Learning: Research and Practice

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Why STEM? Why now? Educating for technologies,

or technologies for education?

Michael Tan

To cite this article: Michael Tan (2018): Why STEM? Why now? Educating for
technologies, or technologies for education?, Learning: Research and Practice, DOI:
10.1080/23735082.2018.1511275

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/23735082.2018.1511275

Published online: 23 Aug 2018.

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LEARNING: RESEARCH AND PRACTICE
https://doi.org/10.1080/23735082.2018.1511275

COMMENTARY

Why STEM? Why now? Educating for technologies, or

technologies for education?
Michael Tan
National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

The STEM movement is a recent phenomenon receiving world- Received 08 August 2018
wide attention as the darling educational project for school sys- Accepted 08 August 2018
tems and research centres. This interest has no doubt been fuelled Keywords
by economic rationales of the supposed necessity of STEM for STEM movement;
continued material wealth, and the claims that the future will curriculum; interdisciplinary;
require a different sort of expertise than what we currently pos- epistemology; STEM
sess. However, not as a conservative response, but as a critical one, education
it is important for us to become clearer about what it is that we
would want students to learn. In addition, as researchers and
practitioners, it is imperative that we distinguish hype from reality,
if only because we need to learn from our collective institutional
histories and claim some form of ownership over the direction of
our work. Interdisciplinary STEM education does provide opportu-
nities for educators to deeply confront such issues as the ethics of
invention, and the distinction between the descriptive and norma-
tive disciplines. Yet, these gains are likely to be drowned out by
the much louder clamour for flashy new things to fill new rooms
with rearranged furniture. This commentary is intended as a
reminder to the community to do the hard, unglamorous work
required to make worthwhile learning happen.

Unless one has been cut off from most media reporting, it has been hard to ignore the
increasingly loud drumbeats of the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics
(STEM) movement. Promising to revolutionise the teaching and learning of these
disciplines, the STEM movement has been associated with sophisticated devices, many
of which claim to afford students with capabilities previously unheard of. While it can be
tempting, as educators and researchers, to jump on the bandwagon and ride towards the
abundant research and private funding coming from the numerous parties with institu-
tional fomo (fear of missing out), there may be reasons to be more critical about the entire
venture. For starters, what, exactly, ought to constitute STEM is still an unresolved
matter. Secondly, in the words of a recent journal article: “it looks like fun, but what
are they learning?” (Bevan, Gutwill, Petrich, & Wilkinson, 2015, emphasis added). This
curriculum question looms large, because of the diverse possibilities that may arise from
subtle variations in attention. Finally, the kinds of learning cultures that will need to be
set up to accomplish this diversity of learning goals, and the social outcomes of large

CONTACT Michael Tan michael.tan@nie.edu.sg

© 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 M. TAN

numbers of students with a “STEM” perspective, are not yet well understood. The
unintended consequences of any educational project needs attention; and while it can
be hard to predict the future, we certainly can learn lessons from history.

What is STEM?
It must be acknowledged that the STEM moniker has been well named – a short, easily
pronounceable acronym with rather positive attributes connoting something central,
strong, and supportive of larger structures. Yet, closer examination would reveal – at
least, in many implementations – deficiencies that reveal weaknesses. For instance, STEM
usually has a strong technology and engineering component, tying components of science
and mathematics in some form of construction task. Yet, when such activities are
considered, the domains of mechanical and electronics engineering are most readily
adapted for schoolhouse use. Concomitantly, the physics discipline often leads as bene-
ficiary of such practices. Glaringly absent are, typically, chemistry and biology – no doubt
because of the particular messiness (and hazards) of chemical reactions or the typical time
scale needed to observe biological interactions. What form meaningful interdisciplinary
interactions should take is neither a settled problem nor one that is easily resolved.
This is not a new problem, and perspectives concerning the nature of disciplinarity can
trace their major positions to the science wars and the demarcation problem over the last
several decades. The problem is with the nature of the distinction between the disciplines:
are they merely arbitrary, or do they reflect some obligatory distinction between the types of
phenomena being studied? The human desire for reductionism and the removal of “con-
founding variables” often means that situations of study are far removed from any
semblance to scenarios in which they are typically confronted. The spectacular success of
knowledge forms such as physics in the creation of weapons of mass destruction (for
instance) obscures the contribution of other fields of study – without the chemistry to
develop controllable, high-yield conventional explosives, the bomb would simply have
remained theoretical. Similarly, even an unglamorous enough skill such as vacuum tube
forming was necessary in the construction of early computers that allowed calculations of
bomb designs to happen. Such a perspective underwrites proposals such as Mark Taylor’s
(2009) in favour of “ending the university as we know it”, and instead organising research
and learning around grand challenges that confront our contemporary day and age. Arising
from the postmodern claim of the inevitable entanglement of power relations in truth
claims, proponents would argue that the sociological arrangement of teams, and the debates
over which forms of knowledge get valorised, matter more significantly than any corre-
spondence of these truth claims to anything existing “out there”. This form of epistemo-
logical pluralism (e.g. Turkle & Papert, 1990) may have widened the scope of participation
and legitimised previously silenced voices, of women, ethnic minorities, and other margin-
alised groups. On the other hand, the logical extremis of this position is recognised today in
the post-truth condition that has poisoned public discourse (Kakutani, 2018), and crucially
for STEM education, diminished the public authoritativeness of scientific experts (Collins,
Evans, & Weinel, 2017).
To be sure, more rational voices exist; in contrast to the relativistic death spiral of
“opening up the discourse” for more voices, Collins and Evans (2017) point to a “third
wave” of STS (Science and Technology Studies), whereby there is acknowledgement of the
 LEARNING: RESEARCH AND PRACTICE 3

