shown an increased interest among young people in developing nations such as India and Malaysia (Thomas and Watters 2015 ).

Seeking coherency in STEM education

Much ambiguity still surrounds STEM education and how it is most effectively implemented (Breiner et al. 2012 ). STEM education is often used to imply something innovative and exciting yet it may, in reality, remain disconnected subjects (Abell and Lederman 2007 ; Sanders 2009 ; Wang et al. 2011 ). However, an integrated curricular approach could be applied to solve global challenges of the modern world concerning energy, health, and the environment (Bybee 2010 ; President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) 2010 ). Kennedy and Odell ( 2014 ) noted that the current state of STEM education:

has evolved into a meta-discipline, an integrated effort that removes the traditional barriers between these subjects, and instead focuses on innovation and the applied process of designing solution to complex contextual problems using current tools and technologies. Engaging students in high quality STEM education requires programs to include rigorous curriculum, instruction, and assessment, integrate technology and engineering into the science and mathematics curriculum, and also promotes scientific inquiry and the engineering design process. (p. 246)

STEM education can link scientific inquiry, by formulating questions answered through investigation to inform the student before they engage in the engineering design process to solve problems (Kennedy et al. 2014 ). Quality STEM education could sustain or increase the STEM pipeline of individuals preparing for careers in these fields (Stohlmann et al. 2012 ). Improving STEM education may also increase the literacy of all people across the population in technological and scientific areas (NAE and NRC 2009 ; NRC 2011 ).

As the USA and other countries work to build their capacity in STEM education, they will need to interact with each other in order to enhance their efforts in international scientific engagement and capacity building to provide quality education to all of their students (Clark 2014 , p. 6).

Defining integrated STEM education

Over the last few decades, STEM education was focused on improving science and mathematics as isolated disciplines (Breiner et al. 2012 ; Sanders 2009 ; Wang et al. 2011 ) with little integration and attention given to technology or engineering (Bybee 2010 ; Hoachlander and Yanofsky 2011 ). Furthermore, STEM subjects often are taught disconnected from the arts, creativity, and design (Hoachlander and Yanofsky 2011 ). Sanders ( 2009 ) described integrated STEM education as “approaches that explore teaching and learning between/among any two or more of the STEM subject areas, and/or between a STEM subject and one or more other school subjects” (p. 21). Sanders suggests that outcomes for learning at least one of the other STEM subjects should be purposely designed in a course—such as a math or science learning outcome in a technology or engineering class (Sanders 2009 ). Moore et al. ( 2014 ) defined integrated STEM education as “an effort to combine some or all of the four disciplines of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics into one class, unit, or lesson that is based on connections between the subjects and real-world problems” (p. 38). Integrated STEM curriculum models can contain STEM content learning objectives primarily focused on one subject, but contexts can come from other STEM subjects (Moore et al.). We, however, define integrated STEM education as the approach to teaching the STEM content of two or more STEM domains, bound by STEM practices within an authentic context for the purpose of connecting these subjects to enhance student learning.

The authors acknowledge that there are limits to this approach to teaching integrated STEM education. Some might view this approach too focused on career pathways with emphasis on STEM practices and authentic application of STEM knowledge. The authors acknowledge that teaching STEM from the proposed approach is not possible in all circumstances and could limit the content taught from this approach. Some necessary knowledge in mathematics and sciences that are theoretically focused may not provide authentic engineering design applications as well as common STEM practices limited by current technology.

Limits of current integrated practices

Making crosscutting STEM connections is complex and requires that teachers teach STEM content in deliberate ways so that students understand how STEM knowledge is applied to real-world problems. Currently, crosscutting connections remain implicit or can be missing all together (NAE and NRC 2009 ). The Committee on Integrated STEM Education noted that:

Connecting ideas across disciplines is challenging when students have little or no understanding of the relevant ideas in the individual disciplines. Also, students do not always or naturally use their disciplinary knowledge in integrated contexts. Students will thus need support to elicit the relevant scientific or mathematical ideas in an engineering or technological design context, to connect those ideas productively, and to reorganize their own ideas in ways that come to reflect normative, scientific ideas and practices. (NAE and NRC 2014 , p. 5)

Increased integration of STEM subjects may not be more effective if there is not a strategic approach to implementation. However, well-integrated instruction provides opportunities for students to learn in more relevant and stimulating experiences, encourages the use of higher level critical thinking skills, improves problem solving skills, and increases retention (Stohlmann et al. 2012 ). Building a strategic approach to integrating STEM concepts requires strong conceptual and foundational understanding of how students learn and apply STEM content. The following theoretical framework for integrated STEM seeks to propose such an approach.

Conceptual framework for integrated STEM education

Research in integrated STEM can inform STEM education stakeholders to identify barriers as well as determine best practices. A conceptual framework is helpful to build a research agenda that will in turn inform STEM stakeholders to realize the full potential of integrated STEM education. We propose a conceptual framework around learning theories and pedagogies that will lead to achieving key learning outcomes. Developing a conceptual framework for STEM education requires a deep understanding of the complexities surrounding how people learn, specifically teaching and learning STEM content. Research shows STEM education teaching is enhanced when the teacher has sufficient content knowledge and domain pedagogical content knowledge (Nadelson et al. 2012 ). Instead of teaching content and skills and hoping students will see the connections to real-life application, an integrated approach seeks to locate connections between STEM subjects and provide a relevant context for learning the content. Educators should remain true to the nature in which science, technology, engineering, and mathematics are applied to real-world situations. The Next Generation Science Standards (NRC 2012 ) suggest closer study of practices may help to provide a framework for integrating STEM subjects.

The proposed framework as presented is intended for secondary education, specifically high school level educators and learners. The following graphic (Fig.  1 ) helps capture a conceptual framework for integrated STEM education and will also serve as a frame for the core concept of the paper. We will reference the graphic throughout the paper to further explain key concepts and make connections across STEM practices. The aim of this paper is to propose a conceptual framework to guide STEM educators and to build a research agenda for integrated STEM education.

Graphic of conceptual framework for STEM learning

Figure  1 illustrates the proposed conceptual framework for integrated STEM education. The image presents a block and tackle of four pulleys to lift a load, in this case “situated STEM learning.” Block and tackle is a pulley system that helps generate mechanical advantage to lift loads easier. The illustration connects situated learning, engineering design, scientific inquiry, technological literacy, and mathematical thinking as an integrated system. Each pulley in the system connects common practices within the four STEM disciplines and are bound by the rope of community of practice. A complex relationship of the pulley system must work in harmony to ensure the integrity of the entire system. The authors are not suggesting that all four domains of integrated STEM must occur during every STEM learning experience but STEM educators should have a strong understanding of the relationship that can be established across domains and by engaging a community of practice. Like any mental model, there are limits to looking at integrated STEM education using this approach. We will seek to provide support for this mental model while acknowledging the limits in viewing STEM education this way. Each part of the conceptual framework will be described in detail. We encourage readers to refer back to Fig.  1 to help better understand the various aspects of this proposed framework.

Situated STEM learning

The authors would advocate most content in STEM can be grounded within the situated cognition theory (Brown et al. 1989 ; Lave and Wenger 1991 ; Putnam and Borko 2000 ). Foundational to this theory is the concept that understanding how knowledge and skills can be applied is as important as learning the knowledge and skills itself. Situated cognition theory recognizes that the contexts, both physical and social elements of a learning activity, are critical to the learning process. When a student develops a knowledge and skill base around an activity, the context of that activity is essential to the learning process (Putnam and Borko 2000 ). Often when learning is grounded within a situated context, learning is authentic and relevant, therefore representative of an experience found in actual STEM practice. When considering integrating STEM content, engineering design can become the situated context and the platform for STEM learning.

Certainly, there is some STEM content that cannot be situated in authentic contexts, therefore limiting this model to only content that can be applied through situated learning approaches. Within Fig.  1 , the analogy of situated learning as a “load” to lift may present a limited perspective of this educational model.

Pulley #1: engineering design

Engineering design can provide the ideal STEM content integrator (NAE and NRC 2009 ; NRC 2012 ). Moreover, an engineering design approach to delivering STEM education creates an ideal entry point to include engineering practices into existing secondary curriculum. Using engineering design as a catalyst to STEM learning is vital to bring all four STEM disciplines on an equal platform. The very nature of engineering design provides students with a systematic approach to solving problems that often occur naturally in all of the STEM fields. Engineering design provides the opportunity to locate the intersections and build connections among the STEM disciplines, which has been identified as key to subject integration (Frykholm and Glasson 2005 ; Barnett and Hodson 2001 ).

Science education can be enhanced by infusing an engineering design approach because it creates opportunity to apply science knowledge and inquiry as well as provides an authentic context for learning mathematical reasoning for informed decisions during the design process. The Conceptual Frameworks for New Science Education Standards (NRC 2012 ) in the USA recommend that students are given opportunities to design and develop science investigations and engineering design projects across all K-12 grade levels (p. 9). The analytical element of the engineering design process allows students to use mathematics and science inquiry to create and conduct experiments that will inform the learner about the function and performance of potential design solutions before a final prototype is constructed. This approach to engineering design allows students to build upon their own experiences and provide opportunities to construct new science and math knowledge through design analysis and scientific investigation. According to Brown et al. ( 1989 ), these are necessary experiences for effective learning:

Engineering and technology provide a context in which students can test their own developing scientific knowledge and apply it to practical problems; doing so enhances their understanding of science—and, for many, their interest in science—as they recognize the interplay among science, engineering, and technology. We are convinced that the engagement in the practices of engineering design is as much a part of learning science as engagement in the practices of science. (p.12)

In engineering practice, engineering design and scientific inquiry are interwoven through an intricate process of design behaviors and scientific reasoning (Purzer et al. 2015 ). Though there is a notable difference between engineering design and scientific inquiry, two central ways they converge according to Purzer et al. ( 2015 ) are “(a) reasoning processes such as analogical reasoning as navigational devices to bridge the gap between problem and solution and (b) uncertainty as a starting condition that demands expenditure of cognitive resources…” (p. 2). Additionally, both engineering design and scientific inquiry accentuate learning by doing (Purzer et al. 2015 ). Similar to situated learning theory, approaching all STEM content through engineering design is not always possible. For example, some science content is currently theoretically based and cannot be taught by design-based instruction.

Pulley #2: scientific inquiry

Learning science in a relevant context and being able to transfer scientific knowledge to authentic situations is key to genuine understanding. An inquiry approach to instruction requires teachers to “encourage and model the skills of scientific inquiry, as well as the curiosity, openness to new ideas, and skepticism that characterize science” (National Research Council 1996 , p. 37). Scientific inquiry prepares students to think and act like real scientists, ask questions, hypothesize, and conduct investigations using standard science practices. However, an inquiry-based approach involves a high level of knowledge and engagement on the part of the teachers and students. Teachers often feel unprepared because they are lacking authentic scientific research and inquiry experiences themselves (Nadelson et al. 2012 ). They harbor misconceptions about hands-on instruction, viewing a series of tasks and lab activities as being equivalent to scientific inquiry. However, practical and procedurally based hands-on activities are not equivalent to true science inquiry but must include “minds-on” experiences embedded within constructivist approaches to science learning (National Research Council 1996 , p. 13). Students can become drivers of their learning when given the opportunity to construct their own questions related to the science content they are investigating. Key to effectively preparing teachers to teach through inquiry requires improving their pedagogical content knowledge while experiencing authentic science investigations and experimentation practices. Powell-Moman and Brown-Schild ( 2011 ) note that “in-service teachers see direct benefits when scientist-teacher partnerships associated with professional development are used to develop content knowledge, along with scientific process and research skill through collaboration on research projects” (p. 48).

Pulley #3: technological literacy

Fully understanding the “T” in STEM education seems to escape many educators who fail to move beyond merely the use of educational technology to enhance STEM learning experiences (Cavanagh 2008 ). STEM educators with only this view point fail to acknowledge that technology consists of a body of knowledge, skills, and practices. The term technology means so many different things to people rendering the term almost useless, and further study of technology definitions will not bring clarity to the subject (Barak 2012 ). Herschbach ( 2009 ) suggested there are two common views of technology; an engineering view of technology and a humanities perspective of technology. The engineering view , also referred to as the instrumental perspective (Mitcham 1994 ; Feenberg 2006 ), indicates that “Technology is equated with the making and using of material objects—that is, artifacts” (p. 128). However, the humanities view of technology focuses on the human purpose of technology as a response to a specific human endeavor; therefore, it is the human purpose that provides additional meaning for technology (Achterhuis 2001 ; Mitcham 1994 ). The humanities view of technology recognizes that technology is value-laden (Feenberg 2006 ) and thus, provides opportunities to explore technology impacts including cultural, social, economic, political, and environmental ( ITEA 2000 ).

Table  1 provides critical elements of distinction between these two views of technology.

Mitcham ( 1994 ) combines these two views together when he identified four different ways of conceptualizing technology. He identifies technology as (a) objects, (b) knowledge, (c) activities, and (d) volition. Often, people associate technology as artifacts or objects; unfortunately, many only view technology in this way and overcoming this limited view of technology may be critical for teaching STEM in an integrated approach. Mitcham also contends that technology consists of specific and distinct knowledge and therefore is a discipline. He views technology as a process with activities that include designing, making, and using technology. Technology as volition is the concept that technology is driven by the human will and as a result is embedded within our culture driven by human values. Herschbach ( 2009 ) contends that technology leverages knowledge from across multiple fields of study. DeVries ( 2011 ) in Barak ( 2012 ) writes:

Engineering can differ from technology in that engineering only comprises the profession of developing and producing technology, while the broader concept of technology also relates to the user dimension. Technologists, more than engineers, deal with human needs as well as economic, social, cultural or environmental aspects of problem solving and new product development. (in Barak 2012 , p. 318)

Barak ( 2012 ) suggests that both engineering and technology are so closely related that they should be taught in unison within technology education and suggests teaching them as one school subject called Engineering Technology Education (ETE).

In 2000, the International Technology Education Association (ITEA) drafted the Standards for Technological Literacy : Content for the Study of Technology (STL) to define the content necessary for K-12 students to become technologically literate citizens living in the twenty-first century. The STLs have been revised twice ( ITEA 2002, 2007 ) and also include student assessment and professional development standards (ITEA 2003 ). The Standards for Technological Literacy identify content standards for grades K-12 that provide students opportunities to think critically about technology beyond technology as an object and in doing so prepare students to become technologically literate. STEM educators should provide students opportunities to think through technology as a vehicle for change with both positive and negative impacts on culture, society, politics, economy, and the environment.

Pulley #4: mathematical thinking

Studies have shown that students are more motivated and perform better on math content assessment when teachers use an integrated STEM education approach. A recent study found that students performed better on post math content assessments and increased STEM attitudinal scores when engaging in learning activities that included engineering design and prototyping solutions using 3D printing technology (Tillman et al. 2014 ). Williams ( 2007 ) noted that contextual teaching can give meaning to mathematics because “students want to know not only how to complete a mathematical task but also why they need to learn the mathematics in the first place. They want to know how mathematics is relevant to their lives” (p. 572). Incorporating STEM practices that include mathematical analysis necessary for evaluating design solutions provide the necessary rational for students to learn mathematics and see the connections between what is learned in school with what is required in STEM career skills (Burghardt and Hacker 2004 ). The authors again acknowledge that not all secondary education math content can be applied to engineering design approaches. Similarly, secondary education students may not have the cognitive development necessary to connect mathematical thinking within all engineering design problems.

The rope: a community of practice

Additionally, the concept of learning as an activity not only leverages the context of the learning but also the social aspect of learning. Lave and Wenger ( 1991 ) describe this as legitimate peripheral participation when the learning takes place in a community of practitioners assisting the learner to move from a novice understanding of knowledge, skills, and practices toward mastery as they participate “in a social practice of a community” (p. 29).

In a community of practice, novices and experienced practitioners can learn from observing, asking questions, and actually participating alongside others with more or different experience. Learning is facilitated when novices and experienced practitioners organize their work in ways that allow all participants the opportunity to see, discuss, and engage in shared practices. (Levine and Marcus 2010 , p. 390)

Integrated STEM education can create an ideal platform to blend these complementary learning theories by providing a community of practice through social discourse. As educational leaders have wrestled with the concept of integrating STEM disciplines, key elements of situated learning have emerged. For example, Berlin and White ( 1995 ) argued that efforts to integrate mathematics and science should be founded, in part, on the idea that knowledge is organized around big ideas, concepts, or themes, and that knowledge is advanced through social discourse.

When engaging students into a community of practice, we suggest that the learning outcomes be grounded in common shared practices. Community of practice can provide opportunity to engage local community experts as STEM partners such as practicing scientists, engineers, and technologists who can help focus the learning around real-life STEM contexts regardless of the pedagogical approach.

Using a community of practice approach to integrated STEM can be challenging for teachers as they need to continually network with experts and be open to allowing members of the community of practice into their classroom. Additionally, not all students learn best in social settings so these students may struggle to fully engage in a community of practice and this may limit their ability to learn using this educational approach.

STEM community of practice

The Next Generation Science (NGS) Framework (NRC 2012 ) carefully uses language that describes common practices of scientist and engineers. These practices become science learning outcomes for students. Equally important to learning science concepts, scientific practices and skills are also emphasized as key outcomes (NRC 2012 ). Engineering practices are also identified within the NGS framework because some of the practices of scientists and engineers are shared. An integrated STEM approach can provide a platform through a community of practice to learn the similarities and differences of engineering and science. Table  2 shows descriptions of common science practices and engineering practices providing opportunity to compare similarities and differences (NRC 2012 ).

The study of STEM practices can provide a better understanding of each domain and help teachers identify key learning outcomes necessary to achieve STEM learning. Table  3 below identifies key practices that build the unique set of knowledge, skills, as well as a unique language to form common practices of science and technology while investigating and solving problems (Kolodner 2002 ).

Table  4 identifies the math standards for math practice located in the Common Core standards for mathematics identifying common practices necessary when solving mathematical problems. Understanding these mathematical practices can be critical for effective integrated STEM education because mathematical analysis can be found in all the other STEM domains.

Upon review of these practices across science, engineering, technology, and mathematics, the very nature of these disciplines as well as the context in which the practices occur provide the learner with authentic examples that could help to illustrate crosscutting STEM connections. Locating intersections and connections across the STEM disciplines will assist STEM educators who understand these practices and how they are uniquely similar and different. An integrated STEM approach should leverage the idea that STEM content should be taught alongside STEM practices. Both content and practices are equally important to providing the ideal context for learning and the rationale for doing so. Locating crosscutting practices will help students identify similarities in the nature of work conducted by scientists, technologists, engineers, and mathematicians and could help students make more informed decisions about STEM career pathways.

