Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Education is a

topic of intense debate globally and is seen by many educational professionals to be

a necessary and important pedagogy in improving educational standards and career
readiness for students to enter into STEM field careers. The scope of this review is to
understand the effectiveness and student engagement of STEM education from both
qualitative and quantitative analysis. Furthermore, the value and outcomes of these
two research methods will be addressed in relation to the overall aim of the STEM
programs. To determine the effectiveness of STEM education, academic studies will
be critically analysed, compared and synthesised to determine what effect STEM
education has on student educational outcomes, attitudes and Engagement. The
studies reviewed highlight different approaches in addressing this question such as,
using different pedagogies including Project Based Learning (PBL) to deliver STEM
content, studies quantifying results from standardised testing and qualitative studies
aimed at determining student engagement in STEM subjects.

Interest in STEM education has been has been growing over the last three
decades since its conception in the 1990’s by the National Science Foundation (USA)
(English, 2016) who saw that combining the disciplines would create a stronger
political voice to gain support for improving education standards in STEM fields.
Since then, there has been a sense of urgency to increase interest in STEM fields,
improve STEM specific skills and education in order to fulfill a current and future
shortage in the STEM workforce (English, 2016). This sense of urgency to increase
educational standards is due to the fastest growing occupations that depend on the
STEM fields (Moore, Johnson, Peters-Burton, & Guzey, 2015). This is not an issue
that is unique to the United States, 34 countries around the world attended the
International Council of Associations for Science Education resulting in the Kuching
Declaration recognising the need to prepare students to become future global
citizens and that policy development, research and educators needed to
acknowledge this need (Kennedy & Odell, 2014).

Many states in the U.S. have conducted in-school studies aiming to

measure the success of STEM programs. One such study conducted by S. Han,
R. Capraro and M. Capraro (2015, 2016) in Texas aimed at determining the benefit of
STEM education to mathematical ability in a PBL environment. This study focused on
six schools within the same region. Three of the schools had implemented STEM PBL
professional development courses and were conducting STEM PBL activities within
the mathematics and science classrooms, while the other three schools undertook
no STEM PBL professional development or teaching and learning activities during the
three years of the study. The main focus of the study was on measuring any gain in
mathematical proficiency of students engaged in STEM PBL education (Han, Capraro,
& Capraro, 2015, 2016). An initial analysis of the results found that Hispanic students
and low achieving students had a better growth rate through the STEM PBL
programs than other categories of students when analysing mathematical
achievement (Han, Capraro, & Capraro, 2015). Further investigation into the results
of the study found that there was no difference in growth rate for at-risk students in
either the STEM PBL stream or the non-STEM streams (Han, Capraro, & Capraro,
2016). It is further stated that while the measured results from the study pointed to
little gain in mathematical ability there could be gains in other unmeasured areas
such as attitude and socio-cognitive benefits (Han, Capraro, & Capraro, 2015, 2016).
The study results were further broken down to analyse the effect of STEM PBL on
different mathematics subjects including probability, algebra, geometry and problem
solving (Han, Rosli, Capraro, & Capraro, 2016). The study found that there was an
improvement in results but this did not occur until the students’ third year of the
STEM PBL program. This indicates that sustained engagement in STEM PBL has a
greater impact on student outcomes compared to traditional teaching methods
(Han, Rosli, Capraro, & Capraro, 2016). This view is supported by a study of a school
in Sydney Australia that has implemented a whole school approach to PBL and STEM
education (Hendry, Hays, Challinor, & Lynch, 2017). Since starting to implement the
pedagogical change, the school has seen improved results in in the lower achieving
students and has eliminated low band results in the Higher School Certificate. This
strengthens the argument that STEM PBL education is beneficial but there needs to
be consistency in approach.

