An official website of the United States government
The relationship between education policy and workforce policy has long been uneasy. It is widely believed in many quarters of American society that the U.S. education system is in decline and, what’s more, that it bears significant responsibility for a wide range of social ills, including stagnant wages, increasing inequality, high unemployment, and overall economic lethargy. However, as analyzed in this paper, the preponderance of evidence suggests that the U.S. education system has produced ample supplies of students to respond to STEM labor market demand. The “pipeline” of STEM-potential students is similarly strong and expanding.
more »
« less
STEM education and workforce policy: its history and politics
"STEM" is a term that has intuitive appeal but lacks an agreed-upon definition. As such, it has become a term whose ubiquity and ambiguity allow it to be used for a range of policy and political purposes. The longstanding focus on STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) as a focal point of education and workforce policy makes it important to understand what is considered a STEM field, for what purposes the STEM designation is used, and how it has become a highly politicized term that lacks practical meaning. The use of STEM in policy historically and currently is used to support a range of policy objectives beyond improving science and engineering education or workforce development.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 1561687
- PAR ID:
- 10521119
- Publisher / Repository:
- EBSCO Pathways to Research Salem Press/EBSCO
- Date Published:
- Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
- STEM science education policy workforce policy Engineering
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Institution:
- Salem Press/EBSCO
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
The persistence and attrition of underrepresented minority (URM) students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) continues to remain a steadfast problem in education and the workforce. Research has shown that educators, administrators, and policy makers all play a vital role in shaping the future generation of STEM education, programs and the workforce, however, much of the research is deficient in providing URM student perceptions on how key factors such as student engagement, financial support, higher education preparation and institutional environment all impact their persistence in the STEM pipeline. This study employs qualitative research methods, semi-structured interviews and casual conversations to gain insight on common trends for the persistence of four (2 males, 2 females) URM students that were enrolled in a 2012 Summer Bridge Program at Mississippi State University (MSU), a predominately large white institution (PWI). Within this study, emphasis will be placed on the engineering branch of STEM. The research found that small diverse organizations such as NSBE and IMAGE along with financial support in the form of scholarships and alumni waivers, and pre-freshmen summer engineering programs such as Summer Bridge played a major role in URM student persistence in engineering disciplines.more » « less
-
Continuing education after years of technician experience can pose multiple challenges to the adult student population, such as incumbent workforce technicians and veterans. Veterans, through their active service, frequently receive training in highly skilled technical areas but may lack a theoretical background in underlying engineering principles. While STEM education is important for the maintenance of national competitiveness, it is especially critical that the nation’s veterans, who possess technical STEM training gained in the military, are enabled to pursue higher education in order to increase the quantity and quality of talent available in the STEM workforce. A program that will be presented in this paper emphasizes the importance of recruiting students to engineering and engineering technology disciplines, mentoring and supporting students through degree completion, and partnering with employers to facilitate student academic success and career placement in the STEM workforce. Enabling multiple mechanisms which support and provide guidance are especially important at universities with large veteran populations such as Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia. Advancing the field’s understanding of interventions that affect these outcomes for adult students and student veterans is important for the improvement of future support programs as well as to guide implementation across different institutions. The program presented in this paper is funded by the National Science Foundation.more » « less
-
null (Ed.)Through a qualitative case study approach, this study examines the pedagogical context of training and mentoring students to undertake STEM internships. This paper explores the learning conditions and outcomes of Biotech Partners (BP), a nonprofit organization working at the intersections of bioscience/biotechnology workforce education in collaboration with public high schools and professional experts and organizations in a range of STEM industries. Incorporating multiple stakeholder perspectives (youth, industry partners, mentors, biotech educators), the study unpacks the nature and impacts of these cross-sector partnerships: In what roles and in what ways do bioscience educators and business and industry workforce members motivate students from diverse underrepresented populations to become aware of, interested in, and prepared for careers in the STEM workforce?more » « less
-
Due to the influence of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), the National Research Council’s (NRC) Framework for K-12 Science Education, and a socio-workforce push to increase diverse representation in STEM fields, engineering education has become more prevalent in K-12 classrooms over the past decade. Although this shift is seemingly optimistic, critical consideration must be given to the ways engineering education tends to be reductive and positivistic, mimicking engineering practices decontextualized from high-stakes socio-political and socio-ecological realities through the adherence of a closed, systematic design process. Teaching and learning that is situated within the confines of normative engineering learning fail to nurture and cultivate students’ intellectual health and ontological security, and further promotes destructive settler ecologics. This study took up efforts to disrupt and desettle engineering education, which opened space for children to critically speculate about real-world engineering entanglements deeply connected to their futurities. The aims of this paper are to (1) establish the need for anticolonial engineering, and engineering education, (2) promote approaches for doing so (3) and elevate the just worlding engineering design principles put forward by radically caring children committed to socio-ecological and multispecies justice. The learning shared in this paper suggests not only why science and engineering fields and education should be reformed, but also provides guidance for evolving the designing of shared worlds, for kincentric flourishing.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Posted Content:
- The DOI is not currently available.