socially constructed nature of truth claims, but nonetheless a stable external reality for
which to reference truth claims upon. Such a position essentially reduces the degree to
which truth claims may be up for contention – we make socially negotiated claims, but not
in isolation from a neutral means to verify the veracity of the claim. Scientific experts can
occasionally get it wrong, as that is the nature of the practice; but anyone who attempts to
show that this is the case needs to be subject to the same degree of epistemic scrutiny as the
scientists. As for our question of the distinctness of the disciplines, it is rather likely the case
that, as with the demarcation question, these disciplinary boundaries do refer to a particular
social division-of-labour arrangement but are constrained by certain material “facts of the
matter”. The study of physics gives its practitioners a particular view of the world that is not
merely a matter of social agreement, but an indication of the way the world is.
These epistemic considerations are certainly not new (see e.g. Hacking, 1983; Laudan,
1996), but their influence on education studies is rather more limited. In curriculum studies,
the movement of social realism has perhaps a short decade of influence (Young & Muller,
2007). The key questions that confronts the STEM movement today is with regards the
contribution of the disciplines to the interdisciplinary mix: What is gained from the combi-
nation? Which discipline contributes what to the mix? What is the social value of STEM?
What is lost when we decide to teach STEM? To date, the discourse on STEM has been
uncritical, especially of the curriculum perspectives. Such an approach cannot be acceptable,
especially since these are definitional issues: What ought STEM constitute? What does STEM
practice look like? By STEM, do we merely mean more of the same Science/Math learning
goals, but made glamorous with engineering/technology so that we can gather more research
funding? We have the opportunity now to reconfigure traditional science and mathematics
learning; to have our students acquire not only new interdisciplinary skills, but also deepened
competencies. Unfortunately, these gains may not be realised if we are not more careful about
these fundamental questions.

Context matters
A popular means of deploying and selling STEM to administrators is via the route of
“engagement” – that particular groups are especially engaged in particular practices that
bear resemblance to STEM practices. While these efforts are not to be dismissed, the question
remains of whether such motivation persists when contextual factors change, or when it
becomes important to deal with boring and meaningless material. An overly contextualised
approach to learning can have its drawbacks, as when we misrepresent to students what
particular engineering practices can be put towards. While it may be fun and games now to
build a ballista to throw an inert projectile into the school field, what should the conscientious
engineer do when her invention is used to deliver a weapon of mass destruction aimed at
civilians? Such a possibility is not completely within the realm of hyperbole, as recent news
reports have pointed out the hollowness of, for instance, Google’s motto of “Do no evil”:
Artificial Intelligence developers protested their work being used in a Department of Defence
project to analyse drone footage (Robitzski, 2018), and reports suggest that Google may
essentially be delivering a “censor engine” for China (Hern, 2018).
An overemphasis on contextual factors for learning may reduce opportunities for the
introduction of apparently “ungrounded” knowledge – knowledge that may not have
any apparent connection to any problem at hand. This situation is especially prominent
4 M. TAN

for advanced mathematics, which “are so devised that they are apt subjects on which the
mathematician can demonstrate his ingenuity and sense of formal beauty” (Wigner,
1960, p. 3). Wigner points out, as an instance, the complex numbers, which appear to
be derived from “nothing in our experiences”.
While it appears that the objective of the STEM movement is not necessarily to ground
every abstraction in some form of practical experience, definitions of STEM have yet to
effectively encompass this aspect of the nature of mathematical thought – that of
communicating its aesthetic elegance, and its ability to transcend the contexts of its
generation to solve problems distant in space and time.
To provide some positivity to this discussion, it must be said that this is not an
argument against STEM integration and the deployment of interdisciplinary learning.
Indeed, there are many reasons why, as an instructional approach, a grounded method is
likely superior to a “formalism first” method (Abrahamson, 2012; Nathan, 2012). Yet, as
with many things, it is the nature of the interaction that determines the quality of the
outcome: too much disciplinary learning, and we potentially run the risk of decontextua-
lised abstraction bearing little relevance and interest to the student. On the other hand,
too much context dependency and interdisciplinarity may dilute the disciplinary insights
that may stand to benefit the student when she encounters scenarios that we as educators
cannot completely foresee. As mentioned, there needs to be clarity as to what each
disciplinary base contributes to the joint study. This is addressed in the following section.

