Asia-Pacific Edu Res (2019) 28(1):1–4

https://doi.org/10.1007/s40299-018-0424-z

EDITORIAL

STEM Education in Asia Pacific: Challenges and Development

Published online: 21 November 2018

Introduction Current Situation in the Asian Context

Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics First, the U.S.-based research accounted for two-thirds
(STEM) education has been viewed as foundational to (65%) of the studies, while Asian countries (China, Korea,
economic growth by many countries in the world, and has Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, etc.) accounted for only
thus received continuous attention from ministries of edu- around 8.5% of the articles. Second, issues related with
cation. The existing reviews (Brown 2012; Mizell and equity account for almost 29% (N = 197) of the articles,
Brown 2016) in the United States indicate that the research while only around 3% (N = 19) employ ‘‘engineering
in STEM is growing, with integrative STEM constituting design’’ as the pedagogical anchor. This trend is not quite
the largest in terms of subject matter investigated. K-12 parallel with Mizell and Brown’s (2016) report, which is a
students are also the most frequently researched student U.S.-based one. In comparison to the myriad studies
group. These reviews indicate that the research conducted labeled as STEM-focused but in fact dealing only with a
so far has employed an equal spread of mixed, qualitative, single subject (usually science learning), only those studies
and quantitative research. To gain further insights into the involving engineering design which are real-world oriented
current emphasis on STEM education, a search on the Web and inherently multidisciplinary deal with real STEM
of Science using the search term (‘‘science technology problems. Fortunately, engineering is increasingly becom-
engineering mathematics’’ OR ‘‘STEM’’) was conducted ing a focus, with the number of studies growing from only
on September 19, 2018. The search was limited to educa- one in 2013 to eight in 2017. In the Asian context, there is
tional research. For the last 5 years (2013–2017), there are only one study that employs engineering design as its
662 published articles with an increasing trend. Within pedagogical anchor (Lou et al. 2017), indicating the
these 662 articles, we identified several important trends. importance of engineering design as an emerging area of
research. Third, there is an obvious gap in research per-
taining to teacher preparation and professional develop-
ment (Al Salami et al. 2017; Cavlazoglu and Stuessy
& Min-Hsien Lee 2017). Teachers play a significant role in equipping stu-
[email protected] dents with relevant STEM knowledge and shaping their
1
Program of Learning Sciences, National Taiwan Normal choice of STEM career. Lee et al. (2015) longitudinal study
University, Taipei, Taiwan employing logistic regression analyses of students’ choice
2
Department of Curriculum and Instruction, The Chinese of a STEM career indicated that teachers’ expectations of
University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong SAR, Hong students are particularly influential. While the lack of
Kong focused study on teacher professional development to
3
Department of Education, National Chengchi University, foster STEM learning warrants further investigation, the
Taipei, Taiwan situation seems unsurprising. If it is already challenging for
4
Institute for Research Excellence in Learning Sciences, a teacher to master the pedagogical content knowledge
National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei, Taiwan

123
2 M.-H. Lee et al.

