Advancing the State of the Art of STEM Integration

Abstract

The inaugural issue (Volume 1, Number 1, 2000) of the Journal of STEM Education (then titled Journal of SMET Education) included an article by Nor- man Fortenberry titled An examination of NSF's programs in undergraduate education. Fortenberry provided a comprehensive summary of the National Science Foundation (NSF) undergraduate education and training programs, which he categorized in five areas for impact in SMET education - curricula and institutions, faculty, courses and laboratories, diversity, and students. He concluded, With sufficient resources, NSF can both strengthen its core pro- grams and address unmet needs and opportunities. Unmet opportunities can be grouped into five areas: (1) systemic reform of curricula and institutions, (2) high-quality instruction by faculty, (3) educational research, materials, and methods, (4) emphasis on meeting the needs of diverse student populations, and (5) student support (p. 4).Since Fortenberry's call for embracing research (area 3), discipline-based education research has advanced through the efforts of a rapidly increasing community of researchers, the emergence of engineer- ing education research (and more broadly STEM education research) centers and programs, and reports, such as, the 2012 National Research Council (NRC) report, Discipline-Based Education Research (DBER; NRC, 2012a).Discipline-based education research in science and engineering has con- tinually advanced in the past ten years. Engineering education research (EER) has been on the fast track since 2004 with a dramatic rise in the number of PhDs awarded and the establishment of new programs, even entire EER de- partments (Benson, Becker, Cooper, Griffin, & Smith, 2010). The rapid ad- vancement of EER has been documented in a series of editorials (Smith, 2006; Streveler & Smith, 2006; 2010) and EER Networking sessions at American Society for Engineering Education conferences. Smith and Streveler have orga- nized and facilitated Engineering Education Research and Innovation (EER&I) networking meetings at each ASEE annual conference since 2010. Each session was attended by between 40 and 60 representatives of engineering education research and innovation programs, departments and centers. At ASEE 2014 the networking sessions will be held at the EER Lounge, which is part of the Engineering Education Research and Innovation space in the Exhibition area.The 2012 National Research Council's Discipline-Based Education Research (DBER) report captures the state-of-the-art advances in our understanding of engineering student learning and highlights commonalities with other science-based education research programs. The DBER report is the consensus analysis of experts in undergraduate education research in physics, chemistry, biology, geosciences, astronomy, and engineering. The study committee also included higher education researchers, learning scientists, and cognitive psy- chologists. Editorials on the DBER report have been published in ASEE Prism (Singer & Smith, 2013a) and the Journal of Engineering Education (Singer & Smith, 2013b). A recent special issue of the Journal of Research on Science Teaching was devoted to Discipline-Centered Postsecondary Science Education Research.Now that the EER community has been established and is growing, it is time to explore the next major advancement, STEM integration, and the Jour- nal of STEM Education, which was established in 2000, is the ideal venue to present this editorial. Research-to-practice efforts on STEM integration are the central organizing feature of the University of Minnesota STEM Education Center, established in 2009 by co-founders Tamara Moore and Gillian Roehrig and cur- rently led by Karl Smith and Kathleen Cramer. Our purposes for this editorial are to summarize STEM integration in both K-12 and undergraduate education with a focus on U.S. and international trends. We will feature known best practices and programs both in classrooms and in research around STEM integration. …