There is hesitation in the mathematics education community about STEM education & its’ role to play (if any some would say!) in mathematics within secondary schools. The acronym has been around since the early 2000’s, with its’ impact starting to wear off, especially in the mathematics community. Teachers feel that STEM has turned into another educational slogan, and (some) mathematics teachers feel that they have had no part to play in many school-based STEM initiatives. Mathematics teachers also have concerns that integrated STEM projects may lose mathematical integrity, may hinder the sequential approach to teaching & learning & may not cover content outcomes with rigor.
Perhaps, though, mathematics teachers need to take the risk in developing STEM integrated units of work (many schools are), uncover the possibilities for mathematics education and begin to have conversations with our students and colleagues around our current approaches.
Why bother though?
In the transition from primary to secondary school it is common for our students to find mathematics abstract and irrelevant, frequently questioning its’ usefulness and purpose. Decades of research show that levels of disengagement increase, students’ views about mathematics progressively get worse throughout these years in response to the difficulty in identifying the usefulness of the content to their lives. We cannot expect our students in these early secondary years to appreciate the beauty, complexity and power of mathematics that we see if the classroom is dominated by teaching and learning approaches that make it difficult for students to relate too. Perhaps these are keys reasons for the decline in the number of students pursuing higher levels of mathematics in the senior years.
At a time when STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) seems to be the solution to every school problem, perhaps there is some merit in considering this approach to making mathematics teaching and learning more meaningful and relevant for our students. In many secondary schools, mathematics operates as an isolated discipline, distinct to other STEM disciplines, resulting in a fragmented view of mathematics in students’ minds. Several government reports and research studies are encouraging secondary mathematics teachers to make their teaching more authentic and contextualized by connecting with content in other STEM areas. For example, mathematics shares common practices such as inquiry learning and problem solving with science, and science can provide opportunities to apply mathematical concepts, can assist in the transfer of knowledge and can present real-world contexts to learn abstract concepts. Current research is indicating the benefits of a more contextualized approach to mathematics teaching and learning through STEM, improving students’ engagement, values towards and potentially achievement in mathematics.
Many of us were taught mathematics at school as an isolated discipline, dominated with a reliance on textbook questions and with little contextualization or useful application. For us, this worked- we enjoyed it, moved onto study mathematics further and now are mathematics teachers. We are, however, the small minority who enjoyed mathematics at school, unfortunately. As a mathematics community, it is challenging to consider alternative approaches to teaching and learning when we were taught through ‘traditional’ methods at school, or even through to university.
Perhaps it is time to further consider the promise of STEM education in improving student engagement, values towards and achievement in mathematics in the junior secondary years, to improve the number of students wanting to continue further mathematics study in the senior years. So I suggest the mathematics community refocuses their thoughts about the (sometimes overused!) STEM acronym & begin to re-think ‘STEM’ as a Step Towards more Engaging Mathematics.
Jake Little 