Article Preview
TopIntroduction
Isaac Asimov (n.d.), the celebrated science fiction writer once said the saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom. He had been extremely pertinent in indicating this ‘wisdom lag’ where scientific wisdom creates confusion in societal wisdom affecting societal development. But how do bridge this lag? STEM had been one among several initiatives in this direction. The current study was inspired with a specific objective to make STEM education more penetrative among the learning generation by enquiring into the deescalating factors. In this introduction authors have laboured to contextualize and rationalize this study asserting the importance of STEM education in current society, identifying its challenges, and possible way outs for improvement.
In today’s world science and technology is driving every aspect of our life with automation as a ubiquitous facet of life requiring of scientific acumen among modern generation for a more complex future. Considering this un-paralleled growth in science and technology, William F. Ogburn coined the term ‘cultural lag’ to suggest that a maladjustment occurs when the non-material culture is struggling to adapt to this speedy scientific proliferation (Ogburn, 1922). Extending this notion in the cognitive aspects the authors introduce ‘wisdom lag’ to indicate a deep crater in the societal wisdom created through rapid change in the scientific wisdom through regular discoveries and intentions. The education system needs renovation to reduce this wisdom lag in society to provide appropriate guidance to the students enabling them to understand the way they need to prepare for an advanced future. From this global recognition, a growing importance of STEM education is audible (Li, 2018) especially in the developed Western nations witnessing the urgent need to support research and scholarship in STEM.
The term STEM is used to group the academic discipline ‘Science’, ‘Technology’, ‘Engineering’ and ‘Mathematics’. Although the learning of those discipline dates long back, the acronym was formally introduced in by U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) in the year 2001 (Chute, 2009). The term serves as an umbrella for several fields, including information technology, software development, computer network architecture, information security, and others. Schreffler, et al. (2019) stated as technology reshapes the world, colleges and universities have responded by offering STEM or STEM-adjacent major programs to students eager to become part of a growing trend, and several STEM degrees and certificates are awarding. The growth of industrialization requires people educated with STEM discipline to meet the requirements of the skilled resources for industrialization and automation (Carlisle & Weaver, 2018). Project-based learning in STEM will help students to develop science knowledge practically (Gehrke & Kezar, 2019). According to US labour statistics, employment in STEM occupations (18.7%) will grow faster than that of non-STEM occupations (14.3%) in 2010-2020 (Hill, et al., 2019).
STEM education can be viewed with a broad and inclusive perspective to include education in the individual disciplines of STEM, i.e., science education, technology education, engineering education, and mathematics education, as well as interdisciplinary or cross-disciplinary combinations of the individual STEM disciplines (Li, 2014). Decades of research have shed light of its importance at elementary level to higher studies helping students increase their creativity, problem solving, or curiosity (Freeman et al., 2014; Laursen, 2019; Thiry et al., 2019). STEM learning and teaching environments enhance students’ learning achievement, retention, and engagement (Reinholz, White, & Andrews, 2021).