Integrated STEM research agenda

The proposed conceptual framework must be tested through educational research methods to determine if these concepts improve the teaching and learning of STEM content. A research agenda must be crafted to test theories under a variety of conditions to determine the best approach to integrated STEM. In the USA, the Committee on Integrated STEM Education developed several recommendations directed at multiple stakeholders in integrated STEM education including those designing initiatives for integrated STEM, those developing assessments, and lastly for educational researchers (NAE and NRC 2014 ). For further investigation in integrated STEM education, researchers need to document in more detail their interventions, curriculum, and programs implemented, especially how subjects are integrated and supported. More evidence needs to be collected on the nature of integration, scaffolding used, and instructional designs applied. Clear outcomes need to be identified and measured concerning how integrated STEM education promotes learning, thinking, interest, and other characteristics related to these objectives. Research focused on interest and teacher and student identity also needs to address diversity and equity, and include more design experiments and longitudinal studies (NAE and NRC 2014 ). Though these recommendations were made in the context of the American education system, they could prove helpful in many other countries’ educational systems as well.

One example: Teachers and Researchers Advancing Integrated Lessons in STEM (TRAILS)

A current National Science Foundation I-TEST project can serve as an example of research created to assess the proposed framework. Todd Kelley is the principal investigator of the TRAILS project that aims to improve STEM integration in high school biology or physics classes and technology education classes. TRAILS partners science and technology teachers during a 2-week summer professional development workshop to prepare the teachers to integrate STEM content through science inquiry and engineering design in the context of entomology. 3D printing technology is used to allow students to create engineering designed bio-mimicry solutions. Students’ use mathematical modeling to predict and assess design performance. Lessons are created to address technological literacy standards and well as math and science standards. The goals of the TRAILS project are as follows:

Goal 1: Engage in-service science and technology teachers in professional development building STEM knowledge and practices to enhance integrated STEM instruction.

Goal 2: Establish a sustainable community of practice of STEM teachers, researchers, industry partners, and college student “learning assistants.”

Goal 3: Engage grades 9–12 students in STEM learning through engineering design and 3D printing and scanning technology.

Goal 4: Generate strategies to overcome identified barriers for high school students in rural schools and underserved populations to pursue careers in STEM fields.

The TRAILS project research will be guided by assessing the following:

Science and technology education teacher’s self-efficacy in teaching STEM through an integrated STEM approach.

Assessing students and teacher’s awareness of STEM careers.

Assess students’ ability to use twenty-first century skills while creating engineering design solutions to TRAILS challenges.

Assess students’ growth in students’ STEM career interest, self-efficacy in learning STEM content, and growth in STEM content knowledge.

We theorize that teachers will increase self-efficacy teaching these subjects after participation in the TRAILS program, and this would indicate a stronger foundation for effective teaching (Stohlmann et al. 2012 ). Measurements of teacher self-efficacy parallels and extends the work of Nadelson et al. ( 2012 ), and additionally measures student self-efficacy in learning STEM. Self-efficacy is a good predictor of performance, behavior, and academic achievement (Bandura 1978 , 1997 ). Research projects like TRAILS provide researcher opportunities to explore the impact of an integrated STEM teacher professional development on teachers teaching practices as well as assess impact on students’ learning STEM content. TRAILS also focuses on how the project may impact students’ interest in STEM careers. This project serves as one example of how future research on integrated STEM teaching can assess teaching and learning of STEM content as well as help to identify barriers that exist in current educational systems. Projects like TRAILS are needed to help inform educational researchers and the greater STEM education community what works effectively and what does not when integrating STEM subjects in secondary education. The proposed theoretical models need to be tested and vetted within the STEM education greater community. The current TRAILS project provides an ideal platform to conduct research on this approach to integrated STEM to seek to identify the benefits as well as limitations.

Conclusion and implications

The recent STEM education literature provides rationale to teach STEM concepts in a context which is most often delivered in project, problem, and design-based approaches (Carlson and Sullivan 1999 ; Frykholm and Glasson 2005 ; Hmelo-Silver 2004 ; Kolodner 2006 ; Kolodner et al. 2003 ; Krajcik et al. 1998 ). It could prove helpful if integrated STEM educators learned the various “STEM languages” and STEM practices outlined above. The reality is secondary education in the US silo STEM subjects within a rigid structure with departmental agendas, requirements, content standards, and end-of-year examinations. If these barriers remain in education in the USA and in other nations, they may constrain the successful implementation of an integrated STEM program therefore jeopardizing the entire STEM movement.

The authors suggest that the key to preparing STEM educators is to first begin by grounding their conceptual understanding of integrated STEM education by teaching key learning theories, pedagogical approaches, and building awareness of research results of current secondary STEM educational initiatives. Furthermore, professional development experiences for in-service teachers could also provide a strong conceptual framework of an integrated STEM approach and build their confidence in teaching from an integrated STEM approach. Kennedy and Odell ( 2014 ) indicated that STEM education programs of high quality should include (a) integration of technology and engineering into science and math curriculum at a minimum; (b) promote scientific inquiry and engineering design, include rigorous mathematics and science instruction; (c) collaborative approaches to learning, connect students and educators with STEM fields and professionals; (d) provide global and multi-perspective viewpoints; (e) incorporate strategies such as project-based learning, provide formal and informal learning experiences; and (f) incorporate appropriate technologies to enhance learning.

Finally, further research and discussion is needed on integrated STEM education so that effective methodologies can be implemented by teachers in the classroom and further assess the strategies this overall framework proposes here (Stohlmann et al. 2012 ). The TRAILS project feature above is just one example of funded research that seeks to better identify the best conditions to teach STEM subjects in an integrated approach to teaching as well as learn what level of support students and teachers require to improve STEM education.

NSF disclaimer

Elements of this paper are supported by the National Science Foundation, award #DRL-1513248. Any opinions and findings expressed in this material are the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of NSF.

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Subject integration and theme evolution of STEM education in K-12 and higher education research

• Zehui Zhan   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-6936-1977 1 , 2 &
• Shijing Niu 1  

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume  10 , Article number:  781 ( 2023 ) Cite this article

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Over the past two decades, the field of STEM education has produced a wealth of research findings. This study systematically reviewed the published literature from the perspective of subject integration and theme evolution, considering both K-12 and higher education. It was found that STEM education originated from higher education, but the main emphasis is gradually shifting to the K-12 stage. There were mainly sixteen subjects involved in STEM education, showing the gradual in-depth integration of science, engineering, technology, math, humanities, and social sciences, in which humanism is increasingly emphasized. Culture is a new perspective for understanding the diversity of participants, which also gives STEM education a distinctive regional character. In addition, in the K-12 stage, research related to computer science and art stands out alongside the four main subjects, demonstrating relatively even distribution across research themes. Conversely, in higher education, engineering, and chemistry garner considerable attention, with research themes predominantly concentrated on learning outcomes and social relevance. On a holistic scale, researchers exhibit a pronounced interest in learning outcomes, yet relatively less emphasis is placed on pedagogical aspects. Regarding prospective trends, there should be a heightened focus on the cultivation of students’ thinking competencies, students’ career development, and pedagogy.

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Introduction.

In response to the global challenges, the promotion of economic development, and the need to meet modern society’s demands for knowledge and skills within the realms of STEM, the emergence of STEM education aimed to develop employment opportunities in STEM fields while bolstering national competitiveness. The acronym STEM education originated from the four subjects (i.e., science, mathematics, engineering, and technology) that were proposed in the report “ Undergraduate Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Education ” (National Science Board 1986 ). Essentially, STEM education stands as an innovation-oriented education that prevailed in Western countries, spearheaded by the United States.

Subsequently, Yakman ( 2008 ) introduced the addition of the “A” element, representing arts, to STEM education, thereby incorporating humanities subjects such as history, philosophy, and religion. The fundamental objective of STEM education is to amalgamate multiple subjects into a cohesive framework (Morrison 2006 ). According to the National Science Foundation ( 2014 ), STEM entails a comprehensive integration of various disciplines, encompassing not only the subjects of natural sciences (e.g., computers and information, engineering, and mathematics), but also the subjects of social sciences (e.g., psychology, economics, sociology, and political science). With an increasing number of disciplines becoming intertwined in STEM education, its interdisciplinary essence has become progressively prominent. As a result, STEM education is increasingly acknowledged as interdisciplinary education with a focus on engineering, where subject integration plays a central role.

In the past two decades, STEM education has witnessed a large number of research achievements, and many scholars have conducted comprehensive reviews on the topic. These studies have focused either on curriculum reform (Uskoković 2023 ), teaching methods (Li and Wong 2023 ), or technology applications (Salas-Pilco et al. 2022 ; Conde et al. 2021 ). At the research level, especially in teaching and learning, many researchers have recognized the interdisciplinary nature of STEM education, but almost no research has focused on the development of STEM education from the perspective of subject integration (Perignat and Katz-Buonincontro 2019 ). The evolution of STEM disciplines and the development of their themes are closely interrelated, but the underlying coupling relationships and reasons for their formation remain unexplored.

Moreover, there exist significant differences in the disciplinary systems of K-12 education and higher education, including teaching objectives, methods, breadth, and depth. As a result, STEM education at different educational levels exhibits distinct characteristics, making it necessary to conduct a segmented analysis. Although some researchers have analyzed the development trends in STEM education from a macro perspective and recognized differences between educational stages, this has not been the primary focus of their work, and there has also been a lack of emphasis on specific disciplines (Zhan et al. 2022a ).

Based on these considerations, this study attempts to examine and explore the developmental trajectories and trends of STEM education at various educational stages from the perspective of disciplinary evolution. Specifically, the following questions will be addressed:

RQ1: How were subjects integrated into STEM education in K-12 and higher education?

RQ2: What is the distribution of the subject themes involved in STEM education at the K-12 and higher education levels?

Keyword search

Papers related to STEM education were searched on 10 July 2023 from the Science Web Core Collection. The query started with the search statement TI = (STEM education) OR TI = (STEAM education) OR AK = (STEM education) OR AK = (STEAM education) OR AK = (STEAM education) OR KP= (STEM education) OR KP = (STEAM education), which yielded a total of 3668 publications. The search results were further refined according to the research area, while duplicates, poorly indexed documents, and documents inconsistent with STEM Education/STEAM Education research were removed, leaving a final total of 2188 publications.

Research process

WOS (Web of Science) was selected as the data source for this study. This database covers a wide range of journals, has a high impact, and can provide a complete sample for this study (Martín-Páez et al. 2019 ). Then, the following steps were used to analyze the data.

Step 1: Data classification (education stage classification). It has been shown that K-12 and higher education systems have different focuses on STEM education (Zhan et al. 2022a ). To clarify the characteristics of the different stages, the data was divided into K-12 and higher education levels based on field information such as title, keywords (including author keywords and keywords plus), journal, and abstract. After discarding the data that could not be categorized, 903 valid data were obtained for the K-12 stage, with the time range from 2009 to 2023, and 873 valid data for the higher education stage, with the time range from 2004 to 2023.

Step 2: Keywords cleaning. In the collected data, some keywords have the same meaning but may be analyzed as different words, such as math, mathematics; model, models, etc., and some words have similar semantics, which may also lead to inaccurate analysis results when analyzed separately, so it was necessary to build a synonym database for synonym replacement so that they could be more accurately counted and visualized.

Step 3: Data classification (time and theme classification). The data at different stages were sub-categorized by time and theme respectively. Time division according to a time slice for a year. The keywords with the top 10 frequency in each subject were screened as alternative theme terms, and the alternative subject terms of each subject were integrated, then the remaining keywords were used as subject terms to participate in the final statistics.

Step 4: Data statistics and visualization. The categorized subject time and subject themes of different sections were counted separately, and the statistical results were visualized and described using heat maps. The heat map used in this study is a kind of statistical chart that shows the frequency of a certain word by the relative shades of color blocks, with dark colors representing the high frequency of occurrence and light colors representing the low frequency of occurrence. Finally, four maps were created to depict the time distribution and theme distribution at the K-12 and higher education levels. The research process is shown in Fig. 1 .

The entire research process went through five stages: data acquisition, data classification (education stage classification), keyword cleaning, data classification (time and theme classification), and data statistics and visualization.

Research findings

Analysis of the temporal evolution of the subject.

STEM education originated from higher education, but in recent years, there has been rapid development in the K-12 stage. Both levels show a similar trend of overall integration, starting with a focus on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, and later, an increasing involvement of humanities and social sciences. Interdisciplinary integration has become prominent, particularly in higher education. As shown in Fig. 2 .

The first column displays the subjects involved in STEM education, and the first row is the timeline. This figure illustrates the time and subject distribution of STEM-related literature. Darker colors indicate a greater number of documents related to the corresponding time node and subject.

Subject integration of STEM in K-12 Education

Subject integration refers to the methods and processes of cross-fertilization of different subjects, which is specifically expressed as the mutual integration of a subject with one or more subjects through knowledge, concepts, skills, methods, etc. at a certain time node, so time node is one important element of subject integration path analysis. Figure 2(1) illustrates the integration of different subjects at different time points at the K12 level. In the early stages (2009 to 2014), the subjects of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics played a dominant role, and these subjects were considered to be the core of STEM education. Over time, science subjects such as computer science, arts, physics, and environmental science were gradually incorporated into the STEM education integration pathway. In the post-2019 period, more and more research has emerged in the humanities and social sciences.

Different subjects played different roles in STEM education at the K-12 level. Science and technology provided a rich foundation of knowledge and practice for students involved in STEM education. Engineering developed students’ design thinking and problem-solving skills, while mathematics provided the foundation for quantitative and logical thinking. Early STEM education has not yet shown a clear trend of cross-fertilization of disciplines. Science courses, such as physics, chemistry, and biology, were considered the main foci of STEM education, with students exploring basic science concepts through participation in experiments and educational games.

As time went on, computer science and environmental science became important subjects for STEM education, and they facilitated the development of computational thinking and environmental awareness in students at the basic education level (Zhan et al. 2022b ). In 2013, Grover and Pea ( 2013 ) published a study entitled “Computational Thinking in K-12: A Review of the State of the Field”, which explored the importance of including computational thinking as a content and goal of STEM education and had a profound impact on subsequent research regarding the integration of computing into STEM education. In 2022, the U.S. Department of Education proposed “ Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math, including Computer Science ”, also hinting at the importance of computer science in STEM (Department of Education, 2022 ).

Environmental issues have always been important social topics and are closely related to the development of engineering and technology. The integration of environmental science emphasized the importance of environmental awareness and sustainable development, making students conscious of environmental problems and proposing solutions through scientific and technological means. At the K-12 level, researchers have focused on green skills elements in STEM curricula and the integration of STEM educational approaches in environmental curricula (Sümen and Çalisici 2016 ).

After 2019, the integration of humanities and social sciences brought more dimensions and diversity to STEM education. At this stage, STEM education showed a clear interdisciplinary character. Compared to science courses that are involved in STEM education in the form of teaching content, humanities, and social sciences are integrated in a way that is more on the level of research methods and educational philosophy.

Psychological research explored the impact of spatial thinking, spatial skills, and spatial abilities on STEM learning, recognizing the importance of students’ mental states and cognitive abilities for learning (Buckley et al. 2018 ; Gilligan et al. 2017 ; Taylor and Hutton 2013 ). The inclusion of arts enhanced students’ understanding of creativity and encouraged them to use their imagination and creative abilities in the practice of science and engineering (Yakman 2010 ). The inclusion of political science primarily conducted a comparative study of STEM education across different regions from the perspective of policies (Sharma and Yarlagadda 2018 ).

Philosophy created a framework for analyzing and synthesizing STEM education goals and discourses, encouraging students to think deeply about the value and impact of science and technology (Ortiz-Revilla et al. 2020 ). The incorporation of history offered students diverse learning objectives that enabled them to understand the context and social impact of the development of science and technology (Park and Cho 2022 ). The inclusion of linguistics promoted the engagement of culturally and linguistically diverse students in STEM education, encouraging cross-cultural communication and collaboration across linguistic and cultural boundaries (Mallinson and Hudley 2018 ).

In the K-12 stage, there is a significant concentration of disciplines in STEM education, with computer science and arts receiving the most attention alongside the four main subjects. Additionally, interdisciplinary teaching in this stage is guided by conceptual instruction. In 2013, the United States released the milestone document “ K-12 Science Education Framework ”, initiating a major reform in science education. This document became the blueprint for the formal launch of the new era of science education reform known as the “ Next Generation Science Standards ” (NGSS). NGSS proposed a paradigm for science education in the U.S., integrating three dimensions: practices, cross-cutting concepts, and disciplinary core ideas. Seven powerful cross-cutting concepts were selected from these dimensions to bridge the boundaries between different subjects. These concepts include patterns, cause and effect relationships, systems and system models, matter and energy, structure and function, stability and change, and scale, proportion, and quantity (National Research Council 2013 ). The document brought new guidance and direction to STEM education in the United States, emphasizing comprehensive and interdisciplinary educational principles.

Subject integration of STEM in higher education

Figure 2(2) illustrates the time distribution of subjects at the higher education level. Since 2004, a total of 16 subjects have been involved in STEM studies at the higher education level. Similar to the K-12 level, the integration in higher education also shows an intersection of science, technology, engineering, humanities, and social sciences.

STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) continued to play an important role at the higher education level, covering a wide range of fields of study. Unlike at the K-12 level, STEM education in higher education has exhibited a blend of disciplines at the beginning because of the strong interdisciplinary nature of the courses offered at universities themselves (for example, biochemistry). Students were exposed to more specialized and in-depth knowledge of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines in their areas of specialization. The focus of disciplinary integration was on combining theories and methods from different disciplines for cross-disciplinary research and innovation. For example, researchers in the multidisciplinary education (ME) course selected undergraduate students in engineering, pre-nursing, and pre-occupational health to collaborate in a maker space to solve health problems and create practical solutions to health-related problems facing the community through their backgrounds and competencies (Ludwig et al. 2017 ).

The development and disciplinary integration of STEM education was influenced by educational reform and societal needs. With the continuous advancement of technology and globalization, there was an increasing demand for comprehensive ability and interdisciplinary thinking. Traditional science and engineering education could no longer meet the current social and professional needs. Therefore, the integration of humanities and social science disciplines has become an important trend in the development of STEM education. For example, art subjects have promoted the integration of innovation and esthetics by providing creative expression and the development of design thinking. The prominence of gender, race, and economic issues, cultural background conflict in higher education has called for the inclusion of social science disciplines such as psychology, economics, and philosophy, linguistics, political science.

In higher education, the distribution of subjects was relatively diverse, with engineering receiving significant attention among the four main subjects. Additionally, chemistry has also been highly regarded, while comparatively, computer science’s involvement is not as prominent.

Comparing the temporal evolution of subjects at different educational levels

In summary, the concept of STEM education was gradually evolving from an initial bias toward engineering education to a more integrated and diverse educational paradigm. Since 2004, there have been 16 subjects involved in STEM (i.e., science, technology, engineering, mathematics, art, physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, computer science, environmental science, linguistics, economics, political science, philosophy, and history). In the analysis of subject integration, the overall integration trend was similar between the K-12 stage and the higher education stage. However, there were still some differences between K-12 education and higher education.

