Bringing STEM Into Focus

By Jean Moon & Susan Rundell Singer

What do we intend when using the acronym STEM? It literally stands for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, but what does it mean? Arguably, attempts to provide a meaningful response to these questions have not stuck. It is not for lack of trying, however. State education agencies, national membership organizations, advocacy groups, and state policymakers have been seeking definitions for STEM for quite some time, and with good reason. Today, not only do we have numerous definitions of STEM, but we also have branded numerous entities to be STEM councils, STEM schools, STEM networks, and STEM curricular outcomes. Despite the well-intended branding, understanding of the brand itself remains elusive. It is a conundrum.

While the STEM-definition conundrum can cause confusion, there is reason for optimism. It is our belief that some important conceptual ground has been gained on this conundrum, and it is ground worthy of exploration.

Several recent reports, including the National Research Council's " A Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas ," offer a vision for science and science education with significant implications, if not clues, for the "what is STEM?" question. For example, the K-12 framework effectively turns attention away from a content-specific definition of STEM to a more epistemic one—the sources, strategies, or practices from which science and, by extension, STEM knowledge comes and, in turn, is shared. It may well be that this long-standing inability to come up with an appropriate definition for STEM is an outgrowth of framing STEM as a fixed entity, an "it" instead of an assemblage of practices and processes that transcend disciplinary lines and from which knowledge and learning of...