The Fate of Trump’s Science Education: Continuities and Disruptions of the Role of Science in STEM

• In Event: Science Educations in/against Reactionary Times

Abstract

This paper explores the shifts and continuities of the meanings of science education in the framework of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education in the Trump era. In December 2018 the Trump administration published its roadmap for STEM education (Committee, 2018). I examine this roadmap in the light of historic context and contestation over the role of the state and the purposes for STEM. The context includes prior research on the role of spectacle in STEM policy under President Trump in the first year of his administration and on the function of STEM itself within neoliberal logics: STEM education as an articulation of science to market ends (Author, 2017). I also draw on the constellation of documents that constitute and expand upon the U.S.’s national science standards, Next Generation Science Standards (Achieve Inc. 2014; Committee, 2011), which institutionalized STEM as an organizing framework for science education. Trump’s early STEM spectacles emphasized business and entrepreneurship at the expense of science content, which was invisible in his staged events at NASA and elsewhere. In this, Trump merely exaggerated trends in STEM. This paper uses this contextualized discourse analysis to examine how these same trends continue and are pushed forward in the new roadmap. It explores which sciences matter, how and why, and the articulation of science to Career and Technical Education. My conclusion reflects on the implications of Trump’s policy for the professional autonomy of science and science teachers in the enduring paradigm of science as a component of STEM education.

Author

• Matthew Weinstein, Univ. Of Washington-Tacoma