First, STEM education arose in higher education, but there seems to be a trend of research focus shifting from higher education to K-12 education. From 2004 to 2009, STEM research was focused on higher education, and after 2016, the number of papers in K-12 surpassed higher education. The reason for this phenomenon may be that the rise of STEM education sprung from the lack of talent in STEM careers, and higher education was directly oriented to society, so it was reasonable for research and reform to start from higher education, while government policies lead and funding investment largely promoted the rapid development of STEM education in K-12 education stage. Higher education points to the current talent needs of society, while K-12 education points to the future talent needs of society. The inclusion of STEM education in the education strategy of several countries also indicates that STEM talents are an important component of future national competitiveness, so it is very necessary to emphasize the K-12 stage.

Second, at the level of pedagogy and practice, disciplinary integration in STEM education at the K-12 level was often achieved through interdisciplinary projects and activities, such as engineering design challenges, science experiments, and mathematical modeling. These activities were usually classroom-cantered, with teachers guiding students through practice and inquiry. In contrast, in STEM education at the higher education level, disciplinary integration was focused more on the integration of research and practice. Students explored and applied integrated disciplinary knowledge in depth through participation in research projects, hands-on internships, and interdisciplinary courses.

In addition, the concept of STEAM education was more popular at the K-12 stage. “STEAM” was more frequently used in the K-12 stage, which could be said to a certain extent that the STEAM education concept was more popular in the K-12 stage, but may not necessarily indicate a deeper level of interdisciplinary integration in this stage.

Analysis of the evolution of subject themes

Research hotspots are reflected, to some extent, by the frequency of scientific theme terms. In this study, 32 keywords were selected as subject themes at the K-12 level and 33 keywords were selected at the higher education level. To facilitate the analysis, these keywords were grouped into “learning outcomes”, “teachers’ professional development”, “technology empowerment”, “social relevance”, and “pedagogy”. As shown in Fig. 3 .

The first column represents topic categories, the second column contains relevant keywords, and the third row displays the subjects involved in STEM education. This figure illustrates the theme and subject distribution of STEM-related literature. Darker colors indicate a greater number of documents related to the corresponding subject and theme.

Subject theme evolution in K-12 education

Overall, STEM research topics at the K-12 level predominantly emphasize “learning outcomes”, while maintaining a relatively balanced distribution across “teachers’ professional development”, “technology empowerment”, “social relevance”, and “pedagogy”. The dimension of “learning outcomes” primarily encompassed keywords such as students’ academic performance, thinking skills, and associated influencing factors. “Teachers’ professional development” involved aspects related to teachers’ preparedness for STEM education and collaborative efforts among educators. “Technology empowerment” focused on the impact of various technologies such as modeling, robotics, programming, and augmented reality on both the teaching environment and instructional content. “Pedagogy” primarily revolved around inquiry based and game based learning. Furthermore, research related to social themes primarily aimed to foster educational equity from multiple dimensions, including aspects like gender, culture, and policy.

At the K-12 level, the theme of “learning outcomes” account for the largest proportion with 37.69%, under which the theme words included “achievement”, “self-efficacy”, “performance”, “attitudes”, “computational thinking”, “knowledge”, “creativity”, “beliefs”, “design thinking” and “cognitive-load”. In 2009, Obama proposed the “ Competing for Excellence ” initiative, which aimed to improve students’ achievement in STEM. This initiative has led to more researchers exploring different teaching models, activities, and tools to improve student achievement and performance. Also, students’ attitudes, knowledge, beliefs, self-efficacy, and cognitive-load were important factors influencing STEM performance and interest and have received close attention from researchers. Self-efficacy refers to one’s perceived ability to perform specific behaviors that may contain difficulties and stress (Bandura et al. 1999 ). Cognitive load is a multidimensional structure that represents the burden placed on a learner’s cognitive system when processing specific tasks, often appearing alongside keywords like motivation, performance, etc., in educational research with technical support (Kao and Ruan 2022 ).

Computational thinking, creativity (Zhan et al. 2023 ), and design thinking were goals of STEM education and were closely related to the disciplines. Computational thinking (CT) could be seen as a thinking pattern for solving problems with computational tools, and it is a fundamental skill required in everyday life (Wing 2006 ). It has the most direct relationship with computers, and the “ Next Generation Science Standards ” emphasized its significance by considering computational thinking as a core scientific practice. In China, computational thinking is recognized as a core competency in the curriculum standards for information technology. In addition, there is also increasing research focusing on the connection between CT and mathematics (Lv et al. 2023 ). Weintrop et al. defined computational thinking in mathematical and scientific practices using a taxonomy that includes four main categories: data practices, modeling and simulation practices, computational problem-solving practices, and systems thinking practices, which had a broad impact on K-12 education (Weintrop et al. 2016 ).

Furthermore, there was a clear association between creativity and the arts, as well as between design thinking and engineering disciplines. Some scholars argued that creativity plays one of three roles that arts assume in STEM education, with the other two being arts/esthetic learning and contextual understanding (Liu et al. 2021 ). Design is a prerequisite for making and the first step in the formation of STEM work, often found in studies of engineering subjects (Hernandez et al. 2014 ), and design thinking also plays an important role in engineering education, especially in high school (Li and Zhan 2022 ).

“Technology empowerment” (18.91%) was the second most popular theme, with the following themes: “modeling”, “robotics”, “programming”, “augmented reality”, and “scratch”. “Technology empowerment” emphasized the development of student literacy such as information awareness and computational thinking on the one hand, and laid the foundation for students’ STEM education practices on the other. Researchers have explored that robotics education has the potential to cultivate transferable skills in the STEM field (Nelson 2014 ) and narrow the gender gap in STEM, particularly by promoting girls’ learning (Zhong et al. 2023 ). The use of modeling tools can help students visualize abstract scientific and mathematical concepts or objects, which has a positive impact on learners’ academic and personal growth.

In addition, programming is a fundamental requirement for learning computer subjects, and the development of skills related to computer programming and robotics, as well as the introduction of computational thinking principles in STEM education, were considered by researchers as trends in today’s world (Bermúdez et al. 2019 ). AR (Augmented Reality) is the technology that allows virtual objects to be overlaid on real images, enriching students’ learning experiences. AR-STEM research was primarily conducted among K-12 students and typically relies on marker-based AR. However, location-based AR has significant advantages in supporting student learning beyond the classroom and facilitating scientific inquiry-based learning (Sırakaya and Alsancak Sırakaya 2022 ). Scratch is a graphical programming tool. In the K-12 stage, the abstract nature of programming concepts and languages makes it challenging for students to grasp them directly. Graphical programming significantly reduces the complexity of programming, making Scratch widely adopted (Kao and Ruan 2022 ).

The theme of “social relevance” ranked third with 17.53%, with the main themes related to “gender”, “equity”, “culture”, “policy”, “justice” and “patriotism”. Equality has always been an important topic in education, ensuring that individuals of different genders and races can participate in STEM education without discrimination. The Obama administration launched “ the Teach for Innovation program ” in 2009, which aimed to increase access to STEM education and employment opportunities for disadvantaged groups, and has contributed in part to researchers’ attention to gender. The topic of justice was multifaceted, with environmental justice being particularly prominent. Its purpose was to encourage readers to reframe societal and environmental issues as an ethical responsibility, fostering the construction of this responsibility through care, recognition, openness, and responsiveness to both human and non-human vitality (Kayumova et al. 2019 ).

Furthermore, since STEM education was a national priority, many researchers have analyzed the development of STEM education through policy analysis (Zhong et al. 2022 ), particularly focusing on different countries and regions such as South Korea (Park et al. 2016 ), the United States, Europe (Subotnik et al. 2017 ), India, Australia (Sharma and Yarlagadda 2018 ), etc. In South Korea, researchers have combined history education with traditional STEM education to inspire students’ patriotism (Park and Cho, 2022 ).

STEM education originated in the United States, and its evolution is determined by a variety of factors, including national economy, politics, and culture (Zhong et al. 2022 ). As STEM education was increasingly promoted worldwide, it faced challenges of cultural conflicts and international exchanges. “Culture” was a broadly encompassing term, and research about culture could be divided into two categories. First, it served as a research methodology, such as sociocultural theory, exploring social issues like gender and race and aiming at promoting educational equity for students of diverse cultures and languages (Eisenhart and Allen 2020 ).

Second, culture served as the background and content carrier for STEM activities. In China, researchers have developed C-STEAM, or culturally oriented disciplinary integration education, based on STEM education and considering the reality and needs of China’s development. This concept emphasized exploring and creating cultural concepts using related disciplines in the context of traditional Chinese culture, cultivating students’ humanistic spirit, and enhancing their cultural identity and understanding. At the same time, C-STEAM embodied the nurturing value of cultivating students’ core literacy, the carrying value of passing on excellent traditional culture, and the social value of creating a culture with regional characteristics. On this basis, the researcher proposed the ETIC curriculum classification framework and 6 C implementation model, which provided a reference for promoting the construction and development of the regional C-STEAM curriculum. (Zhan et al. 2020 , 2021 ; Huo et al. 2020 ).

“Professional development” ranked fourth with 15.62%. The theme words related were “knowledge”, “professional development”, “attitudes”, “conceptions”, “beliefs”, “teacher preparation”, and “teacher collaboration”. Researchers have indicated that changing teachers to interdisciplinary teaching requires first developing the skills and attitudes of interdisciplinary teaching, and professional development (PD) was considered a key component to helping teachers through this transition process (Al Salami et al. 2017 ). The link between teacher preparation to teach STEM and student STEM achievement has motivated researchers to develop professional development programs to address teacher confidence, attitudes, knowledge, pedagogy, and other preparation issues (Nadelson et al. 2013 ). Understanding the beliefs held by educators was central to influencing change and improving instruction, so researchers needed to be able to design educational programs that address teachers’ beliefs and work to change them when appropriate (Nathan et al. 2010 ; Vossen et al. 2020 ).

Furthermore, there was still considerable uncertainty about “what STEM education is” and “what it means” in terms of curriculum and student achievement, research and discussion on the concept of STEM aimed to create a shared concept of STEM education to facilitate dialog between different stakeholders (Dare et al. 2019 ; Holmes et al. 2018 ). The above topics can all be categorized as preparations for STEM education, primarily referring to pre-service and in-service STEM teacher training. In addition to the mentioned content, this also included language training, relevant technical learning, and teaching methods. Furthermore, due to the interdisciplinary nature of STEM education, collaboration among teachers from multiple disciplines was necessary, especially when humanities and social sciences were involved (Park and Cho 2022 ). Therefore, teacher cooperation was also an important way for teachers’ professional development.

“Pedagogy” received the least attention (10.25%). The theme words related were “inquiry based learning”, “game based learning”, “project based learning”, and “self-regulated learning”. Game based learning demonstrated a close association with technology and computers. Nowadays, students are generally passionate about electronic games, however, they often lack sufficient computer programming knowledge and skills, which limits their development in the computer and technology fields. To address this issue, game based learning has received significant attention in the K-12 stage. The purpose of inquiry based learning was to cultivate students’ inquiry skills, which was also at the core of the science curriculum. In STEM education, this method was considered to have three components: data analysis, interpretive reflection, and critical reflection. Using inquiry based learning could integrate various disciplines, enhance educators’ attitudes, and it’s also suitable for the special needs of gifted students (Abdurrahman et al. 2019 ).

STEM PBL (STEM Project-Based Learning) is a student-centered teaching approach based on constructivism, characterized by clear outcomes and vaguely defined tasks (Capraro and Slough 2013 ). STEM PBL activities are fundamentally interdisciplinary, encouraging students to construct knowledge, identify problems independently, and collaborate to solve them (Han et al. 2015 ). Self-regulated learning (SRL) refers to an active, iterative process in which learners achieve their goals by controlling, monitoring, and adjusting their cognitive/metacognitive processes and learning behaviors. This approach was effective in activating and monitoring learners’ behaviors, cognitions, and emotions, which is crucial for task performance in the STEM field (Li et al. 2020 ).

Through the above analysis, it is evident that research topics in different disciplines have varying emphases. “Achievement” and “gender” were highly popular topics in the scientific community. Additionally, in the fields of math, physics, chemistry, and biology, there was a greater emphasis on “technological empowerment” and “pedagogy”. Technology placed the most emphasis on “modeling”, while computer science was concerned with “computational thinking”. Engineering exhibited a relatively even distribution of research topics. In contrast, the focus areas within humanities and social sciences were relatively scattered.

Subject theme evolution in higher education

In comparison to the K-12 level, research theme distribution in higher education appeared to be more concentrated. This was primarily manifested in the prevalence of research related to “learning outcomes” and “social relevance”, which collectively account for over three-quarters of the total research. Conversely, research areas focusing on “teachers’ professional development”, “technology empowerment”, and “pedagogy” were relatively scarce. However, from a disciplinary perspective, research topics in the humanities and social sciences at the higher education level exhibited greater diversity and richness.

“Social relevance” was the most popular theme in higher education research (47.31%). The research content could be broadly categorized into three types. The first category was educational equity and justice, including keywords “gender”, “identity”, “stereotype threat”, “race”, “equity”, “minority”, and “marginalized populations”. STEM identity is an expressed connection between one’s self and STEM, which depends on the individual’s beliefs about their abilities and their conceptual and practical knowledge of their particular STEM subject (Charleston et al. 2014 ). Enhancing the self-identity of minority groups and optimizing the experience of marginalized populations, especially females, contributed to their more active participation in STEM education. Stereotype threat is a risk experienced by individuals in which individuals fear that they will validate negative stereotypes of the group to which they belong (Spencer et al. 1999 ). Stereotype threat has been shown to have a significant impact on the likelihood of women, minorities, and white men leaving STEM professions (Beasley and Fischer 2012 ).

The second category was students’ career development, including the keywords “career” and “choice”. Career orientation was more prominent at the higher education level than at the K-12 level, with researchers focusing on career goals, career preparation, the position of STEM talent in the labor market, major selection, and attrition.

The third category was culture-related research, which, in higher education, connected with various humanities and social sciences disciplines such as psychology, philosophy, history, linguistics, and more. Research in this category focused on promoting educational equity and students’ full participation in STEM education by addressing the fair treatment of students from different sociocultural backgrounds and using “culturally responsive pedagogy”. This approach involved leveraging the cultural characteristics, experiences, and perspectives of ethnically diverse students to teach them more effectively, fostering educational equity and comprehensive engagement in STEM education (Gay 2003 ).

“Learning outcomes” was also a theme that received a lot of attention in higher education, with 30.47%. The related themes included “achievement”, “performance”, “self-efficacy”, “motivation”, “persistence”, “innovation”, “critical thinking”, “computational thinking”, “creativity”, and “digital skills”. It was evident from this that higher education was not only concerned with issues such as students’ achievement, performance, and computational thinking but also paid attention to influencing factors such as students’ self-efficacy and motivation. How to sustain students in STEM majors and reduce attrition of STEM majors, especially among minority and female populations, was a concern in studies related to “persistence” (Burt et al. 2019 ; Ong et al. 2018 ).

Compared to the K-12 stage, higher education placed less emphasis on computational thinking and creativity but focused more on innovation and critical thinking. Creativity refers to “the generation of novel and useful ideas by an individual or a small group of individuals” while innovation is “the successful implementation of creative ideas within an organization” (Amabile 1988 ). The distinction between creativity and innovation lies in the emphasis on products and outcomes in innovation. Higher education demands that students not only have creative ideas but also successfully transform these ideas into scalable products. In contrast, K-12 education placed more emphasis on encouraging students to generate new ideas. Besides, Critical thinking was another important developmental goal at the higher education level. It served as a method and tool for problem-solving, conceptualized as purposeful, self-regulated judgment involving various thinking skills such as analysis, evaluation, and reasoning (Gadot and Tsybulsky 2023 ).

Digital skill is a concept encompassing skills and specific techniques that are necessary for the use of effective digital technology (van Laar et al. 2019 ). In research, various terms were used to describe the ability to use digital technology effectively in learning activities, such as digital skills, technical skills, digital literacy, digital competence, digital tools, 21st-century skills, ICT literacy, and ICT skills. Studies have shown a positive correlation between students’ digital skills and their creative self-efficacy, and higher levels of digital skills were often predictive of higher levels of actual performance (Chonsalasin and Khampirat 2022 ).

“Technology empowerment” was ranked third with 11.53%, and the related themes were “modeling”, “robotics”, “programming”, “augmented reality” and “virtual reality”. Modeling is a useful tool to identify current problem situations, predict future societal changes, and identify possible solutions (Suh and Han 2019 ). Programming was considered to be related to problem-solving and the main pedagogical challenge was the lack of appropriate methods and tools as well as scaled and personalized instruction (Medeiros et al. 2019 ). Robots were often used in the classroom to develop students’ human-machine collaboration skills (Mathers et al. 2012 ).

Augmented Reality (AR) refers to the technology that enhances virtual information in the real environment through ongoing activities and user input, while “Virtual Reality (VR)” is the technology that immerses users in a purely virtual environment. The learning environments created by VR and AR technologies contributed to the formation of collaborative, interactive, and highly immersive learning experiences, thereby enhancing the efficiency of learning for learners (Zhong et al. 2021 ). Additionally, they demonstrated the potential to help students improve their cross-cultural communication skills (Akdere et al. 2021 ).

“Teachers’ Professional Development” was ranked fourth with 6.11% of the total, and related terms were “faculty training”, “professional development”, and “educational innovation”. Faculty training and professional development were broadly defined terms, and there was a significant degree of overlap in their research content. They encompassed research related to teacher development (such as teacher reflection and active learning), diversity and equity issues among the teaching staff, curriculum design, teaching methodologies, and pedagogical knowledge. Research related to educational innovation encompassed the introduction of new educational technologies, teaching methods, curriculum designs, and assessment approaches to address evolving learning needs and societal challenges.

“Pedagogy” was the least studied topic (4.58%), with related themes including “collaborative learning”, “active learning”, “experiential learning”, “game based learning”, and “positive learning”. Collaborative learning played a significant role in enhancing the likelihood of successful problem-solving. Additionally, collaborative skills are crucial for individuals pursuing STEM careers. Active learning is a method characterized by students taking control of their learning to some extent through metacognition, self-assessment, and reflection, within student-centered and inquiry based learning approaches (National Research Council et al. 2000 ; Kuh 2008 ). The American Association for the Advancement of Science encouraged university science educators to shift their teaching from traditional lectures to active learning (American Association for the Advancement of Science 2011 ).

