Poster #11 - STEM for What? Considering Curriculum Goals for STEM

• In Event: 21.063 - MTCC Poster Session Three
  In Poster Session: 21.063-1 - Research in Science Teaching and Learning Poster Session 2

Abstract

As the STEM movement gathers public and scholarly attention it is important to scrutinize its curriculum goals. Technology and education has had an uncritically positive association, and the ethical dimension of design decision making has been conspicuously absent. The goals of this theoretical paper are to develop a curriculum justification for the privileging of one form of knowledge over another. This is done by considering the natures of Science, and Technology, as interested in the natural and the artificial worlds respectively. Such considerations buy us the conclusions that context dependency of truth claims may be used as a basis for its discrimination, and that appreciating sites of contentious knowledge opens up possibilities for achieving liberatory goals for education.

Author

• Michael Tan, National Institute of Education - Nanyang Technological University