(PCK) for a single subject, it would be even more difficult possible combinations of STEM knowledge. By recruiting
for him or her to develop PCK for interdisciplinary STEM 220 high school teachers in Taiwan, the results based on
learning. To further develop epistemic fluency (Markaus- factor analyses and structural equation modeling indicated
kaite and Goodyear 2017) for fruitful interdisciplinary that the newly developed instrument was valid and reliable.
collaboration in pedagogical design work, it is asking for a Teachers’ self-efficacy in Engineering Design and Mathe-
special breed of teachers to design lessons that will require matical Thinking plays a critical role in predicting their
a substantial amount of time and effort. The three orders of self-efficacy in Synthesized Knowledge of STEM, which
barriers articulated by Tsai and Chai (2012) would need predicts their attitudes toward STEM education. These
concerted effort to negotiate. In short, STEM education is a findings suggest that to develop more effective teacher
necessary and difficult challenge for today’s educators to professional development in STEM education, teachers’
collectively pursue workable solutions. understanding of concepts and processes that are applied
Given the current gaps in research in STEM education, through engineering design and mathematical thinking
this special issue was accepted by the journal editorial activities should be considered.
committee after review, and was initially targeted to call The third and fourth papers deal with in-service teach-
for research papers pertaining to integrative STEM edu- ers’ self-efficacy in STEM teaching. The third paper, by
cation. While we did not specifically focus on teacher Dong, Xu, Song, Fu, Chai, and Huang, examined in-service
education, the accepted submissions nonetheless heavily teachers’ self-efficacy in STEM teaching. They constructed
targeted STEM teacher professional development. Appar- a hypothesized model including teaching self-efficacy,
ently, concerns about teachers’ capacity have emerged as pedagogical design self-efficacy, discipline knowledge,
the top priority, and the technological pedagogical content administration support, and collegial support, and investi-
knowledge has also emerged as a possible partial theoret- gated their structural effects on teacher engagement. The
ical framework in STEM education. structural equation modeling results of 458 Chinese in-
service teachers showed that teacher engagement in STEM
teaching can be improved once they are more confident of
Overview of the Seven Studies their class design and teaching competencies, and if they
can get enough support from peers. The findings provide
This special issue includes seven papers, of which five insights into STEM teacher professional development.
particularly deal with teachers’ STEM teaching, and the Moreover, the fourth paper, by Geng, Jong, and Chai,
other two investigate students’ STEM learning. The first examined 235 in-service teachers’ self-efficacy and con-
paper, by Chai, reviewed 20 studies pertaining to teacher cerns about STEM education in Hong Kong. Their study
professional development for STEM education from the shows that almost half of the teachers are not quite ready
perspective of technological pedagogical content knowl- for STEM education, and that the teachers have intense
edge (TPACK). He proposes that underlying the TPACK ‘‘information,’’ ‘‘management’’ and ‘‘consequence’’ con-
framework is the notion of the teacher as a designer who cerns about implementing STEM education in Hong Kong
creates TPACK to facilitate students’ STEM learning schools. This paper suggest that it is necessary to provide
through design thinking. STEM education necessarily teachers with substantial professional development, peda-
requires teachers to integrate technology, pedagogy, and gogical support, and curricular resources for improving
associated content knowledge through design. Moreover, STEM education in practice.
the engineering design is emerging as the key focus, with It is also important to realize the importance of pre-
future research needing to examine teacher-educators’ and service teachers’ STEAM teaching competency. The fifth
teachers’ Technological Pedagogical Engineering Knowl- paper, by So, Ryoo, Park, and Choi, investigated the
edge (TPAEK). structural relationship among 238 pre-service teachers’ art
It is recognized that, in the area of research in STEM appreciation, attitude toward science, technology accep-
education, there is a lack of a validated instrument to assess tance, creative convergence competency, and teaching
teachers’ self-efficacy regarding their STEM abilities or competency regarding STEAM education in Korea. Their
knowledge. The second paper, by Lee, Hsu, and Chang, study revealed that, to foster creative convergence skills, it
developed a new survey to examine teachers’ perceived is necessary to develop pre-service teachers’ positive atti-
self-efficacy in STEM knowledge. They followed Kelley tudes toward art appreciation and science. Instead of using
and Knowles’ (2016) conceptual framework for integrated the fragmented approach (i.e., the knowledge and skills are
STEM education (which consists of four core components learned separately in each STEM discipline) with strict
including scientific inquiry, technology use, engineering disciplinary boundaries at teaching education institutions,
design, and mathematical thinking) and also Mishra and the holistic and systemic approaches (i.e., linking concepts
Koehler’s (2006) TPACK framework to illustrate the and skills through a real-world problem-solving