Experiential Learning is an educational approach that emphasizes acquiring knowledge and skills through first-hand experiences, practice, and reflection, often in forms such as teaching, research, and internships. Experiential learning can facilitate the transfer of classroom learning to real-world practice and has the potential to enhance students’ learning, motivation, skill development, and graduation rates (Gong et al. 2022 ). Game based learning was not very common in higher education, and research in this area was quite scattered, covering topics such as computer-based learning and the creation of diverse and inclusive learning environments. The origins of positive learning can be traced back to the early days of the positive psychology movement, to promote students’ overall well-being, not just the imparting of knowledge and skills, but also the cultivation of their positive psychological traits and qualities (White 2016 ).

Undoubtedly, in higher education, almost all disciplines focused their research on “learning outcomes” and “social relevance”. Among these, the most emphasized areas included students’ performance, diversity, equity, and career development. Furthermore, engineering placed a significant emphasis on programming and robotics technology; mathematics and technology prioritized students’ self-efficacy, motivation, persistence, and programming skills. Chemistry, on the other hand, exhibited a unique pattern by showing less focus on learning outcomes but a greater emphasis on technology integration and pedagogy. The arts concentrated more on technology integration and social relevance. However, many other disciplines lacked a substantial focus on teacher professional development.

Comparing the evolution of subject themes at different educational levels

From the above analysis, it can be found that the distribution of research topics in K-12 education was relatively balanced, while in higher education, it was more concentrated. However, in higher education, research in the humanities and social sciences was more in-depth, and the distribution of themes was more extensive. The research hotspots at the two levels have shown the following differences.

Overall, in the K-12 stage, “learning outcomes” received the most attention, while career education for students was lacking. In higher education, “learning outcomes” and “social relevance” were the most emphasized aspects, while “teachers’ professional development” and “pedagogy” were relatively neglected.

Specifically, concerning “learning outcomes”, achievement, performance, and self-efficacy were common topics across different educational levels. K-12 education placed more emphasis on computational thinking, creativity, and design thinking, while higher education focused more on innovation and critical thinking. Regarding “teachers’ professional development”, higher education paid relatively less attention to teachers and their development, lacking a systematic body of research. In “technology empowerment”, technologies in the research were highly similar, but there was a greater volume of publications in K-12 education. The knowledge or tools learned were also more foundational and straightforward at this level. In the realm of “social relevance” research, gender, equity, and culture were common topics of interest, but higher education delved into students’ career choices and development, an area that lacked emphasis in K-12 education. In terms of “pedagogy” research, K-12 education primarily focused on inquiry based learning and game based learning, while higher education emphasized collaborative learning and active learning.

This study analyzed and compared the development of the STEM research field in two aspects: subject integration and subject themes distribution, to clarify the STEM subject orientation and the ecological map of subject integration in the STEM field.

Referring to RQ1, the subject time distribution maps were used to find out how subjects integrated into STEM education at the K-12 and higher education levels. From the above analysis, it is clear that subject integration followed the evolutionary path of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics to the addition of social sciences and humanities. The addition of the latter has qualitatively improved the connotation of STEM education and fundamentally changed the subject integration path. In other words, the field of STEM studies has expanded from science education to the whole education field, and the cross-fertilization of subjects has become its most fundamental feature. This conclusion has been corroborated by existing research and policies (Perignat and Katz-Buonincontro 2019 ; Zhan et al. 2022a ).

Referring to RQ2, the subject themes distribution maps at the K-12 and higher education levels reflected the main research content of STEM education. Research themes were not evenly distributed, especially since the research on “learning outcomes” was much more than the research on “teachers’ professional development” and “pedagogy”, which implied that the current attention to STEM teachers was insufficient. Previous research indicated that teacher education programs lack content related to interdisciplinary integration across different subject areas and do not provide suitable activities for integrating STEM education (Türk et al. 2018 ). In addition, although K-12 education started late, it has developed rapidly due to the promotion of policies and the future needs of society, but there is still much room for expansion of its research scope, especially career issues. In recent years, with the further development of globalization, student diversity has become evident not only in higher education but also in K-12 education. Research has shown that multicultural education and culturally supportive teaching contribute to addressing the persistent inequalities in the field of STEM education (Charity Hudley and Mallinson 2017 ).

STEM education has obvious interdisciplinary characteristics, in which different subjects play different roles, as shown in Table 1 . The essence of science subjects is to understand the objective laws of the world, and science education aims to help students understand the world through inquiry methods, knowledge is the key to its teaching. The essence of technology is the application of knowledge scenarios, and technology achieves the purpose of transforming the world by manipulating and optimizing the variables that affect the results (products), the key to its teaching is the acquisition of skills. Engineering is the integrated application of technology, and its purpose is also to transform the world, but unlike technology, engineering places more emphasis on the coordination of all elements within the system to find the optimal solution to the problem, and engineering operates and optimizes the variables that affect the system to achieve the purpose of system optimization. The essence of mathematics is measurement and calculation, which develops itself through abstract, non-empirical mathematical operations and heuristic logical deduction, and can provide the logical and calculative basis for other subjects, and the key to its teaching is calculation, measurement, and logical deduction.

Unlike the above subjects, the essence of humanities and social sciences is to feel, interpret, and create the man-made world. It contributes to the all-around development of human beings, the enhancement of moral values and cultural identity, and the development of creative and innovative thinking through the unity of awareness, expression, values, and emotions, the key to teaching is tasting, designing, and creating. In addition, there is a slight difference between the humanities and social sciences. The social sciences involved in STEM fields mainly reflect on the social issues that exist or are raised in STEM education from the perspective of research, but are less reflected in the teaching of the subjects, such as psychology. The involvement of the humanities is mainly reflected in the teaching of the subjects, and the educational goals are achieved through teaching students to appreciate the appeal and value of the arts.

The STEM education research ecosystem comprises two parts. The upper elliptical portion reveals the distribution of disciplines and research topics, while the lower timeline illustrates the timeline of interdisciplinary integration. The central part of the ellipse indicates the disciplinary composition of STEM education. Science, oriented towards exploration, forms the foundation of STEM education. Engineering, driven by creativity and innovation, plays a crucial role in fostering students’ creativity and innovation. Science and engineering mutually reinforce each other and progress together. Technology provides the tools and support for STEM education, while mathematics serves as the computational foundation, collectively facilitating STEM education activities.

STEM education, through interdisciplinary teaching, emphasizes the cultivation of students’ higher-order thinking skills, such as scientific thinking, design thinking, engineering thinking, and computational thinking. The outermost circle includes other disciplines involved in STEM education, such as arts, economics, history, political science, linguistics, psychology, philosophy, physics, biology, computer science, environmental studies, chemistry, and more. This demonstrates the trend in STEM education shifting from STEM to STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) and the integration of science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and social sciences in education. The pink and blue sections represent the distribution of research topics in the K-12 and higher education stages.

From the above analysis, we could outline the ecological map of STEM subject integration in terms of subject integration and subject themes distribution, as shown in Fig. 4 , which demonstrates the subject integration and main research contents of STEM education.

This figure is composed of two parts, with the upper part representing the content dimension, and the lower part representing the time dimension. The pink area within the ellipse illustrates the most prominent research themes in the K-12 stage, while the blue area illustrates the most prominent research themes in higher education.

Conclusion and future research

Based on the literature related to STEM education in the WOS database from 2004 to 2023, covering 903 papers at the K-12 level and 873 papers at the higher education level, this study conducted a bibliometric analysis from the perspective of subject evolution, including subject timeline evolution analysis and subject theme evolution analysis, to reveal the subject evolution trends and research hotspots in STEM education. The following conclusions were reached.

First, regarding subject integration, the interdisciplinary and cross-subject collaboration in STEM education was constantly expanding and deepening, forming a new situation in which science, engineering, humanities, and social sciences are integrated. Since 2004, a total of 16 subjects have been involved, among them, arts, physics, chemistry, biology, computer science, and environmental science were the main integrated subjects. Interdisciplinary integration promoted the innovation and development of STEM education research.

Second, regarding the research themes, humanism was more and more emphasized in STEM education. In the temporal evolution of subjects in STEM education, it was found that the research outputs of humanities and social science subjects such as arts, psychology, and philosophy kept increasing. The cultural themes have enriched the diversity of participants and the uniqueness of regions in STEM education research, viewed from perspectives such as theory, teaching methods, and regional development. “Social relevance” has garnered significant attention across different educational levels. In K-12 education, research topics were relatively balanced, but there was a lack of research on students’ career choices and development. In higher education, research topics in the humanities and social sciences were more diverse in their distribution.

To sum up, this study analyzed the developmental lineage of STEM education, focusing on the subject roles, and hot topics of research, and summing up potential guidance for subsequent subject integration research. Future work should prioritize the articulation of STEM subject integration between K-12 education and higher education. At the K-12 level, it is necessary to enhance vocational education appropriately, while in higher education, reducing the attrition rate of STEM majors may become a crucial issue. Additionally, attention to multi-discipline teacher collaboration and professional development, high-quality curricula design, and regional policy support should continue to be emphasized. Moreover, different countries present different characteristics in the development of STEM education due to their different cultural, political, and economic backgrounds. In future studies, we aim to conduct a comparative study on the development of STEM education on a country-by-country basis.

Data availability

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available in the supplementary file.

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This research was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation in China (62277018; 62237001), Ministry of Education in China Project of Humanities and Social Sciences (22YJC880106), the Major Project of Social Science in South China Normal University (ZDPY2208), the Degree and graduate education Reform research project in Guangdong (2023JGXM046).

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• Published: 13 December 2021

Beyond the basics: a detailed conceptual framework of integrated STEM

• Gillian H. Roehrig   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-6943-7820 1 ,
• Emily A. Dare 2 ,
• Joshua A. Ellis 2 &
• Elizabeth Ring-Whalen 3  

Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Science Education Research volume  3 , Article number:  11 ( 2021 ) Cite this article

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Given the large variation in conceptualizations and enactment of K − 12 integrated STEM, this paper puts forth a detailed conceptual framework for K − 12 integrated STEM education that can be used by researchers, educators, and curriculum developers as a common vision. Our framework builds upon the extant integrated STEM literature to describe seven central characteristics of integrated STEM: (a) centrality of engineering design, (b) driven by authentic problems, (c) context integration, (d) content integration, (e) STEM practices, (f) twenty-first century skills, and (g) informing students about STEM careers. Our integrated STEM framework is intended to provide more specific guidance to educators and support integrated STEM research, which has been impeded by the lack of a deep conceptualization of the characteristics of integrated STEM. The lack of a detailed integrated STEM framework thus far has prevented the field from systematically collecting data in classrooms to understand the nature and quality of integrated STEM instruction; this delays research related to the impact on student outcomes, including academic achievement and affect. With the framework presented here, we lay the groundwork for researchers to explore the impact of specific aspects of integrated STEM or the overall quality of integrated STEM instruction on student outcomes.

Since the term “STEM” (Science-Technology-Engineering-Mathematics) was coined in 2001, there have been numerous efforts to improve K − 12 STEM teaching and learning around the world (Freeman et al., 2014 ). With the release of STEM policy documents across the globe (e.g., Australian Curriculum, Assessment, and Reporting Authority, 2016 ; European Commission, 2015 ; Hong, 2017 ; National Research Council (NRC), 2012), the implementation of STEM in K − 12 education has focused on interdisciplinary or integrated instruction, commonly referred to as “integrated STEM education”, rather than separate disciplinary approaches to the teaching of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. While integrated STEM education is well established through national and international policy documents, disagreement on models and effective approaches for integrated STEM instruction continues to be pervasive and problematic (Moore et al., 2020 ). Sgro et al. ( 2020 ) argue that, in essence, integrated STEM is “whatever someone decides it means” and that the large variation across integrated STEM curricula suggests a need for “greater clarity about not only what constitutes STEM education, but how educators as a whole conceptualize STEM and the process of integration” (p. 185). In response, this paper puts forth a detailed conceptual framework for K − 12 integrated STEM education that can be used by researchers, educators, and curriculum developers as a common vision.

Various broad definitions of integrated STEM education exist in the literature and policy documents. For example, Moore, Stohlmann, and colleagues (2014) defined integrated STEM education as “an effort to combine some or all of the four disciplines of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics into one class, unit, or lesson that is based on connections between the subjects and real-world problems” (p. 38). Similarly, Kelley and Knowles ( 2016 ) defined integrated STEM as “the approach to teaching the STEM content of two or more STEM domains, bound by STEM practices within an authentic context for the purpose of connecting these subjects to enhance student learning” (p. 3). Common across almost all definitions is the use of real-world contexts to both contextualize learning and motivate student engagement (e.g., Kelley & Knowles, 2016 ; Kloser et al., 2018 ; National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and NRC, 2014). While some researchers argue for integration across all four of the STEM disciplines (e.g., Burrows et al., 2018 ; Chandan et al., 2019 ), others call for the integration of at least two of the STEM disciplines (e.g., Moore et al., 2020 ). Given the prominence of engineering within STEM policy documents (e.g., NRC, 2012; NGSS Lead States, 2013 ), many approaches to integrated STEM specifically include an engineering context or engineering design problem as the context for learning (e.g., Berland & Steingut, 2016 ; Mehalik et al., 2008 ; Moore, Stohlmann, et al., 2014). Indeed, Nathan et al. ( 2013 ) argue, the ideals of STEM integration are not likely to be fulfilled by the integration of any pair of STEM fields … the pairing of technology with engineering (the design sciences) is insufficient to satisfy STEM integration, and also excludes pairing science and math (the natural sciences). Rather, it calls for STEM integration that spans the design and natural sciences. (p. 82).

In addition to the centrality of engineering and connection to real-world problems, other aspects of integrated STEM on which there is consensus in the literature include: (a) the use of student-centered pedagogies (e.g., Asunda & Mativo, 2017 ; Johnson et al., 2016 ; Thibaut et al., 2018 ), (b) supporting the development of twenty-first century skills such as creativity, collaboration, communication, and critical thinking (e.g., Sias et al., 2017 ; Wang & Knoblach, 2018), and (c) connections between STEM disciplines should be made explicit to students (e.g., English, 2016 ; Kelley & Knowles, 2016 ; NAE and NRC, 2014). While there is consensus on these aspects as being central to broad definitions of STEM, the literature does not provide detail on how these aspects should be operationalized for quality implementation of integrated STEM education in K − 12 classrooms.

While integrated STEM education is not restricted to implementation in science classrooms, in the United States there exists a policy mandate to K − 12 science teachers through the Framework for K − 12 Science Education (NRC, 2012) and the Next Generation Science Standard s (NGSS Lead States, 2013 ) and consequently the preponderance of integrated STEM research occurs within the context of science education (Takeuchi et al., 2020 ). Thus, in this paper we specifically focus on STEM integration within K − 12 science classrooms. It is also important to state that integrated STEM is not promoted to the exclusion of other important learning goals within a K − 12 science classroom. Plainly stated, not all science content can and should be taught using an integrated STEM approach; attention should also be paid to the nature of science and engaging students in learning science concepts through inquiry-based learning.

While the field has moved towards increased agreement on definitions and broad characteristics of integrated STEM education, there remains a lack of specification in how these characteristics should be operationalized within curricula and classrooms. Educators and curriculum developers need specifics if the implementation of integrated STEM education is to meet the policy goals of using interdisciplinary and integrated approaches to teaching STEM content to increase students’ interest and readiness for STEM careers (e.g., National Academy of Science, National Academy of Engineering, and Institute of Medicine, 2007; President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology [PCAST], 2011). Without clear guidelines, implementation of integrated STEM education comprises a broad range of approaches (Moore et al., 2020 ), many of which, as discussed below, are problematic (e.g., Gunckel & Tolbert, 2018 ; McComas & Burgin, 2020 ). There is a clear need for research to provide critical evidence of the impact of integrated STEM education on student learning and affect toward STEM, as many arguments for integrated STEM are argued from policy and theoretical positions (e.g., NAE and NRC, 2014). The development of valid assessments and protocols to research integrated STEM teaching and learning requires that characteristics of integrated STEM education are developed in explicit detail. Thus, this paper develops a detailed framework for integrated STEM education that expands on previously established components of quality integrated STEM as broad statements to detailed constructs that describe fully what quality integrated STEM implementation should look like in the classroom. First, we examine the policy environment in which integrated STEM education is being promoted. Second, we provide an extensive literature review which expands on the consensus aspects of integrated STEM education described above to provide a more nuanced and detailed discussion of key characteristics of integrated STEM.

STEM policy

It is important to understand the policy context in which integrated STEM education is being promoted, as the myriad approaches are in response to policy directives, originating within the US, that call for addressing pressing issues such as STEM workforce needs (Takeuchi et al., 2020 ). Indeed, dominating policy arguments is the suggestion that continued national prosperity is dependent on meeting STEM workforce needs to address critical challenges such as energy, health, the environment, national security, and global development (e.g., National Academy of Science, National Academy of Engineering, and Institute of Medicine, 2007; PCAST, 2011). The number of STEM jobs is growing faster than non-STEM jobs (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2020 ), which may result in a shortage of up to 3.5 million STEM workers in the United States by 2025 (National Association of Manufacturing and Deloitte Report, 2018 ). STEM workforce arguments are used in countries throughout the world to establish new STEM education policies and initiatives (Freeman et al., 2014 ). However, policy documents do not unpack specifics about STEM workforce needs beyond shortages of STEM workers. For integrated STEM education to address policy calls related to the STEM workforce, it is necessary to better understand the knowledge and skills that students need to be successful as STEM professionals.

More specific to the needs of the STEM workforce are concerns about a “creativity crisis” in the United States and around the world (Bronson & Merryman, 2011 ; Kim, 2011 ; Lin, 2011 ). STEM employers are looking for a workforce with not only strong STEM content knowledge and skills, but also an ability to compete in the global economy in a workforce with strong twenty-first century skills (e.g., critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity) (Bronson & Merryman, 2011 ; Charyton, 2015 ). According to a World Economic Forum survey, approximately 65% of today’s Kindergarteners will end up working in jobs that do not currently exist given the rapid growth of automation and artificial intelligence in the workplace (World Economic Forum, 2016 ). Thus, it is no longer enough to expect our students to simply learn isolated facts and content. Rather than positioning students as consumers of information, students should be involved in knowledge construction. The deep understanding of content developed through knowledge construction forms the basis for students to apply twenty-first century skills to create, analyze, evaluate, innovate, and address real-world problems (Stehle & Peters-Burton, 2019 ).

Less visible in the current STEM policy rhetoric are arguments that integrated STEM education should promote increased STEM literacy and awareness, as well as addressing issues in developing countries related to equitable education and poverty reduction (Freeman et al., 2014 ; National Academy of Sciences [NAS], 2014). Indeed, teaching STEM solely from a workforce rationale is viewed by some science educators as problematic (e.g., Hoeg & Bencze, 2017 ; Zeidler, 2016 ; Zeidler et al., 2016 ). For example, Gunckel and Tolbert ( 2018 ) call out the technocratic, utilitarian, and neoliberal underpinnings of engineering design as portrayed in the Framework (NRC, 2012). These critiques are carefully considered and integrated in our development of an understanding of integrated STEM education to guide both educators and researchers seeking to better understand integrated STEM and ensure a positive learning experience for all students.