Is STEM a cargo cult?

We cannot get away from the fact that we are surrounded by technology; and not just in the
generic sense that the human species has always been reliant on technology since at least the
first recorded use of tools such as the flint axe. Rather, I refer to the specific sense of
contemporary technologies that we now find indispensable. The amount of technological
knowledge required to understand even the working principles of the things around us is
immense. It is clear why educators desire to attend to the aphorism attributed to Arthur C.
Clarke, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”, by appar-
ently bestowing students with the promethean gift of technological know-how. Yet, such
knowledge may not be enough unless we are content with our students only being mere
users or even connoisseurs.
The risk here, is that the layers of abstraction we take for granted might make us
susceptible to a cargo-cult mindset: because any technological artefact stands at the inter-
face between its internal structure and the external imposed goal, we often abstract away the
internal functioning of the artefact and focus on the degree of fit of its external behaviour to
its stated goals. As a result, we take for granted that the internal structure is optimally
designed, or we fail to notice the compromises that must be made to achieve the goals.
More closely related, it is always worth remembering that teaching can happen, but learning
is not guaranteed – the things that we blanket the learning interaction with may correlate
with measures of enhanced outcomes, but care needs to be taken to ensure that causation is
not simply assumed.
Here, we need to take heed exhortations from nearly a century ago:
 LEARNING: RESEARCH AND PRACTICE 5

Let it not be supposed that there is really any advance in the science of education merely
because there is a technical improvement in the tools of managing an educational scheme
conspicuous for its formation prior to the rise of science. Such “science” only rationalises
old, customary education while improving it in minor details. Given the required intellec-
tual equipment, the further immediate demand is for human qualities of honesty, courage,
and invention which will enable one to go ahead without the props of custom or the
specious pretensions of custom masquerading in the terminology of science. […] Every
time it was a courageous imagination, a quality which is personal, human, moral, rather
than scientific or technical, which built the bridge – in every sense of the word bridge.

For this insight, we are indebted to no less than John Dewey ([1922]2009, p. 3). Little
else needs to be said, except to reiterate the necessity of educating for human qualities
rather than merely the scientific or technical.

Breadth of human flourishing requires knowledge of methods and

purposes
If we are interested in a form of education that seeks to expand the realm of possible
actions for individuals and societies, rather than a utilitarian training and preparation
for employment, then the particular form that STEM should take needs some inter-
rogation. Dana Zeidler (2016), for instance, points to the currently dominant discourses
surrounding STEM education as depicting a contemporary deficit mindset, with indu-
cements to fear for a lack of compliance with the STEM bandwagon. Almost univer-
sally, discourse around STEM threatens economic consequences for non-compliance, or
irrelevance in the face of advancing technological development. STEM education, as
seen from this perspective, serves as a means to secure future economic dominance.
Emphasis is then placed on the non-normative aspects of STEM: data collection,
methods, analysis, reporting formats and the like. Less well attended to are the
normative aspects of STEM: “prescribing courses of action, choosing to create selected
products, decisions about what ought to be done” (Zeidler, 2016, p. 13).
As with Dewey, the purposes to which we direct our STEM knowledge need to be
deeply interrogated, and research attention ought to be placed on the education of the
ethical dimensions of invention. It cannot be acceptable that the only appropriate goals
for STEM education are enhanced economic competitiveness, or reduced chance for
obsolescence. Likewise, the technologies that we surround ourselves with should serve
humanity in its pursuit of our collective better lives. For all the problems that we are
aware of, surely we can find a better way, a better narrative for our existence? At the
very least, STEM education should equip students with the notion that the design
intentions that we decide for our artefacts are not “cast in stone” but amenable to
contention. While there are ways in which we can tell that some goals are better than
others, it cannot be true that there is only one inevitable course of action that we are all
compelled towards.

Conclusion
There is still much work to be done for STEM education and research. The problem is
not a simple technical issue of finding the best means of communicating a particular
6 M. TAN

form of knowledge to learners who may be unwilling to listen. How, for instance, may
we address the deeply held cultural norms of schooling as a standardised, industria-
lised process? These norms are militant against even the very notion of an integrative
STEM subject, not to mention a student-centric approach to learning required to truly
develop students’ interests and design intentionalities. It is almost a cliché to repeat
here that we must look to our histories to avoid making the same mistakes; yet, it is
more than likely that we will again be distracted by the flash, glamour, novelty, and
the excessive funding to really do the hard, slow, unrewarding work of cultural change
that may eventually secure for our collective futures a difference that matters. For
once, I sincerely hope that I am wrong.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID
Michael Tan http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1841-6226

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