Additionally, J. Gnagey and S. Lavertu (2016) studied the impact of

inclusive STEM High Schools in Ohio USA, aiming to quantify the effects of STEM
education. The aim of the research was to estimate the effect of STEM education on
student achievement using student-level data collected on each student
participating in the study. The study used six high schools in Ohio and followed
student results for a period of mid-2006 and mid-2013 (Gnagey & Lavertu, 2016).
During this period, the researchers focused on the first two years students spent at
the inclusive STEM High School. Researchers compared the Ohio’s high school
diploma graduation tests for each cohort and compared them to standardised
testing done by students previously. It is noted by J. Gnagey and S. Lavertu (2016)
that there are concerns over the use of standardised testing to measure student
growth. This is due to the inability to estimate the full effects of STEM PBL education
from these tests. Irrespective of this, the results from the study suggest that the first
two years in the inclusive STEM schools had an overall negative impact on
achievement levels, suffered mostly in non-STEM Subjects. However, two schools
showed an increase in achievement levels in science only. It is also stated that if the
goal is to increase interest in the STEM fields then the schools, ‘may very well
achieve their goal of improving and broadening the STEM workforce’ (Gnagey &
Lavertu, 2016). This indicates that trying to quantify results for STEM education is
difficult because the aim is not necessarily an increase in test scores but an increase
in interest for the STEM fields.

While studies have been conducted to try and quantify the effect of STEM
education, other qualitative research into STEM education has aimed to determine
its benefits in other ways. A study conducted by Hernandez et al. (2014) in five
Colorado high schools has aimed to create a new scale to measure students’
‘perceptions of the interdependent nature of STEM content knowledge’. The aim
was to determine how much students understood of the interconnectedness of the
four STEM fields. The study was conducted using teams of teachers, each with a
specific teaching area, that worked together to create an engineering design project
incorporating each teaching area’s curriculum units. The students were all given a
pre-test and a post-test following the studies STEM intervention (Hernandez, et al.,
2014). The study found that students with high initial perceptions of STEM content
maintained their level of understanding. While students that had a low initial
perception of the integrated STEM content had developed positive perception of
STEM interconnection between areas.

Additionally, M. Franco and N. Patel (2017) from Wright State University in

the USA conducted research using the question, ‘In what ways do students across
the four different STEM education settings differ in their perceived experiences
related to student engagement and learning opportunities.’ The four STEM
education settings are: STEM School, STEM program within a school, Non-STEM
program within the same school and a traditional school (Franco & Patel, 2017). The
study was conducted in two different metro areas in the Midwest of the United
States. In this study, students were given 11 guiding questions and asked to respond
to them. The M. Franco & N. Patel (2017) found that from discussions over 32 focus
groups, students from STEM education schools and programs were more likely to
‘grasp the importance of student engagement, experience challenging work,
increase cognitive and emotional engagement through teacher instructional
practices and understand how course content is related to future careers and
education’ than their counterparts in traditional or non-STEM subjects. This
highlights that there is something unique affecting cognitive engagement in students
attending STEM schools and programs that traditional educational approaches lack.

Research into the effects of STEM education on student outcomes and

benefits has produced some interesting results in different contexts. The results of
the quantitative studies suggest that overall there was little or no positive gains, nor
any negative effects from STEM programs. However, low-achieving and Hispanic
students showed gains in content knowledge. The implications for teachers is that
short term exposure to STEM education does not have a profound impact on
standardised testing results. From the studies educators should also understand that
the longer a STEM PBL program was implemented the more positive the results
became. All of these studies indicate that while the results may not show
improvement in content knowledge, there may be improvement in skills that the
standardised tests do not account for. On the other hand, the Hernandez et al.
(2014) and M. Franco & N. Patel (2017), study shows that STEM education is
effective at interconnecting content for students to gain a broader view of the
subject areas indicating that soft skill, such as teamwork, are being learnt. The
implications for teachers is that students my not improve overall content knowledge
from STEM education but there is an improvement in soft skill and the
understanding of the interconnectedness of STEM fields. There is not enough
research to conclusive show that STEM education is effective or ineffective when it
comes to content knowledge and long term studies should be conducted to
determine this. It is clear that STEM education does have a positive impact on soft
skill and understanding of the STEM field.

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