Integrated STEM framework

Throughout this literature review, we propose a framework for K − 12 integrated STEM education that provides essential details for consistent implementation and evaluation of integrated STEM teaching. Without common understandings of integrated STEM education, it is difficult at best to draw conclusions across studies about teacher practices related to integrated STEM instruction and student outcomes. This common understanding needs to move past definitions and lists of consensus features of integrated STEM that can be interpreted in myriad ways by educators. Our framework includes seven key characteristics of integrated STEM: (a) focus on real-world problems, (b) centrality of engineering, (c) context integration, (d) content integration, (e) STEM practices, (f) twenty-first century skills, and (g) informing students about STEM careers. Table 1 provides a summary of these characteristics, and a detailed literature review for each characteristic follows this overview of the framework. These key characteristics are aligned with and expand upon three of the four consensus features of integrated STEM identified in the preceding sections: (a) integrated STEM is contextualized by a real-world problem, (b) integrated STEM supports the development of twenty-first century skills, and (c) connections between STEM disciplines should be made explicit to students. We note agreement within our framework that integrated STEM requires the use of student-centered pedagogies; however, we focus on student engagement in STEM practices rather than broad notions of student-centered pedagogies. Our framework extends conceptualizations of integrated STEM to explicitly address the nature of integration, the role of engineering, and STEM career awareness. Finally, our framework directly attends to issues of diversity and equity as opposed to the techno-centric focus of prevalent conceptualizations of integrated STEM. It is important to note that none of the characteristics in Table 1 operate in isolation from each other (see Fig. 1 ). The following section grounds each characteristic in the literature and illustrates the connections amongst the characteristics.

Interactions between critical characteristics of integrated STEM

Focus on real-world problems

If learning is not centered on developing solutions to a real-world problem (Characteristic 1), a lesson cannot be considered to be representative of integrated STEM education. Indeed, as noted earlier, the most common feature included in definitions of integrated STEM in the literature is that STEM integration should be centered around a real-world problem or context (e.g., Kelley & Knowles, 2016 ; Kloser et al., 2018 ; Moore et al., 2020 ). Indeed, many students find it difficult to relate to STEM content presented using traditional, disciplinary approaches (Kelley & Knowles, 2016 ). Proponents of integrated STEM education argue that using real-world or authentic problems as a context for learning provides motivation and purpose for learning STEM content (e.g., Kelley & Knowles, 2016 ; Monson & Besser, 2015 ). Research shows that engaging students in learning through authentic engineering design problems improves student interest in science and engineering (Guzey, Moore, & Morse, 2016 ; Lachapelle & Cunningham, 2014 ; McClure et al., 2021 ). However, the selection of a real-world problem requires careful consideration as the ability to engage students with all characteristics of integrated STEM education hinges on the nature of the real-world problem (Fig. 1 ).

Our framework expands consideration of the importance of the nature of these real-world problems as care needs to be taken that these authentic problems generate interest and motivation in learning for all students (Carter et al., 2015 ; Monson & Besser, 2015 ). Given the lack of diversity within many of the STEM fields (Vakil & Ayers, 2019 ), there is a need to increase STEM interest for students that are historically under-represented in STEM. It is important to engage students in real-world problems that are personally motivating and connect STEM content to students’ lived experiences. This has been shown to make learning more meaningful and relevant, which enhances student engagement in science (Djonko-Moore et al., 2018 ) and positions students as epistemic agents in their learning (Miller et al., 2018 ). Often, integrated STEM classroom activities tend to focus on the male-oriented, technical aspects of engineering related to the design of “things”, such as designing cars and rockets (Gunckel & Tolbert, 2018 ). However, research shows that girls and students of color are more motivated by projects with a communal goal orientation, focused on societal issues such as health, the environment, and social justice as opposed to these types of gendered engineering projects (Billington et al., 2013 ; Diekman et al., 2010 ; Leammukda & Roehrig, 2020 ). The emphasis on “things” and technical criteria is oppositional to a communal goal orientation which negatively impacts interest in STEM careers (Diekman et al., 2010 ). This line of research parallels the arguments of Gunckel and Tolbert ( 2018 ), who argue for considerations of the dimensions of care and empathy in integrated STEM. While the literature has demonstrated a clear consensus that integrated STEM education should include an authentic problem to contextualize learning (e.g., Kelley & Knowles, 2016 ; Moore, Stohlmann, et al., 2014), there are important considerations about the nature of such problems if content learning and student motivation are to be promoted as argued in policy documents (e.g., Australian Curriculum, Assessment, and Reporting Authority, 2016 ; European Commission, 2015 ; NRC, 2012 ). Drawing on personal and community interests and lived experiences of students will be more motivating for students, and with purposeful consideration of students’ interests there is the potential to diversify STEM fields.

Centrality of engineering

Given the prominence of engineering within STEM policy documents (e.g., NRC, 2012 ), real-world problems are represented as an engineering design challenge (Characteristic 2) (Moore et al., 2020 ). Engineering is considered central in most definitions of integrated STEM (e.g., Berland & Steingut, 2016 ; Mehalik et al., 2008 ; Moore, Stohlmann, et al., 2014; Nathan et al., 2013 ); even within research that calls for the integration of only two disciplines to be considered integrated STEM, the most common combination is science and engineering (Moore et al., 2020 ). Thus, our framework links real-world problems to engineering design challenges (Characteristics 1 and 2 in Fig. 1 ) to promote the practices called for within current reform documents (e.g., NRC 2012 ).

Developing solutions to an overarching real-world problem relies on using and developing understanding of content from multiple disciplines (e.g., Cavlazoglu & Stuessy, 2017 ; Thibaut et al., 2018 ; Walker et al., 2018 ). Specifically, within integrated STEM education, students are expected to engage in engineering practices to develop possible design solutions to real-world problems (Berland & Steingut, 2016 ; NAE and NRC, 2014 ; NRC, 2012 ). Engineering practices are loosely defined within the NGSS through the eight science and engineering practices; however, successful integration of engineering practices into science classrooms requires a more robust articulation of engineering practices (Cunningham & Carlsen, 2014 ; Moore, Glancy, et al., 2014). In our work, we draw heavily on the Framework for Quality K − 12 Engineering Education (Moore, Glancy, et al., 2014), which proposes three domains consisting of 12 key indicators of quality K-12 engineering (see Table 2 ).

Engineering is a systematic and iterative approach to designing solutions (products, processes, and systems) based on the needs of a client (NRC, 2012 ). As such, design is widely considered to be the central activity of engineering (Dym, 1999 ). Engineering design is an iterative process of “testing the most promising solutions and modifying what is proposed on the basis of the test results leads to greater refinement and ultimately to an optimal solution” (NRC, 2012 , p. 210). In other words, response to failure is central to the engineering design process; failure is expected if innovation is to occur as it can lead to stronger, more innovative designs (Henry et al., 2021 ; Simpson et al., 2018 ). Thus, it is critical that K-12 students have opportunities within integrated STEM curriculum to fully engage in the iterative engineering design process and engage in at least one cycle of evaluating and redesigning a proposed solution or set of solutions (Moore, Stohlmann, et al., 2014). Learning from failure needs to be explicitly scaffolded for students, purposefully engaging them in a reflective decision-making process (Wendell et al., 2017 ).

Unfortunately, in K-12 classrooms engineering design is usually depicted solely as a technical problem (Gunckel & Tolbert, 2018 ). Thus, our framework expands on the Framework for Quality K-12 Engineering Education (Moore, Glancy, et al., 2014) to extend its focus on the technical aspects of engineering design to explicitly consider diversity and equity within STEM. Parallel to the work of professional engineers, students are expected to understand and address the criteria and constraints of a problem in developing possible design solutions (Watkins et al., 2014). Yet, these constraints are usually limited to realistic, but surface-level, issues such as time, access to materials, and budget, often ignoring the social, political, and ethical issues that are inherent in most real-world problems (Gunckel & Tolbert, 2018 ; Roehrig et al., 2020 ). Indeed, some researchers argue the NGSS (NGSS Lead States, 2013 ) and the Framework (NRC, 2012 ) marginalize the moral and ethical considerations within engineering design (e.g., Kahn, 2015 ). Gunckel and Tolbert ( 2018 ) caution that, while engineering education has elevated a focus on ethics, the focus of this approach still draws on technocratic and utilitarian principles. An approach grounded in care and empathy is necessary to reframe engineering education to engage students in considering the societal implications of their design solutions (Gunckel & Tolbert, 2018 ; Jackson et al., 2021 ). Similarly, researchers have promoted the inclusion of socio-scientific issues (SSI) into integrated STEM instruction (Kahn, 2015 ; Owens & Sadler, 2020 ; Roehrig et al., 2020 ). In addition to promoting scientific solutions to a real-world problem, SSI explicitly address moral and ethical considerations (Kahn, 2015 ; Zeidler, 2016 ). This approach to integrated STEM education not only elevates the purpose to include STEM literacy for all citizens regardless of their future participation in a STEM career, but also reimagines the necessary skills needed in the STEM workforce to improve and diversify thinking and approaches to engineering design.

Context integration

The real-world problem and/or engineering design challenge used to motivate student learning should be complex enough to foster multiple solutions (Lachapelle & Cunningham, 2014 ) and engage learners in applying and expanding their knowledge of the STEM disciplines (Berland & Steingut, 2016 ; Monson & Besser, 2015 ). There needs to be clear alignment between the engineering design challenge or real-world problem and specific content learning objectives (see Fig. 1 ), with the challenge or problem framed such that students need to draw upon STEM content knowledge to generate possible designs and make evidence-based decisions. This is represented in Fig. 1 as context integration (Characteristic 3).

Without clear and explicit integration between the problem context and content learning goals, students will resort to tinkering (a form of trial and error), negating the achievement of content learning objectives (McComas & Burgin, 2020 ; Moore, Glancy, et al., 2014; Roehrig et al., 2021 ). This relates to a significant problem pointed out by Takeuchi et al. ( 2020 ) in that there is a lack of a clear focus on specific STEM concepts. In their systematic review of the literature, Takeuchi et al. ( 2020 ) reported that almost 40% of the 154 integrated STEM articles they reviewed focused on students’ career aspirations and choices rather than learning of specific STEM concepts. The real-world problem and engineering design challenge must provide a context for learning target STEM content, as well as being motivating and engaging for students to help promote positive STEM identities (e.g., Tai et al., 2006 ).

Unfortunately, even with a real-world context, design tasks can degenerate into simply making crafts or tinkering solely through trial and error, neither of which require knowledge of STEM content or practices to develop solutions. While engineers develop both products and processes as solutions to real-world problems, K-12 engineering and integrated STEM educators tend to gravitate toward the building of physical products. For example, engineering courses, makerspaces, and digital fabrication labs have proliferated in K-12 schools over the past decade (Adams Becker et al., 2016 ). The focus of makerspaces and fabrication labs is the development of a product, often through “tinkering with materials with an endpoint in mind” (Sheffield et al., 2017 , p.149). In effect, these spaces are the modernized versions of vocational education or shop class (Blackley et al., 2017 ; McComas & Burgin, 2020 ). Studies demonstrate limited content learning in science and mathematics for students participating in hands-on, project-based engineering courses because of the lack of clear and explicit connections to science and mathematics content (Tank et al., 2019 ). Makerspaces, fabrication labs, and engineering programs are not commensurate with characteristics of integrated STEM education unless teachers make explicit connections to mathematics and science content (Sheffield et al., 2015). As such, integrated STEM education requires an authentic problem or engineering design challenge that engages students in explicitly learning and applying science and mathematics concepts.

The practice of engineering requires the use and application of science, mathematics, and engineering knowledge. K-12 STEM education should emphasize this interdisciplinary nature by providing students with opportunities to apply developmentally appropriate mathematics or science content within the context of solving engineering problems (Arık & Topçu, 2020 ; NRC, 2012 ; Reynante et al., 2020 ). Indeed, engineering as a discipline involves an “understanding of the science undergirding physical relationships and the mathematical foundations of models that guide engineering design, as opposed to tinkering or making random modifications without basing those changes upon mathematical and/or scientific analyses” (Householder & Hailey, 2012 , p.12). Design iterations throughout the engineering design process are based on evidence, scientific and mathematical knowledge, and analyses of the data generated through the testing of prototype designs (Mathis et al., 2016 ; Mathis et al., 2018 ).

Our argument is that integrated STEM education at its core is driven by real-world problems and the development of possible solutions to those problems using knowledge and practices from any relevant discipline. If students are to consider and understand the full socio-historical-political context of the problems in developing and evaluating design solutions to real-world problems (e.g., Gunckel & Tolbert, 2018 ), then knowledge and practices from the social sciences are necessary in addition to the technical knowledge of the STEM disciplines. In addition, critical to addressing issues of equity and diversity in STEM, is promoting students’ lived experiences and cultural knowledge, as well as disciplinary knowledge, as relevant to proposing solutions to real-world problems and engineering design challenges. Unfortunately, the cultural knowledge of students who are marginalized and under-represented in STEM are often perceived as deficit and not as legitimate ways of engaging in STEM (Tan & Calabrese Barton, 2018 ). Limited attention has been paid within the integrated STEM education literature to elevating the application of cultural and indigenous knowledge in engineering design; however, promoting STEM interest and learning for all students needs to attend to approaches such as cultural maker education (Tan & Calabrese Barton, 2018 ) and ethno-engineering (Friesen & Herrmann, 2018 ; Kilada et al., 2021 ).

Content integration

In addition to explicit connections between the real-world problem/engineering design challenge and the targeted science and/or mathematics content (Characteristic 3 - contextual integration), it is important that connections between the disciplines (Characteristic 4 - content integration) are also made explicit to students (English, 2016 ; Kelley & Knowles, 2016 ; NAE and NRC, 2014 ). Although teachers may understand the connections across the range of content representations and activities within an integrated STEM lesson, students often struggle to make these connections on their own (Dare et al., 2018 ; Tran & Nathan, 2010 ). Since students seldom make these connections spontaneously (Tran & Nathan, 2010 ), teachers must either help students recognize and identify these connections or explicitly make these connections clear for students. In a study of a high school engineering classroom, Nathan et al. ( 2013 ) discuss productive pedagogical moves to help make these interdisciplinary connections explicit to students. Their suggestions include asking questions, facilitating problem solving, creating models and representations, and explicitly foregrounding disciplinary knowledge to help students to identify the presence of specific content.

Content integration can be achieved through multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, or transdisciplinary approaches (Bybee, 2013 ; Moore & Smith, 2014 ; Vasquez et al., 2013 ). Some researchers argue that one approach is not superior to another (Rennie et al., 2012 ), whereas others define a continuum of increasing integration from disciplinary to transdisciplinary (e.g., Vasquez et al., 2013 ; Wang & Knoblach, 2018 ). Proponents of an interdisciplinary approach argue that this approach is superior because a theme or real-world problem anchors the learning (e.g., Vasquez et al., 2013 ) in contrast to multidisciplinary approaches that “begin and end with the subject-based content and skills [with] students expected to connect the content and skills in different subjects that had been taught in different classrooms” (Wang et al., 2011 , p.2).

While many researchers define multidisciplinary integration as occurring across multiple classrooms (e.g., Vasquez et al., 2013 ), the calls to integrate engineering and mathematical thinking in science classrooms (e.g., NRC, 2012 ) require integration across the disciplines within a science lesson or unit of instruction (Capobianco & Rupp, 2014 ; Moore, Stohlmann, et al., 2014). In a multidisciplinary approach, each STEM discipline would be identifiable within the curriculum and instruction, whereas in an interdisciplinary approach, each discipline would be difficult to distinguish from one another (Lederman & Niess, 1997 ). Given the argument that integrated STEM education can improve students’ learning of science and mathematics concepts (e.g., Berland & Steingut, 2016 ; Fan & Yu, 2017 ; Guzey et al., 2017 ) and the difficulty faced by students in recognizing the way in which different content areas support and complement each other (English, 2016 ; NAE and NRC, 2014 ), the connections between content areas need to be made explicit for students (English, 2016 ; Kelley & Knowles, 2016 ). As stated in the NAE and NRC ( 2014 ) report:

Connecting ideas across disciplines is challenging when students have little or no understanding of the relevant ideas in the individual disciplines. Also, students do not always or naturally use their disciplinary knowledge in integrated contexts. Students will thus need support to elicit the relevant scientific or mathematical ideas in an engineering or technological design context, to connect those ideas productively, and to reorganize their own ideas in ways that come to reflect normative, scientific ideas and practices. (p. 5)

While not discounting transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches to integrated STEM education, multidisciplinary approaches yield the best approach for students to learn and apply disciplinary content and develop an understanding of the ways in which disciplinary content is connected.

Given the positioning of engineering within national and state science standards, mathematics and technology have received little attention in the literature and their inclusion within integrated STEM curriculum is often limited (Roehrig et al., 2021 ) (e.g., Roehrig et al., 2021 )). Thus, it is critical that more explicit attention is given to mathematics and technology in the development of more robust and detailed models of integrated STEM education.

The case of mathematics

Despite a long history of integration between science and mathematics (e.g., Berlin & White, 1995 ; Davison et al., 1995 ; Huntley, 1998 ), the integration of mathematics is particularly difficult within integrated STEM education (Walker, 2017 ; Zhang et al., 2015 ), and studies show only small impacts on students’ mathematical knowledge (e.g., Becker & Park, 2011 ; NAE and NRC, 2014 ; Nugent et al., 2015 ). For example, Huntley ( 1998 ) describes the interdisciplinary approach as having one discipline that is in the foreground with the second discipline in the background simply to provide context. However, most often in science (and more recently in integrated STEM lessons), mathematics is backgrounded as a tool for data measurement and analysis with few or no conceptual learning goals for mathematics (e.g., Baldinger et al., 2021 ; Ring et al., 2017 ; Roehrig et al., 2021 ; Walker, 2017 ). This treatment of mathematics is reinforced by the NGSS through the inclusion of mathematics and computational thinking as one of the eight science and engineering practices (NRC, 2012 ). This practice presents mathematics as a tool that is central to science and engineering (Hoda, Wilkerson, & Fenwick, 2017 ) including “tasks ranging from constructing simulations, to making quantitative predictions, to statistically analyzing data, to recognizing, expressing, and applying quantitative relationships” (Aminger et al., 2021 , p. 190).

