STEM education implementation

STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) is the foundation for the 21st century skills because in this information age, most economies are driven by technology. The strength of an economy is depending on the ability of the country to create new innovations, new products, and new technologies. The ability to fulfill that depends on the skills of their people in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. This logic is simple: The more people have these skills, the better the economy could be; and the better the economy, the more jobs could be created. So it is important to develop more people with STEM skills; and that means education system must set a high priority for STEM fields.

STEM skills are not something new but recently they receive more attention due to their ability to improve the economy and create jobs. In this global recession where job creation is important, every government wants to improve STEM education but unfortunately few succeed. In the past few years, there were lots of talks and speeches about improving education to focus on STEM but nothing much has happened. Many western European countries poured money into their schools, modernized their facilities, brought more technologies devices for their students but the numbers of students graduated in STEM fields had not improved. Other like the U.S and China continue to fund research in technology with the hope to accelerate more innovations but the results were not much different from several years ago. Basically, encouraging more research or buying more technological devices are NOT the solution. From what I have seen, only few countries succeed in implement STEM education such as Singapore, Finland, Denmark, S. Korea and Taiwan. Instead of pouring money into schools or funding research, these countries started with the most basic principle as they invested in people who can make the difference: The Teacher.

All of these countries set very high standards for people who are studying education, some as high as the standards for getting into Medical schools. My friend in Finland told me that it is easier to get into Medical school than Education school. From that information, I look at countries that did not do well in STEM fields and find that most of them have no standards for entering education fields so anyone, even people with a low score can still get to this field and become teachers. Successful countries like Finland and S. Korea have rules that require teachers to know their teaching subjects well. To teach any subject they must have studied that in college. A math teacher can only teach math and nothing else. A history teacher can only teach history etc. As I look at other countries, including the U.S., UK and several western European countries, I find that it is common for teachers to teach anything as long as they have the teacher certificate from an education program. Therefore it is possible for a teacher to teach math without ever having taken a college-level math course. My friend in Finland told me that their laws require prospective teachers to spend a least one year mastering the subject of teaching before they can even get teacher licensed. They must spend a year under a tutorial of a “master teacher” after they have been hired for their first job.

By looking at countries that did not do well in STEM education, I find that the education field is not considered a “Prestigious field” as teachers usually do not get good wages or being highly respected. In these countries it is often assumed that anyone who teach, know their subject well based on their teacher certificate. Teachers' wages are often much less than other professions. Last year, I attended an education conference where a Chinese educator explained the situation in his country that confirms my view: “Without strict entry level standards, you may not get good people to study education. Without good wages, good people would rather study something else than education. When teachers have difficulty to making a living, many quit and switch to something else. When teachers have to work second job, or even third job, they cannot devote their entire time to teach. When teachers are worrying about the cost of living with their meager wages, corruptions may happen. If education is not considered important nor has high priority in society, the whole generation of students will suffer. If you want to improve STEM education, it must start with the teachers, from elementary to high school because by the time students go to college, it is too late.”

By looking at Finland, S. Korea and Singapore, I found that they pay their teachers at about the same wages as their engineers, doctors, and other high paying positions. Indeed a high school principal is making the same as a medium sized company CEO. Most education programs in these successful countries are in their top universities, when in not so successful others, education programs may be located anywhere without any monitoring. Finland, Singapore, and S. Korea have high quality national instructional systems which instantiate internationally benchmarked standards in all the STEM subjects in the curriculum into first class, deeply thoughtful course syllabi, and the resulting curriculum is used to create high quality (NOT multiple-choice, computer-scored) examinations; and they teach their teachers to teach those courses well in their schools of education. And they all have curriculum frameworks, which specify a logical order for introducing topics grade by grade so that all students have an opportunity to study those topics in depth and at the right point in the sequence.

To start with STEM education, we must start with the teacher first. Of course investing in teachers' training is about investing in the future and it requires leadership with a vision. Today many people only want to see something quick regardless of the results. Buying more tablets to school like what Indian's government did is impressive and looks good in the newspapers but without good teachers what would the students do with all these tablets? Pouring more money into research like what Chinese government did is impressive but without good teachers to train students to become scientists what good are those research beside some academic publications? For better education, there is nothing better to start with the teachers because only teachers can make a difference.

Sources

  • Blogs of Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University

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