123
STEM Education in Asia Pacific: Challenges and Development 3

transdisciplinary context) are suggested to enhance pre- 5. Contextualizing STEM topics to current technological
service teachers’ STEAM teaching competency. advancements that address the emerging needs of
The last two papers examined whether the design of the society: especially in the areas of green technology,
learning environment and instruction facilitates STEM elderly care, biomedical science, the Internet of
learning. The sixth paper, by Hong, Lin, Chen, and Chen, Things, Artificial Intelligence, Big data, robotics, and
exemplifies how idea-centered knowledge-building peda- unmanned automated vehicles. Explicit effort in con-
gogy can be used as a theoretical principle to guide the necting the core concepts and cutting-edge technology
design of effective technological environments for foster- would help to update curricula and relate them to
ing productive STEM learning. This paper shows that students’ lived experiences.
students highly engaged in Knowledge-Building activities 6. Cultivating design-oriented problem solving with sub-
to foster community, work with ideas, and assume agency ject-specific technologies that is labeled as technolog-
and groups, were able to design high-quality STEM prod- ical content knowledge (TCK) and which can help
ucts. The final paper, by Lin, Wang, and Wu, implemented foster the students’ disciplinary ways of knowing.
interdisciplinary STEM instruction by adopting modeling- While general productivity tools such as Office
based physics programming, and explored its learning software and Web 2.0 technologies facilitate informa-
effectiveness. They found that students in the STEM group tion processing and communication, TCK are tech-
benefited from the modeling-based instruction. The above nologies that subject-matter experts use to do their
two studies provide insights into the different considera- work, and thus are tools that need to be mastered by
tions for effective learning environmental design and today’s learners.
instructional alignment. 7. Closing each STEM unit with future design challenges
to seed innovation needs. Design is future oriented,
and design begets design. Articulating future design
Challenges and Further Development challenges will foster a life-long learning disposition
among learners.
Reflectively, the papers in this special issue raise some 8. In addition to studies focusing on STEM teaching and
important issues that are pertinent in the current worldwide learning, at the curriculum level, future studies should
climate of widening participation in STEM education, and also look at how to redesign and transform the current
increasing concerns about students’ real-world problem- subject-based curriculum framework used in most
solving capacity and the twenty-first-century skills. We Asian countries into one that is more accommodative
summarize the design issues raised as follows: of STEM education.
9. At the policy level, studies are also needed to
1. Addressing the needs of schools in designing integra-
reexamine educational aims and policies in Asian
tive STEM units that improve or at least preserve
countries, while comparing with policies of more
students’ examination results while concurrently fos-
progressive countries (e.g., the United States), in order
tering their creative and collaborative authentic prob-
to better promote more coherent and integrative STEM
lem-solving capacities. Needless to say, this asks for a
curricula.
very powerful pedagogical design.
2. Negotiating equitable subject representation where the In sum, these are design issues, from the microscopic
science, mathematics, and technology teachers can (e.g., classroom) level to the macroscopic (e.g., national
accept the topic as enhancing their subject area (see policy) level, which call for collective knowledge building
also English 2017). Both mathematics and engineering from all sectors of educators, policy makers, and related
components need to feature more strongly in future stakeholders, and perhaps also student designers. The
research. advancement of integrative STEM education is about
3. Promoting technology-supported collaborative learn- pedagogically designing relevant and appropriate engi-
ing to prepare learners for the twenty-first-century neering design challenges for students to participate in
workplaces when they are doing STEM. Current design-oriented knowing.
TPACK studies reveal that teachers’ lesson designs
may still be inclined toward didactic teaching (for
example see Pringle et al. 2015).
4. Matching students’ interests and capacities, which References
implies the design of a series of modular-based
Al Salami, M. K., Makela, C. J., & de Miranda, M. A. (2017).
engineering challenges with adequate support for the Assessing changes in teachers’ attitudes toward interdisciplinary
differentiated needs of students.

123
4 M.-H. Lee et al.

STEM teaching. International Journal of Technology Design learning. Eurasia Journal of Mathematics Science and Technol-
and Education, 27, 63–88. ogy Education, 13(6), 2387–2404.
Brown, J. (2012). The current status of STEM education. Journal of Markauskaite, L., & Goodyear, P. (2017). Epistemic fluency and
STEM Education, 13(5), 7–11. professional education: Innovation, knowledgeable action and
Cavlazoglu, B., & Stuessy, C. (2017). Changes in science teachers’ actionable knowledge. Dordrecht: Springer.
conceptions and connections of STEM concepts and earthquake Mishra, P., & Koehler, M. J. (2006). Technological pedagogical
engineering. The Journal of Educational Research, 110(3), content knowledge: A framework for teacher knowledge.
239–254. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220671.2016.1273176. Teachers College Record, 108(6), 1017–1054.
English, L. D. (2017). Advancing elementary and middle school Mizell, S., & Brown, S. (2016). The current status of STEM education
STEM education. International Journal of Science and Mathe- research 2013–2015. Journal of STEM Education, 17(4), 52–56.
matics Education, 15, S5–S24. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10 Pringle, R. M., Dawson, K., & Ritzhaupt, A. D. (2015). Integrating
763-9802-x. science and technology: Using technological pedagogical con-
Kelley, T. R., & Knowles, J. G. (2016). A conceptual framework for tent knowledge as a framework to study the practices of science
integrated STEM education. International Journal of STEM teachers. Journal of Science Education and Technology, 24(5),
Education, 3(1), 11. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40594-016-0046-z. 648–662.
Lee, S. W., Min, S., & Mamerow, G. P. (2015). Pygmalion in the Tsai, C.-C. & Chai, C. S. (2012). The ‘‘third’’-order barrier for
classroom and the home: Expectations’ role in the pipeline to technology-integration instruction: Implications for teacher
STEMM. Teachers College Record, 117(9), 1–40. education. In C. P. Lim & C. S. Chai (Eds.), Building the ICT
Lou, S.-J., Chou, Y.-C., Shih, R.-C., & Chung, C.-C. (2017). A study capacity of the next generation of teachers in Asia. Australasian
of creativity in CaC2 steamship-derived STEM project-based Journal of Educational Technology, 28 (Special issue, 6) (pp.
1057–1060). http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/ajet28/tsai-cc.html

123