While it is difficult to imagine teaching and learning science or engineering without engaging in mathematical practices, the mathematical connections are most often implicit and may not be transparent to students (Roehrig et al., 2021 ). Successful mathematics integration requires that the role of mathematics be made explicit, such as through putting mathematics in the foreground (Silk et al., 2010 ). For example, in a meta-analysis, Hurley ( 2001 ) found the greatest effect sizes for mathematics learning occurred when students learned science and mathematics content in sequence through a multi-disciplinary approach, rather than interdisciplinary approaches. More recently, Baldinger et al. ( 2021 ) argued that science and mathematics learning opportunities need to be strategically positioned and highlighted across a unit. Indeed, as noted previously, conceptual learning of science and mathematics is improved through a multidisciplinary approach that allows mathematics and science concepts to be explicitly and purposefully foregrounded within a unit.

In a rare study of the implementation of mathematical and computational thinking in K-12 science classrooms, Aminger et al. ( 2021 ) found that teachers were able to improve students’ understanding of scientific phenomena only when engaged in high cognitive demand mathematical tasks, such as mathematical modeling. Modeling uses mathematical equations to represent scientific phenomena and communicate scientific ideas (e.g., Bialek & Botstein, 2004 ; Brush, 2015 ; Lazenby & Becker, 2019 ). While students are expected to interpret the mathematical and scientific meaning represented by an equation (e.g., Bialek & Botstein, 2004 ; Sevian & Talanquer, 2014 ), studies at the postsecondary level show that students rely on algorithmic procedures without making connections between the mathematical equation and the scientific phenomenon (e.g., Bing & Redish, 2009 ). Postsecondary researchers advocate for blended sensemaking, where students’ scientific and mathematical knowledge is activated and used to develop understanding of scientific phenomena (Zhao & Schuchardt, 2021 ). When instruction encourages engagement in mathematical modeling through blended sensemaking, students show improved quantitative problem solving (e.g., Becker, Rupp, & Brandriet, 2017 ; Lazenby & Becker, 2019 ; Schuchardt & Schunn, 2016 ).

The case of technology

Technology is rarely explicitly called out within definitions of integrated STEM education (e.g., Ellis et al., 2020 ; Herschbach, 2011 ). Implicit treatments of technology take two primary forms: the integration of educational technology and technology as the production and use of technology within engineering (Ellis et al., 2020 ; Kelley & Knowles, 2016 ). Unquestionably, educational technology plays an increasingly large role in K-12 classrooms and, as is the case for all teachers, science teachers are involved in using digital technology tools to present content and allow students to complete their work, often through one-to-one technology initiatives. Standards guiding the use of technology in K-12 classrooms, such as the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) Standards for Educators, which define the technological skills educators need (ISTE, 2000), are content- and grade-level agnostic (Ellis et al., 2020 ). Most often, these digital technologies are used as replacements to traditional paper and text learning. For example, in science classrooms, digital notebooks have been used instead of paper notebooks (Constantine & Jung, 2019 ). While this allows students to include multimedia such as photos and videos and work collaboratively through web-based tools, these uses of technology are not specific to STEM.

Given the focus on engineering within the NGSS , views of technology within integrated STEM education are often connected to how technology is portrayed within engineering curriculum. In a review of K-12 engineering curricula, technology was primarily represented as the product of engineering (NRC, 2009 ). This representation of technology within integrated STEM education is clearly stated within the NGSS where engineering is defined as “a systematic practice for solving problems, and technology as the result of that practice” (NRC, 2012 , p. 103). Similarly, the Framework states that “technologies result when engineers apply their understanding of the natural world and of human behavior to design ways to satisfy human needs and wants” (NRC, 2012 , p. 12). In essence, under this definition of the “T” in STEM, STEM becomes SEM, resulting in technology being subsumed by engineering.

More productive in defining technology specific to integrated STEM education is the view of the “T” in STEM defined as the tools used by practitioners of science, mathematics, and engineering (Ellis et al., 2020 ; NAE and NRC, 2014 ). To support student engagement in the authentic practices of STEM professionals, students should have opportunities to use STEM-specific tools or technologies (e.g., Bell & Bull, 2008 ; Ellis et al., 2020 ; McCrory, 2008 ). A common example in science classrooms is the use of digital probes to collect and analyze data (e.g., Hechter & Vermette, 2014 ). More recently, with the addition of engineering into science classrooms, new technologies such as computer-assisted design (CAD) software and 3-D printers are being introduced (e.g., Wieselmann et al., 2019 ). Critical to integrated STEM education, however, is that these tools should not be limited to data collection devices; rather, they should encourage deeper student engagement with science content (Bull & Bell, 2008 ). Moving beyond basic data practices, technology practices in STEM education can be elevated to incorporate simulation and modeling practices which have been shown to improve students’ conceptual science understanding (Aminger et al., 2021 ).

Summary of content integration

Given the need for disciplinary knowledge to be activated and applied in integrated STEM lessons, there is a strong argument for a multidisciplinary approach where students have opportunities to both learn the content and connect that content to an authentic problem. Implicit connections are not enough; observations of instruction should yield clear and explicit discussion orchestrated by the teacher to facilitate students’ understanding of the connections across the disciplines. The inter-relationships among the disciplines are complex and require teaching STEM content in deliberate and purposeful ways so that students understand how STEM content is conceptually linked. In the case of mathematics and technology, it is critical that these subjects are not limited to tools in the service of data collection and analysis. When appropriate, curriculum developers and teachers should engage students in higher cognitive demand practices and explicit sensemaking through mathematical and technology-assisted modeling. While the literature related to modeling in physics is more robust (e.g., Hestenes, 2010 ), modeling literature also exists in other scientific disciplines that can be used to guide higher quality mathematics integration (e.g., Lazenby & Becker, 2019 ; Schuchardt & Schunn, 2016 ; Zhao & Schuchardt, 2021 ). Engagement in these data and mathematical practices, as practiced by STEM professionals, is a STEM-specific approach to technology integration.

Integration through STEM practices and twenty-first century skills

Also common across definitions of integrated STEM are references to specific disciplinary practices (e.g., inquiry, engineering design), as well as to shared practices and skills (e.g., critical thinking, creativity) (Moore et al., 2020 ). In addressing real-world problems and engineering design challenges, students should engage directly in authentic STEM practices (Characteristic 5) and twenty-first century skills (Characteristic 6) to develop potential solutions (Fig. 1 ) (e.g., Kelley & Knowles, 2016 ; Moore, Stohlmann, et al., 2014). The nature of the engineering design challenge is critical in promoting the desired learning outcomes and should be structured with multiple possible solution pathways. For example, if the task is too constrained, then the design space becomes limited, and students will not have the opportunity to develop important twenty-first century skills, such as critical thinking and creativity.

STEM practices

Engaging students in STEM practices is a common component of definitions of integrated STEM education (e.g., Kelley & Knowles, 2016 ; Moore et al., 2020 ). These practices are “a representation of what practitioners do as they engage in their work and they are a necessary part of what students must do to learn a subject and understand the nature of the field” (Reynante et al., 2020 , p.3). Engaging students in STEM practices is supported broadly by pragmatism, which emphasizes learning by doing (Asunda, 2014 ), and more specifically by social constructivist learning theories that underpin reforms in STEM education that advocate for students’ active construction of knowledge as opposed to transmission of knowledge (e.g., Guzey, Moore, & Harwell, 2016 ; Riskowski et al., 2009 ).

Central to knowledge construction and the work of STEM professionals are data practices (Duschl et al., 2007 ). Data practices include the creation, collection, manipulation, analysis, and visualization of data (Weintrop et al., 2016 ). Given that engineering design challenges afford multiple solution pathways without a single correct solution (Lachapelle & Cunningham, 2014 ) and “data do not come with inherent structure that leads directly to an answer” (Weintrop et al., 2016 , p. 135), it is important that students are actively engaged in data practices and using data to make decisions as they engage in the engineering design process. Within the Framework (NRC, 2012 ), this is called out as the practice of engaging in argument from evidence , which features the use of evidence and scientific and mathematical knowledge to develop explanations in science and justify design decisions in engineering.

Argumentation is a common practice within both science and engineering fields (Couso & Simarro, 2020 ); however, while scientific argumentation is well-supported within the research literature (e.g., Berland & McNeill, 2010 ), the level to which K-12 students use both evidence and STEM content to justify design decisions is in its infancy (e.g., Mathis et al., 2018 ; Purzer et al., 2015 ; Valtorta & Berland, 2015 ). Argumentation and decision-making require considering the advantages and disadvantages of possible design solutions in light of available evidence and any defined criteria and constraints (Wendell et al., 2017 ).

Siverling et al. ( 2017 ) argue that students’ application of scientific and mathematical content is promoted through the explicit use of evidence-based reasoning within integrated STEM lessons. For example, the classroom activities may require students to justify their thinking about why an initial design solution should be pursued during the planning phase and additionally require students to use evidence and STEM content when evaluating a tested design solution and justifying it to the client (Mathis et al., 2016 ; Mathis et al., 2018 ). This formal evidence-based reasoning explicitly asks students to make claims about their designs and design decisions that are supported by both evidence (from iterative testing) and reasoning (using scientific and mathematical content) (Siverling et al., 2019 ). Students do not spontaneously use science and mathematics content to justify and explain their design choices; rather, students focus on cost and material limitations when engaging in engineering design tasks (e.g., English et al., 2013 ; Guzey & Aranda, 2017 ). Thus, explicit inclusion of evidence-based reasoning in K-12 integrated STEM lessons is necessary to scaffold students in connecting science and mathematics content to the engineering design challenge.

STEM content knowledge is not the only consideration in making design decisions. In evaluating a possible design solution, students are expected to prioritize “criteria and trade-offs that account for a range of constraints, including cost, safety, reliability, and aesthetics as well as possible social, cultural, and environmental impacts” (NGSS standard HS-ETS1–3). It is important that the social and cultural aspects of proposed solutions are not ignored, as we truly intend to develop a STEM literate citizenry and develop a future workforce who think more deeply about their work beyond the traditional technocratic focus (Gunckel & Tolbert, 2018 ; Roehrig et al., 2020 ; Zeidler, 2016 ).

Students should have agency in design decisions as they engage in the engineering design process (e.g., Berland & Steingut, 2016 ; Johnson et al., 2016 ; Saito et al., 2015 ). Engineering design challenges should be constructed with multiple solution pathways, allowing students to determine their own solution trajectories and opportunities to build knowledge as possible design solutions develop from students’ questions, ideas, and explorations. Miller et al. ( 2018 ) argue that we must also position students as epistemic agents as opposed to receivers of STEM content, without which the call from the Framework (NRC, 2012 ) for students to engage in STEM practices will not be realized. Miller et al. ( 2018 ) define epistemic agency as “students being positioned with, perceiving, and acting on, opportunities to shape the knowledge building work in their classroom community” (p. 1058). Specifically, students should have opportunities to: (a) build on personal and cultural knowledge as a resource for learning, (b) build knowledge, (c) build a knowledge product that is personally useful, and (d) change structures that constrain and support action. When afforded epistemic agency, students can propose solutions to personally meaningful problems, rather than simply learning the canonical facts of the discipline (Schwarz et al., 2017) and mimicking the proscribed practices. Engaging students in engineering design challenges contextualizes learning around meaningful and authentic problems, providing a sense of agency as students can see the content learning goals as useful and relevant to developing solutions to the problem (e.g., Schwarz et al., 2017). Researchers argue that real-world problems should position students as not only knowledge builders, but also change agents in their community, further promoting epistemic agency and the development of STEM identity (Billington et al., 2013 ; Leammukda & Roehrig, 2020 ; Miller et al., 2018 ).

• Twenty-first century skills

In addition to specific STEM practices, integrated STEM instruction should support the development of twenty-first century skills (e.g., Moore, Glancy, et al., 2014; Sias et al., 2017 ). Broadly, twenty-first century skills include knowledge construction, real-world problem solving, skilled communication, collaboration, use of information and communication technology for learning, creativity, and collaboration (Partnership for twenty-first Century Learning, 2016 ); these are the skills “necessary for a person to adapt and thrive in an ever-changing world” (Stehle & Peters-Burton, 2019 , p.2). A recent trend has been to include the arts, as proponents of STEAM education argue that the integration of the arts will enhance students’ critical thinking and problem-solving skills and cultivate their creativity (Trevallion & Trevallion, 2020 ). However, these arguments are already central to agreed-upon goals of integrated STEM education (NAE and NRC, 2014 ; Moore, Glancy, et al., 2014), and creativity is pivotal within the STEM disciplines without the insertion of the arts. Integrated STEM education provides a rich environment for the development of critical thinking, collaboration, creativity, and communication (Stehle & Peters-Burton, 2019 ).

The ill-defined nature of real-world problems and engineering design challenges requires that students engage in critical thinking, drawing on their STEM content knowledge and lived experiences to propose possible design solutions. Engaging in the engineering design process inherently incorporates creativity and critical thinking as there is no single correct solution, thus promoting the potential of transformative and innovative design solutions (Stretch & Roehrig, 2021 ; Petroski, 2016 ; Simpson et al., 2018 ). As students iteratively test and improve their design solutions, they will experience design failure. As previously noted, failure should be expected if innovation is to occur, and the ability to learn from failure can lead to stronger designs and innovation through the application of creativity and critical thinking (Henry et al., 2021 ; Simpson et al., 2018 ).

Given the highly interdisciplinary and integrative nature of engineering, students should also be provided opportunities to work together in teams to enhance their collaboration skills (Riel et al., 2012; Rinke et al., 2016 ; Thibaut et al., 2018 ), which are necessary to develop negotiated design solutions that synthesize across differing understandings of the same problem space (Wendell et al., 2017 ). Indeed, in the K-12 classroom, small group activities account for approximately half of instructional time in science classrooms with the expectation that small groups co-construct knowledge of STEM content and design solutions to real-world problems (Wieselmann et al., 2020 ; Wendell et al., 2017 ). Sharunova et al. ( 2020 ) used Bloom’s taxonomy (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2005 ) to define a continuum of cognitive engagement that groups engage in during small group engineering design activities. Integrated STEM learning environments involve “new levels of communication, shared vision, collective intelligence, and direct coherent action by students” (Asunda, 2014 , p. 8). Further, researchers call for integrated STEM activities wherein students are expected to collectively apply what they have learned to develop possible design solutions and improve these designs through iterative analysis and evaluation (Asunda et al., 2015; Dolog et al., 2016 ; Sharunova et al., 2020 ).

Promoting STEM careers

The final characteristic, promoting STEM careers (Characteristic 7), is the least common feature of integrated STEM within the literature. As such, it stands somewhat separate from the other characteristics of the integrated STEM framework but undergirds the policy motivation for including integrated STEM education in K-12 classrooms. With the goal of promoting future participation in STEM careers in mind, integrated STEM education should expose students to details about STEM careers (Jahn & Myers, 2014 ; Luo et al., 2021 ). This should include both allowing students to engage in the authentic work of STEM professionals (Kitchen et al., 2018 ; Ryu et al., 2018 ) and critically promoting student development of STEM identities. A growing body of research has shown that STEM interest, attitude, and identity serve as predictors of sustained pursuit in the STEM disciplines rather than academic performance in STEM coursework (Avraamidou, 2020 ; Rodriguez et al., 2017 ; Tai et al., 2006 ). Furthermore, identity research has shown that students who show interest and enjoyment in STEM do not necessarily see themselves pursuing a future STEM career (Carlone et al., 2011 ); this is especially true for students from historically underrepresented groups of people who are less likely to show interest in and identify with the STEM domains (Rodriguez et al., 2017 ). Further, STEM interests and career aspirations are largely developed by eighth grade (Tai et al., 2006 ), suggesting a need to introduce students to STEM careers early in their education. In addition to introducing students to STEM careers, research shows that a focus on connections to personal experience and knowledge can help shape students’ identity within STEM (Ryu et al., 2018 ; Carlone et al., 2014 ; Sias et al., 2017 ).

Although supporting students in developing solutions to real-world problems through engaging in STEM practices and twenty-first century skills may also help to develop positive STEM identities and interest in STEM, these activities do not require any explicit connection to STEM careers. Research exploring the development of students’ understanding of engineering is limited and debate remains about whether implicit modeling of STEM professions by engaging students in hands-on STEM activities leads to durable and robust understandings about the work of engineers and other STEM professionals (e.g., Svihla et al., 2017 ). However, explicit discussion of STEM professions can help students to understand specific career opportunities and align these professions with their interests (Kitchen et al., 2018 ; Ryu et al., 2018 ).

Implications and use of the framework

Each of the seven critical characteristics of integrated STEM education (Table 1 ) has important implications for teachers in their planning and implementation of integrated STEM if integrated STEM in K-12 classrooms is going to be successful in promoting STEM literacy and increasing diversity in the STEM fields. Careful consideration is critical in selecting the context for an integrated STEM lesson, as research shows differences in motivation to engage in STEM for students of color and women who are under-represented in STEM as compared to White males (e.g., Billington et al., 2013 ; Diekman et al., 2010 ; Leammukda & Roehrig, 2020 ). While some science topics lend themselves to simple engineering design activities, such as designing a mousetrap car to travel as far as possible, these activities are not contextualized in a real-world problem. In contrast, students could be asked to design habitats to protect equatorial penguins impacted by climate change, a problem that requires knowledge and application of the scientific concepts of heat transfer (Sheerer & Schnittka, 2012). This engineering design challenge is contextualized by a real-world problem created through human impact on the environment and could easily be adapted to include considerations of human-caused environmental issues and local policies and traditions in developing design solutions. By contextualizing an engineering design challenge in a real-world problem, we ask students not only to understand the technical criteria and constraints of a problem but also to consider the problem within the context of a potentially difficult moral and ethical dilemma. Teachers should seize such opportunities to guide students in sense-making, understanding the authenticity of the context, and approach these problems with a critical perspective. Attention to selecting real-world problems and related engineering design challenges that promote positive STEM identities for students that are under-represented in STEM not only addresses reported workforce needs but brings new perspectives and approaches to how STEM content and practices are applied in the real-world.

Unfortunately, even with a real-world context, engineering design tasks can degenerate into tinkering and iterative improvement of designs through random trial and error (McComas & Burgin, 2020 ; Moore, Glancy, et al., 2014; Roehrig et al., 2021 ) if these integrated STEM lessons are poorly planned. As well as providing a motivating context designed to promote positive STEM identities, the real-world problem and engineering design challenge must provide a context for learning specified STEM content. This could involve the reactivation of prior knowledge or the explicit teaching of STEM content within a unit of instruction. We suggest that a pedagogical approach closer to multidisciplinary integration might better afford students’ recognition of the STEM content inherent within an integrated STEM unit. In other words, quality integrated STEM units (e.g., Bhattacharya et al., 2015 ; Karahan et al., 2014 ; Moore, Guzey, et al., 2014; Moore et al., 2015 ) should include lessons designed to explicitly teach relevant STEM content. Given that students rarely make these connections spontaneously (Tran & Nathan, 2010 ), it is critical that teachers use specific pedagogical approaches, such as evidence-based reasoning (Mathis et al., 2016 ; Mathis et al., 2018 ), to help make these connections explicit. Strong teacher facilitation and questioning is needed to help students recognize the connections across the disciplines and use these connections to develop stronger design solutions through iterative and reflective processes.

