56.073 - Slowing Down the STEM Train: Questions, Critiques, and Reflections About the STEM Education Movement

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

Science, mathematics, engineering, and technology (STEM) education is a fast-moving train. Few have critically questioned the direction and pace of this movement, the underlying assumptions, or its impacts on schools, teachers, and students. With the goal of facilitating a more reflective and comprehensive dialogue about the current directions of the STEM movement, this symposium brings together scholars who represent all four areas of STEM education. Symposium presenters critically analyze the STEM movement to question the neoliberal discourse and practices that currently promote and guide STEM education in the schools, analyze governance systems that promote STEM in schools, and raise issues related to the effects of the growing STEM movement on social justice-oriented education in/through science and mathematics learning.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Science Teaching and Learning

Chairs

• Kristin L. Gunckel, The University of Arizona

• Sara E. Tolbert, Te Whare Wangana o Waitaha University of Canterbury

Papers

• Other Worlds Are Possible: Marking and Challenging the STEM Project - Matthew Weinstein, University of Washington - Tacoma

• STEM-ification of Public Education: A Network Governance Perspective - Ajay Sharma, University of Georgia; Cheryl Hudson, University of Georgia - Athens

• Exploring the Potentials of Digital Literacies for Disciplinary Learning - Jill M. Castek, University of Arizona

• Questioning the Politics, Ethics, and Economics of the Engineering Education Movement - Kristin L. Gunckel, The University of Arizona; Sara E. Tolbert, Te Whare Wangana o Waitaha University of Canterbury

• The Need for SySTEMic Reform: How the Current STEM Movement Prevents Humane Mathematics - Rochelle Gutierrez, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Discussant

• Sara E. Tolbert, Te Whare Wangana o Waitaha University of Canterbury