Challenges of STEM Education

Aida Suraya Md. Yunus

2018

Abstract

STEM initiatives and STEM education tend to be assumed as the need to strengthen science, technology, engineering and/or mathematics separately as different subjects. This paper discusses the concept of STEM education, the need to focus on STEM, and the challenges that school teachers face in implementing STEM education. STEM education requires interdisciplinary approach to teaching that integrates at least two of the subjects in STEM. Lack of STEM participation which refers to students taking up science stream in upper secondary education in Malaysian schools consequently results in the country not meeting its enrolment target of 60 percent of students in science and technology related programmes in tertiary education. This paper also highlights on the state of mathematics learning which greatly influences the success of STEM education. The main contributing factor in the poor performance of Malaysian students in international mathematics tests is the students’ inability to answer questions that require higher order thinking skills (HOTS). This has brought about revision of the school curriculum and assessment. Core competencies needed and strategies to enhance STEM education are suggested.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Md. Yunus A. (2018). Challenges of STEM Education.In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Recent Innovations - Volume 1: ICRI, ISBN 978-989-758-458-9, pages 45-52. DOI: 10.5220/0009914200450052

in Bibtex Style

@conference{icri18,
author={Aida Suraya Md. Yunus},
title={Challenges of STEM Education},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Recent Innovations - Volume 1: ICRI,},
year={2018},
pages={45-52},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0009914200450052},
isbn={978-989-758-458-9},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Recent Innovations - Volume 1: ICRI,
TI - Challenges of STEM Education
SN - 978-989-758-458-9
AU - Md. Yunus A.
PY - 2018
SP - 45
EP - 52
DO - 10.5220/0009914200450052