Our integrated STEM framework helps to not only provide more specific guidance to educators, but also support for integrated STEM research. Despite the push for integrated STEM in K-12 classrooms, the development of observation protocols that assess STEM-integrated teaching has been slow. Until valid protocols are developed, STEM education researchers continue to rely on existing instruments that predate current STEM education initiatives, such as the Reformed Teaching Observation Protocol (Sawada et al., 2002 ). The lack of a detailed integrated STEM framework thus far has prevented the field from systematically collecting data in classrooms to understand the nature and quality of integrated STEM instruction; this delays research related to the impact on student outcomes, including academic achievement and affect. This framework provides detailed guidance on teacher practices one would expect to observe within an integrated STEM lesson. With this framework, the groundwork is now set for researchers to explore the impact of specific aspects of integrated STEM or the overall quality of integrated STEM instruction on student outcomes as this framework could guide the development of observational protocols for integrated STEM which are currently lacking in the field (e.g., Dare et al., 2021 ).

Conclusions

Our framework addresses a critical need in the field to move beyond simple definitions of integrated STEM to detailed descriptions that operationalize central constructs such as the nature of integration itself. Based on intentions of STEM policy documents and the extant literature, we proposed an integrated STEM framework that includes seven key characteristics of integrated STEM: (a) focus on real-world problems, (b) centrality of engineering, (c) context integration, (d) content integration, (e) STEM practices, (f) twenty-first century skills, and (g) informing students about STEM careers. While these key characteristics include commonly agreed upon components of integrated STEM (e.g., Johnson et al., 2016 ; Kelly & Knowles, 2016; Moore, Stohlmann, et al., 2014), our framework conceptualizes each of the key characteristics in detail, operationalizing integrated STEM for educators, curriculum developers, and researchers. This is critical as statements such as “an effort to combine some or all of the four disciplines of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics into one class, unit, or lesson that is based on connections between the subjects and real-world problems” (Moore, Stohlmann, et al., 2014, p. 38) do not provide enough information about critical issues such as how to integrate any subset of the STEM disciplines or what real-world problems would be appropriate to drive learning in STEM for all students.

Most importantly, our framework directly attends to issues of diversity and equity as current definitions and implementation of integrated STEM are content-focused and consider only the technical aspects of engaging in solving real-world problems and/or engineering design challenges. Our framework specifically addresses issues raised by critics of integrated STEM (e.g., Gunckel & Tolbert, 2018 ; Roehrig et al., 2020 ; Zeidler, 2016 ) to give full consideration to the socio-historical-political context in which the engineering design challenge resides and use this knowledge in making design decisions. The framework also attends to the development of STEM identities for all students through understanding how the nature of the real-world problem and/or engineering design challenge can constrain or afford interest and engagement in STEM for girls and students of color (e.g., Billington et al., 2013 ; Diekman et al., 2010 ; Leammukda & Roehrig, 2020 ). Also important to promoting positive STEM identities for all students is elevating students’ lived experiences and cultural knowledge as valid forms of knowledge to be drawn on as they engage in developing solutions to real-world problems.

Availability of data and materials

Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analyzed during the current study.

Abbreviations

National Academy of Engineering

National Academy of Science

Next Generation Science Standards

National Research Council

President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology

Socio-scientific Issues

Science-Technology-Engineering-Mathematics

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Roehrig, G.H., Dare, E.A., Ellis, J.A. et al. Beyond the basics: a detailed conceptual framework of integrated STEM. Discip Interdscip Sci Educ Res 3 , 11 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1186/s43031-021-00041-y

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Integrated Biology and Undergraduate Science Education: A New Biology Education for the Twenty-First Century?

• Jay B. Labov
• Ann H. Reid
• Keith R. Yamamoto

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Board on Life Sciences, National Research Council, Washington, DC 20001; and

Department of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94143

INTRODUCTION

Given the radical changes in the nature of the science of biology and what we have learned about effective ways to teach, this is an opportune time to address the biology we teach so that it better represents the biology we do.

Release of draft curriculum frameworks in biology for the College Board's multiyear restructuring of advanced placement courses in science for high school students (see http://apcentral.collegeboard.com/apc/public/repository/draft_revised_ap_biology_curriculum.pdf ). This restructuring closely follows the recommendations of a report from the NRC (2002) and calls for teaching fewer concepts in greater depth. Restructuring also requires developing and implementing means to measure students' level of conceptual understanding ( Mervis, 2009a ; Wood, 2009 ).

Publication of Scientific Foundations for Future Physicians , a joint report from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) and the Association of American Medical Colleges, which calls for a change in undergraduate science education away from a system based on courses to one based on “competencies.” According to the committee, “A competency-based approach will give both learners and educators more flexibility in the premedical curriculum and allow the development of more interdisciplinary and integrative courses that maintain scientific rigor, while providing a broad education.” (Executive Summary, p. 1) 1

Convening of “Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education,” a summit held in Washington, DC, in July 2009 that was organized by the American Association for the Advancement of Science with support from the NSF. This summit brought together >500 people to consider future pathways for undergraduate education in the life sciences ( Mervis, 2009b ; Woodin et al. , 2009 ). 2 A report from the summit is planned for release in 2010.

Publication in September 2009 of A New Biology for the Twenty-First Century by a committee under the aegis of the NRC's Board on Life Sciences ( NRC, 2009 ; a podcast about the report is available at http://dels.nas.edu/dels/viewreport.cgi?id=5953 ). The report proposes a bold new integrated research agenda, with important implications for the future of undergraduate and K–12 science education.

Convening in November 2009 of an interdisciplinary forum on synthetic biology as part of the annual National Academies Keck Futures Initiative. 3 Consistent with calls to find ways to develop science curricula in conjunction with cutting-edge scientific discoveries ( Jurkowski et al. , 2007 ), the forum actively considered issues of education and communication about synthetic biology in conjunction with discussions of scientific, legal, and ethical aspects. A report from this event will be published by the National Academies in 2010.

A NEW BIOLOGY FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY: OVERVIEW AND IMPLICATIONS FOR BIOLOGICAL RESEARCH

Biological research is in the midst of a revolutionary change due to the integration of powerful technologies along with new concepts and methods derived from inclusion of physical sciences, mathematics, computational sciences, and engineering. As never before, advances in biological sciences hold tremendous promise for surmounting many of the major challenges confronting the United States and the world. Historically, major advances in science have provided solutions to economic and social challenges. At the same time, those challenges have inspired science to focus its attention on critical needs. Scientific efforts based on meeting societal needs have laid the foundation for countless new products, industries, even entire economic sectors that were unimagined when the work began …

… the essence of the New Biology is integration–reintegration of the many subdisciplines of biology, and the integration into biology of physicists, chemists, computer scientists, engineers, and mathematicians to create a research community with the capacity to tackle a broad range of scientific and societal problems. NRC (2009) , p. viii

… the New Biology represents an additional, complementary approach to biological research. Purposefully organized around problem-solving, this approach marshals the basic research to advance fundamental understanding, brings together researchers with different expertise, develops the technologies required for the task and coordinates efforts to ensure that gaps are filled, problems solved, and resources brought to bear at the right time.

The committee 4 that authored A New Biology ( NRC, 2009 ; Figure 1 ) was asked by the National Institutes of Health, NSF, and the U.S. Department of Energy to undertake an appraisal of areas in which the life sciences are poised to make major advances and of how these advances could contribute to practical applications and improved environmental stewardship, human health, and quality of life. It also was asked to examine current trends toward integration and synthesis within the life sciences, the increasingly important role of interdisciplinary teams, and the resultant implications for funding strategies, decision making, infrastructure, and education in the life sciences.

Figure 1. Report cover for A New Biology for the 21st Century .

health, with an emphasis on developing the capacity to understand individual health at a level that allows prevention, diagnosis, and treatment to be based on each individual's unique genetic and environmental characteristics rather than statistical probability;

environment, with an emphasis on developing the means to monitor, diagnose, and restore ecosystem function and biodiversity in the face of rapid environmental change;

energy, with an emphasis on expanding sustainable alternatives to fossil fuels; and

food, with an emphasis on developing the capability to adapt any crop plant to sustainable growth under any set of growing conditions. The new biology, if successful, would make it possible to more quickly and predictably breed food plants suitable for cultivation where they are most needed.

Integration of Scientific Information, Theory, Technologies, and Thinking about Complex Problems. As noted in Figure 2 , biology is essential, but in its traditional form is insufficient to confront the key problems that must be addressed in the future. The physical sciences, mathematics, engineering, and information sciences all must be integrated with the traditional discipline to form the New Biology. Importantly, the committee emphasized that science education must be an integral input to this interdisciplinary approach to capacious problems. Science education itself also is envisioned as advancing as a result of the feedback loops that emerge from this integrated approach.

Deeper Understanding of Biological Systems. A deeper understanding of biological systems emerges from the multifaceted thinking of experts from a variety of disciplines. This deeper understanding will advance biology from an era of observation and mechanism to one of deciphering design principles for biological processes, making them accessible to manipulation and eventually predictable.

Biologically Based Solutions to Societal Problems. For societal problems that may be intractable by other approaches, the deeper understanding that results from the integrated and interdisciplinary collaborations driving the New Biology will allow more rapid progress on complex and interrelated challenges such as those in the areas of health, environment, energy, and food. In this context, the societal issues could be considered as interactive drivers on a very large scale, spurring the development of enabling technologies and new discovery.

Feedback and Benefits to Contributing Disciplines and to Education. The collective, synergistic knowledge and thinking that emerge from integrated approaches to biological research and their applications to societal challenges will, in turn, inform and stimulate fundamental research across the scientific spectrum and in science education. If education tracks the projected trajectory of research that is encompassed by the New Biology, individual disciplines are also likely to converge around the idea of integrated and interconnected science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education.

Figure 2. The inputs to and outcomes of a new integrated approach to biological research in the twenty-first century ( NRC, 2009 , p. 18).

A NEW BIOLOGY FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY: OVERVIEW AND IMPLICATIONS FOR BIOLOGICAL EDUCATION

The committee observed that the New Biology presents unprecedented opportunities to draw attention to the excitement of biology but will require new ways of thinking about how to attract, educate, and retain undergraduates as detailed below.

The New Biology Initiative Provides an Opportunity to Attract Students to Science Who Want to Solve Real-World Problems

This approach may be especially attractive to those students who would otherwise become disenfranchised from science through traditional approaches to teaching and learning. Emerging research is demonstrating that allowing students to make connections between the science they study and the problems that they, their families, and their communities face can encourage greater interest in science as well as the motivation to learn scientific concepts more deeply ( NRC, 2000b ; Hulleman and Harackiewicz, 2009 ).

The New Biologist Is Not a Scientist Who Knows a Little about All Disciplines, but One with Deep Knowledge in One Discipline and a “Working Fluency” in Several

Although this vision of scientists who participate in the New Biology may seem to support the current structure of science majors, it actually would require very different thinking about how scientists are educated. Solving complex, interdisciplinary problems will require that students go far beyond their life science majors both in understanding what connections exist across disciplines and how to make those connections. Requiring separate courses in other natural and behavioral sciences with no attempt to help students make specific connections among them will probably be insufficient. Preparing future life scientists without offering them exposure to and experience with engineering, design, computer science, and an appreciation of the broader connections between science and technology ( NRC, 1998 , 2003 ; National Academy of Engineering, 2002 , 2007 , 2009 ) will not constitute adequate preparation. And mere exposure (by requiring students to take courses in these other areas) most likely will not prepare them to make and understand the connections among these disciplines; specific efforts must be made to help students learn these skills ( NRC, 2000b ).

Highly Developed Quantitative Skills Will Be Increasingly Important

demonstrate quantitative numeracy and facility with the language of mathematics,

interpret data sets and communicate those interpretations using visual and other appropriate tools,

make statistical inferences from data sets,

extract relevant information from large data sets,

make inferences about natural phenomena using mathematical models,

apply algorithmic approaches and principles of logic (including the distinction between cause/effect and association) to problem-solving,

quantify and interpret changes in dynamical systems (pp. 22–24).

Development and Implementation of Genuinely Interdisciplinary Undergraduate Courses and Curricula Will Both Prepare Students for Careers as New Biology Researchers and Educate a New Generation of Science Teachers Who Will Be Well Versed in New Biology Approaches

The preparation of future science teachers must become a joint responsibility between faculties in science departments and schools of education ( NRC, 1998 , 2000a , 2003a ). Templates and syllabi for interdisciplinary undergraduate courses that would benefit teachers of science (especially those in the elementary and middle grades) have been published. 8 But science, mathematics, and engineering faculty and academic leaders in higher education must recognize their roles in preparing future teachers as well as future researchers. Consideration must be given to what undergraduates will need to learn to teach science in the way envisioned in A New Biology , both with respect to the necessary scientific knowledge base and to familiarity with scientifically based pedagogical techniques that are most effective in teaching science.

Similar attention needs to be paid to preparing graduate students to become the next generation of faculty who will, in turn, assume some of the responsibility for K–12 teacher preparation. Are graduate students being encouraged to pursue quality teaching experiences? Are they being provided with training in new approaches to teaching and learning and exposure to the research literature about human learning and cognition as part of that preparation?

Cellular and Molecular Biology: Cancer

Life Science in Context: SubSaharan Africa & HIV/AIDS

The Science of Sleep

Addiction: Biology, Psychology, and Society

Environment and Disease

Nutrition & Wellness and the Iowa Environment

Human Genetics

Tuberculosis

Biomedical Issues of HIV/AIDS

Mysteries of Migration

In 2005–2006, Harvard University launched two semester-long introductory courses that provide an interdisciplinary introduction to biology and chemistry. The first course synthesizes essential topics in chemistry, molecular biology, and cell biology, and the second course synthesizes essential topics in genetics, genomics, probability, and evolutionary biology. Scientific facts and concepts are introduced in the context of exciting and interdisciplinary questions, such as understanding the possibility of synthetic life, the biology and treatment of AIDS and cancer, human population genetics, and malaria. Through interdisciplinary teaching, students' grasp of fundamental concepts is reinforced as they encounter the same principles in multiple situations. Each course is taught by a small team of faculty from multiple departments. Members of each teaching team attend all lectures and participate for the entire term. The preparation for and teaching effort in each course offering is integrated. Teaching assistants are also drawn from different departments and work in small interdepartmental teams.

Development of these courses required institutional support. The president, dean of the faculty, and the chair of the life sciences council all provided funds to support a one-year curriculum development effort, lab renovations, lower teaching fellow–student ratios, equipment, and development of teaching materials. One of the founding faculty member's HHMI undergraduate education award contributed to developing specific sets of teaching materials.

Success depended on finding faculty members with personal commitments to the principles of the courses and willingness to work as a team to build the new courses from scratch. This effort was rewarded as individual departments agreed to count these interdepartmental and interdisciplinary courses toward their respective departmental teaching expectations.

Since the courses were implemented, undergraduate enrollment in introductory life sciences courses is up >30% and the number of life sciences majors has risen 18%. NRC (2009) p. 80

The life sciences and science education communities have made significant advances in articulating how undergraduate biology education can be made accessible to more students with varying education needs and learning styles. The beginnings of real consensus about the future course for life sciences education is emerging. As the year 2010 opens, the ideas for “transforming undergraduate education for future research biologists” that were envisioned in the Bio 2010 report are being considered more seriously and implemented more widely than many had imagined when the report was published in 2003 (e.g., Pfund et al. , 2009 ). The New Biology report emphasized the ongoing and lasting relevance of Bio 2010 but also noted the incomplete implementation of its recommendations to date. Much work remains.

The findings and recommendations that emerged in 2009 again offer a collective and coherent vision for improving undergraduate science education in general, and biology education specifically. As a community, we must work toward implementation of the visions articulated in A New Biology and other recent initiatives, scaled to encompass all areas of biology and all undergraduates who enroll in biology courses and programs.

1 A separate Executive Summary for this report is available at www.hhmi.org/grants/pdf/08-209_exec_summary.pdf .

2 Additional information is available at www.visionandchange.org .

3 Additional information is available at www.keckfutures.org/conferences/synthetic-biology.html .

4 A list of committee members and their institutional affiliations is available at http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=12764&page=R5 .

5 This editorial is part of a special issue of Science on “Mathematics in Biology.” All relevant papers in this issue are available through links at www.sciencemag.org/sciext/mathbio .

6 According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, “The Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) is a standardized, multiple-choice examination designed to assess the examinee's problem solving, critical thinking, writing skills, and knowledge of science concepts and principles prerequisite to the study of medicine. Scores are reported in Verbal Reasoning, Physical Sciences, Writing Sample, and Biological Sciences. Medical colleges consider MCAT exam scores as part of their admission process.” See www.aamc.org/students/mcat/about/start.htm .

7 For a listing of entry requirements in mathematics for medical schools in the United States, see www.cse.emory.edu/sciencenet/additional_math_reqs.pdf .

8 For example, model courses have been developed with support from the NSF as part of the Science Education for New Civic Engagements and Responsibilities (SENCER); see www.sencer.net/Resources/models.cfm ) and the Mathematics/Science Partnerships (see http://mspnet.org ) initiatives.

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Avila BKB; National Research Council (US) Planning Group for the Workshop on Integrating Education in Biocomplexity Research. Integrating Research and Education: Biocomplexity Investigators Explore the Possibilities: Summary of a Workshop. Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 2003.

Integrating Research and Education: Biocomplexity Investigators Explore the Possibilities: Summary of a Workshop.

• Hardcopy Version at National Academies Press

Introduction

P rincipal investigators of natural science research projects are accustomed to designing fresh approaches to research problems, but most face a formidable challenge when attempting to integrate education into their research. Many find that they are not sufficiently cognizant of modern educational methods to appropriately inform either the general student population or the general public about their science. Likewise, many educators strive to communicate the excitement and importance of science to students and the public, but do not always have access to information on the latest research advances.

• THE WORKSHOP

The National Science Foundation (NSF) proposed a National Research Council workshop as a way to help researchers to incorporate effective educational components into their research proposals. The goals were to help principal investigators to design educational endeavors that would broaden the impact of science and to foster collaboration and communication among researchers and educators. The invitees were in three categories: members of teams that had already received large grants for biocomplexity research projects, those who had received “incubation grants” that would enable them to develop full research proposals in the future, and science educators invited to help lead discussions.

In designing the workshop, the planning group wanted to emphasize the dynamics of combining education and research: helping students to acquire scientific habits of mind, translating discoveries into instructional resources, brokering collaborations, and attracting larger numbers and more diverse populations of students to continue studying the sciences. Thus, the group's intentions when designing the workshop were to provide the attendees with an initial community-building atmosphere and to provide material for a summary that could serve as a useful guide for both educators and scientists in any field. The planning group set out to inform the workshop participants about the many methods that can be used to meet educational goals and about how to design education projects compatible with their research and expertise.

The workshop included case-study discussions in small groups and larger group activities accompanied by discussion. The format was chosen as a way to demonstrate and model effective ways to communicate information and trigger learning. For example, at the beginning of the workshop Lou Gross encouraged participants to interact in small groups by leading them in an activity called the “polya-urn experiment,” which he used as an example of a simple manipulative experiment that can generate complex, nonintuitive results. Dr. Gross has used this experiment in groups from elementary school to graduate school, with learning objectives differing with level of experience. (See box .)

Polya-Urn Experiment. The participants were broken into groups of three to four individuals, and each group carried out experiments by drawing beads of two different colors from an urn. Starting with two beads in each urn, one person of each group drew (more...)

Diane Ebert-May later engaged the audience in a survey that used small Post-it notes to build bar graphs of participant responses to questions. Throughout the workshop audience members were encouraged to gather in small groups to discuss their reactions to presentations. All of these approaches served to model a variety of educational activities available beyond the formal lecture.

The scientific theme of the workshop was biocomplexity. NSF defines biocomplexity as referring to “the dynamic web of often surprising interrelationships that arise when components of the global ecosystem—biological, physical, chemical, and the human dimension—interact. Investigations of Biocomplexity in the Environment are intended to provide a more complete understanding of natural processes, of human behaviors and decisions in the natural world, and of ways to use new technology effectively to observe the environment and sustain the diversity of life on Earth” ( http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2001/nsf0134/nsf0134.htm ). Rita Colwell, director of NSF, further explained, “Biocomplexity is understanding how the components of a global system interact with the biological, physical, chemical, and human dimension, all taken together to gain an understanding of the complexity of the system and to be able to derive fundamental principles from it. I personally think we'll be able to have a scientific understanding of sustainability even perhaps a series of formulae or equations, developed by mathematicians to explain and define sustainability. We'll be able to develop a predictive capacity for actions taken with respect to the environment to predict specific outcomes. We can't do this yet well, we can predict, but it's not precise and quantitative. After investing in biocomplexity research, we'll be able to make predictions concerning environmental phenomena as a consequence of human actions taken.” 1

The speakers and other participants share an interest in studying connections within the global ecosystem. They do not all interpret biocomplexity in the same way, but they generally agree that the study of biocomplexity can enhance our understanding of our world. Research findings in biocomplexity are appropriate for conveying science to students and the general public because they often involve issues in the public sphere. The topic was chosen as a model for the workshop in the hope that it will be helpful to researchers in other fields striving toward the goals suggested in Criterion 2.

• PRODUCTS OF THE WORKSHOP

The products of the workshop are this summary and a Web site ( http://dlesecommunity.carleton.edu/biocomplexity/ ) that contains links to currently funded biocomplexity projects, to Web resources that support biocomplexity research, and to tips on partnering, assessment, and dissemination. The site also has spaces for discussion groups and for posting available resources.

This summary is written for both principal investigators (who are commonly also educators) and educators (who many times do research) to give them a sense of important issues to consider in designing scientific education and outreach projects. The workshop addressed, and this summary presents, a wide array of ideas for investigators and educators who are considering how to respond to the challenges of Criterion 2. The ideas presented here are certainly not exhaustive of all possibilities for integrating research and education, but they should provide readers with a foundation for approaching the design and implementation of education components of research projects.

Many attendees at the Workshop on Integrating Education in Biocomplexity Research supported the idea of collaborating with others who have complementary expertise to create and run education and outreach projects. The idea behind such partnerships is that education would benefit in the same way that interdisciplinary scientific studies benefit from research collaboration. The goal of the partnerships would be a combination of the talents of principal investigators and educators to communicate the results of research more effectively to varied audiences (schoolchildren, museum visitors, science journalists [and their readers], policy-makers, and so on).

An Interview with Rita Colwell, Scientist 14(19):0, Oct. 2, 2000 ( http://www.the-scientist.com/yr2000/oct/emmett_p0_001002.html )

• Cite this Page Avila BKB; National Research Council (US) Planning Group for the Workshop on Integrating Education in Biocomplexity Research. Integrating Research and Education: Biocomplexity Investigators Explore the Possibilities: Summary of a Workshop. Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 2003. Introduction.
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I wrote a play for children about integrating the arts into STEM fields − here's what I learned about encouraging creative, interdisciplinary thinking

O ften, science and art are described as starkly different things. That narrative can start early on, with kids encouraged to pursue a STEM – short for science, technology, engineering and math – education that may or may not include an arts education.

As a professor of acting , I’d never thought much about the STEM fields until I received a fellowship to integrate the arts into STEM educational models. I used the opportunity to write and direct a play for elementary schoolers that showed how the arts can improve upon and extend work in STEM fields when properly integrated – but it wasn’t an easy process.

STEM or STEAM?

Whether STEM should be augmented to STEAM – science, technology, engineering, arts and math – with the addition of the arts remains something of a debate .

The origins of STEM education can be traced to as early as the Morrill Act of 1862, which promoted agricultural science and later engineering at land grant universities. In 2001, the National Science Foundation pushed a focus on STEM education in order to make the U.S. more competitive globally .

A Biden-Harris initiative launched in December 2022 called You Belong in STEM offers support of more than US$120 billion for K-12 STEM education until the year 2025. But, starting in 2012, the United States Research Council has explored the idea of a STEAM education .

Researchers have found that when integrated into a STEM education, the arts make space for curiosity and innovation . So why the lack of agreement and consistency around whether it should be STEM or STEAM?

The bias toward emphasizing a STEM education could be driven by the higher future salaries of STEM majors or the significant funding that is connected more to STEM-based research and grants than to the arts. A STEAM education takes more time and is more complex than a traditional STEM educational model.

Or it could simply be that many academics in STEM fields lack the incentive for interdisciplinary work that brings in the arts, and vice versa. In fact, that was exactly the position I was in as an arts-based researcher asked to create something about STEM disciplines that I knew very little about.

Putting on the play

It took me several tries and lots of research to get the script of my STEAM-centered play to its current form.

At first, I made basic discoveries. I learned that there is a debate about whether the arts should be included in a STEM education. I learned that “ soft sciences” like psychology are not included in many STEM educational models. I lacked a background in most of the disciplines included in STEM. And I struggled to find a project that inspired me.

But eventually I began work on five one-act plays, called “The STEAM Plays: Using the Arts to Talk about STEM.” Each focused on a category of STEAM education. I wrote the first draft of the show with a chip on my shoulder, trying to prove that the arts did indeed belong in STEM education.

The tone was defensive and provocative – and not entirely appropriate for the elementary age range I was focused on.

The new, revised version that toured Michigan elementary schools in the Fall of 2023 contains 20 bite-sized comedic scenes and songs that dramatize how the arts are integral to many STEM fields. These include how engineering skills go into designing a celebrity’s evening gown, how bakers need to know some basic chemistry, and how the mathematical algorithms of TikTok find new videos for each user.

In each of the scenes, students can see how artistic imagination and creative thinking expand STEM education.

Beyond the stage

These themes emerge from a wider scholarly understanding that STEM isn’t done in a creativity vacuum, and stimulating students’ artistic thinking will help them both in the science classroom and the art studio.

One plot point of the show is about an evil genius who views the arts as less important trying to keep the arts out of STEM. He swaps the bodies of a scientist and an actor, as well as an engineer and a creative writer. In each body swap, the STEM professional and the artist recognize how similar their work is. In the final scene, the evil genius tries to switch the bodies of Pythagoras and Taylor Swift, only to realize that music is all about math.

This article is part of Art & Science Collide , a series examining the intersections between art and science.

You may be interested in:

Literature inspired my medical career: Why the humanities are needed in health care

Art and science entwined: This course explores the long, interrelated history of two ways of seeing the world

Art illuminates the beauty of science – and could inspire the next generation of scientists young and old

Many teachers have provided rave reviews. “The plays did an excellent job of highlighting the importance and value of arts in our educational system,” one noted. “Students walked away enjoying and having a deeper understanding of how all of the different aspects of STEAM were able to work together collaboratively.

A STEAM education in which students learn soft skills like empathy, collaboration, emotional intelligence and creativity through the arts helps prepare students for the job market. And these discussions aren’t confined only to K-12 education – many research grants encourage interdisciplinary work .

My understanding of the STEM and STEAM debate and my experience writing, producing and watching how people respond to my show have helped me understand how the arts are necessary to every student’s education. I learned that without artistic imagination, STEM students’ big-picture thinking skills can get stifled.

It only took writing a play for children for me to get it myself.

This article is republished from The Conversation , >, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and analysis to help you make sense of our complex world.

• Natalie Portman says method acting is a ‘luxury women can’t afford’ – but my research shows how it can empower them
• New approach to teaching computer science could broaden the subject’s appeal

Rob Roznowski received funding from Michigan State University from two places. As part of the STEAMpower Fellowship https://grad.msu.edu/news/steampower-facultystaff-fellows $10,000 and the Humanities And Arts Grant Proposal System. https://research.msu.edu/humanities-and-arts-research-program The first fellowship covered the writing and research. The HARPwas awarded to tour and design the play. $7000

Integrated Science

New Approaches to Education A Virtual Roundtable Discussion

• © 2009
• Michael E. Brint 0 ,
• David J. Marcey 1 ,
• Michael C. Shaw 2

Uyeno-Tseng Professor of International Studies and Professor of Political Science, California Lutheran University, Thousand Oaks, USA

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Fletcher Jones Professor of Developmental Biology, California Lutheran University, Thousand Oaks, USA

Professor of physics and bioengineering, california lutheran university, thousand oaks, usa.

• This book will have three sections, each addressing key topics from different angles and perspectives.
• Section I will discuss new approaches to graduate training in the sciences including the decline of both the large laboratory and the usefulness of traditional Ph.D. program
• Section II covers the politics, sociology and economics of integrated science with essays offering contending perspectives on interdisciplinary science education as well as focused discussions of issues of diversity and economic analysis
• Section III address new frontiers in science and emerging areas on interdisciplinary education
• Experts discuss specific details and unique challenges in five emerging frontiers in integrated science, including Biotechnology, Molecular Biology and Biochemistry, Nanotechnology, Brain Science, and Bioinformatics
• Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

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Table of contents (10 chapters)

Front matter, the promises and challenges of integrated science, in what ways can or should science and government be integrated, what are the promises and challenges of scientific integration.

• Elias A. Zerhouni

The Integration of Academic Science and Industry

Should business and industry create integrative partnerships with academic science.

• Stanley Aronowitz

What Are the Institutional Obstacles to the Integration of Academic Science and Industry?

• Henry Riggs

The Implications of Interdisciplinary Science on Education and Training

What are the long term implications of integration/interdisciplinary science on traditional disciplines and their professional associations (turf wars).

• Steven Brint

What Are the Implications of Integrated Science for Liberal Arts Education and Pedagogy at the Undergraduate Level?

• Wulf William

Do the New Directions in Scientific Training Have an Impact on Developing a More Diverse Workforce?

• Rita R. Colwell

What Are the Implications for Training at the Master’s Level?

What are the implications for training at the doctoral level.

• David Baltimore, Robert A. Millikan

What Are the Architectural Implications of Integration?

• Robert Venturi

Back Matter

• Integration
• biochemistry
• environment

About this book

Authors and affiliations.

Michael E. Brint

David J. Marcey

Michael C. Shaw

About the authors

Bibliographic information.

Book Title : Integrated Science

Book Subtitle : New Approaches to Education A Virtual Roundtable Discussion

Authors : Michael E. Brint, David J. Marcey, Michael C. Shaw

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-84853-2

Publisher : Springer New York, NY

eBook Packages : Humanities, Social Sciences and Law , Education (R0)

Copyright Information : Springer-Verlag US 2009

Softcover ISBN : 978-0-387-84852-5 Published: 24 November 2008

eBook ISBN : 978-0-387-84853-2 Published: 02 November 2008

Edition Number : 1

Number of Pages : XIII, 148

Topics : Science Education , Popular Science in Medicine and Health , Life Sciences, general , Biomedicine general , Educational Technology

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Modular, scalable hardware architecture for a quantum computer

A new quantum-system-on-chip enables the efficient control of a large array of qubits, moving toward practical quantum computing..

Quantum computers hold the promise of being able to quickly solve extremely complex problems that might take the world's most powerful supercomputer decades to crack.

But achieving that performance involves building a system with millions of interconnected building blocks called qubits. Making and controlling so many qubits in a hardware architecture is an enormous challenge that scientists around the world are striving to meet.

Toward this goal, researchers at MIT and MITRE have demonstrated a scalable, modular hardware platform that integrates thousands of interconnected qubits onto a customized integrated circuit. This "quantum-system-on-chip" (QSoC) architecture enables the researchers to precisely tune and control a dense array of qubits. Multiple chips could be connected using optical networking to create a large-scale quantum communication network.

By tuning qubits across 11 frequency channels, this QSoC architecture allows for a new proposed protocol of "entanglement multiplexing" for large-scale quantum computing.

The team spent years perfecting an intricate process for manufacturing two-dimensional arrays of atom-sized qubit microchiplets and transferring thousands of them onto a carefully prepared complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) chip. This transfer can be performed in a single step.

"We will need a large number of qubits, and great control over them, to really leverage the power of a quantum system and make it useful. We are proposing a brand new architecture and a fabrication technology that can support the scalability requirements of a hardware system for a quantum computer," says Linsen Li, an electrical engineering and computer science (EECS) graduate student and lead author of a paper on this architecture.

Li's co-authors include Ruonan Han, an associate professor in EECS, leader of the Terahertz Integrated Electronics Group, and member of the Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE); senior author Dirk Englund, professor of EECS, principal investigator of the Quantum Photonics and Artificial Intelligence Group and of RLE; as well as others at MIT, Cornell University, the Delft Institute of Technology, the Army Research Laboratory, and the MITRE Corporation. The paper appears in Nature .

Diamond microchiplets

While there are many types of qubits, the researchers chose to use diamond color centers because of their scalability advantages. They previously used such qubits to produce integrated quantum chips with photonic circuitry.

Qubits made from diamond color centers are "artificial atoms" that carry quantum information. Because diamond color centers are solid-state systems, the qubit manufacturing is compatible with modern semiconductor fabrication processes. They are also compact and have relatively long coherence times, which refers to the amount of time a qubit's state remains stable, due to the clean environment provided by the diamond material.

In addition, diamond color centers have photonic interfaces which allows them to be remotely entangled, or connected, with other qubits that aren't adjacent to them.

"The conventional assumption in the field is that the inhomogeneity of the diamond color center is a drawback compared to identical quantum memory like ions and neutral atoms. However, we turn this challenge into an advantage by embracing the diversity of the artificial atoms: Each atom has its own spectral frequency. This allows us to communicate with individual atoms by voltage tuning them into resonance with a laser, much like tuning the dial on a tiny radio," says Englund.

This is especially difficult because the researchers must achieve this at a large scale to compensate for the qubit inhomogeneity in a large system.

To communicate across qubits, they need to have multiple such "quantum radios" dialed into the same channel. Achieving this condition becomes near-certain when scaling to thousands of qubits. To this end, the researchers surmounted that challenge by integrating a large array of diamond color center qubits onto a CMOS chip which provides the control dials. The chip can be incorporated with built-in digital logic that rapidly and automatically reconfigures the voltages, enabling the qubits to reach full connectivity.

"This compensates for the in-homogenous nature of the system. With the CMOS platform, we can quickly and dynamically tune all the qubit frequencies," Li explains.

Lock-and-release fabrication

To build this QSoC, the researchers developed a fabrication process to transfer diamond color center "microchiplets" onto a CMOS backplane at a large scale.

They started by fabricating an array of diamond color center microchiplets from a solid block of diamond. They also designed and fabricated nanoscale optical antennas that enable more efficient collection of the photons emitted by these color center qubits in free space.

Then, they designed and mapped out the chip from the semiconductor foundry. Working in the MIT.nano cleanroom, they post-processed a CMOS chip to add microscale sockets that match up with the diamond microchiplet array.

They built an in-house transfer setup in the lab and applied a lock-and-release process to integrate the two layers by locking the diamond microchiplets into the sockets on the CMOS chip. Since the diamond microchiplets are weakly bonded to the diamond surface, when they release the bulk diamond horizontally, the microchiplets stay in the sockets.

"Because we can control the fabrication of both the diamond and the CMOS chip, we can make a complementary pattern. In this way, we can transfer thousands of diamond chiplets into their corresponding sockets all at the same time," Li says.

The researchers demonstrated a 500-micron by 500-micron area transfer for an array with 1,024 diamond nanoantennas, but they could use larger diamond arrays and a larger CMOS chip to further scale up the system. In fact, they found that with more qubits, tuning the frequencies actually requires less voltage for this architecture.

"In this case, if you have more qubits, our architecture will work even better," Li says.

The team tested many nanostructures before they determined the ideal microchiplet array for the lock-and-release process. However, making quantum microchiplets is no easy task, and the process took years to perfect.

"We have iterated and developed the recipe to fabricate these diamond nanostructures in MIT cleanroom, but it is a very complicated process. It took 19 steps of nanofabrication to get the diamond quantum microchiplets, and the steps were not straightforward," he adds.

Alongside their QSoC, the researchers developed an approach to characterize the system and measure its performance on a large scale. To do this, they built a custom cryo-optical metrology setup.

Using this technique, they demonstrated an entire chip with over 4,000 qubits that could be tuned to the same frequency while maintaining their spin and optical properties. They also built a digital twin simulation that connects the experiment with digitized modeling, which helps them understand the root causes of the observed phenomenon and determine how to efficiently implement the architecture.

In the future, the researchers could boost the performance of their system by refining the materials they used to make qubits or developing more precise control processes. They could also apply this architecture to other solid-state quantum systems.

• Quantum Computers
• Computers and Internet
• Spintronics Research
• Computer Science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Information Technology
• Mobile Computing
• Neural Interfaces
• Computer software
• Quantum computer
• Quantum entanglement
• Computer security
• Quantum tunnelling
• Quantum dot
• Introduction to quantum mechanics

Story Source:

Materials provided by Massachusetts Institute of Technology . Original written by Adam Zewe. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference :

• Linsen Li, Lorenzo De Santis, Isaac B. W. Harris, Kevin C. Chen, Yihuai Gao, Ian Christen, Hyeongrak Choi, Matthew Trusheim, Yixuan Song, Carlos Errando-Herranz, Jiahui Du, Yong Hu, Genevieve Clark, Mohamed I. Ibrahim, Gerald Gilbert, Ruonan Han, Dirk Englund. Heterogeneous integration of spin–photon interfaces with a CMOS platform . Nature , 2024; DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07371-7

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