The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology – PCAST – has just released a new report on US K-12 education in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (the STEM subjects).  The report provides, in the words of the President’s Science Advisor John Holdren, “a strategy for improving K-12 STEM education that responds to the tremendous challenges and historic opportunities facing the Nation”.

In a covering letter to President Obama, PCAST co-chairs John Holdren and Eric Lander explain that they

“ envision a two-pronged strategy for transforming K-12 education. We must prepare students so they have a strong foundation in STEM subjects and are able to use this knowledge in their personal and professional lives. And we must inspire students so that all are motivated to study STEM subjects in school and many are excited about the prospect of having careers in STEM fields. But this report goes much further than that. It includes specific and practical recommendations that your Administration can take that would help bring this two-pronged strategy to fruition. These recommendations fall under five overarching priorities: (1) improve Federal coordination and leadership on STEM education; (2) support the state-led movement to ensure that the Nation adopts a common baseline for what students learn in STEM; (3) cultivate, recruit, and reward STEM teachers that prepare and inspire students; (4) create STEM-related experiences that excite and interest students of all backgrounds; and (5) support states and school districts in their efforts to transform schools into vibrant STEM learning environments.”

“Prepare and Inspire: K-12 Education in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) for America’s Future” is a thoughtful report which captures many of the concerns that have been expressed by scientists and educators in recent years.  Reading the report, it’s clear that the group writing it were guided by four overarching ideas.

• Science, engineering and technology will be increasingly important in determining economic success in the future;
• An effective STEM education at the K-12 stage is essential to ensuring the US has an educated workforce and a strong foundation of innovators;
• Increasing science, technology an math literacy is essential to building a citizenship that makes informed decisions in a technology-driven age; and
• Everyone can appreciate the wonder of science, technology, engineering and math, if they are enabled through education to do so.

I should be clear that this is my articulation of the underlying ideas and not PCAST’s.  But these perspectives are woven into the fabric of the report, and are reflected in the analysis, conclusions and recommendations that result.

This isn’t surprising – speak to scientists and engineers in the US, or attend a large conference like the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting, and you will find similar ideas permeating the air when it comes to science in society and STEM education.

But I wonder whether this perspective, while leading to a relatively conventional and no doubt widely applauded assessment of STEM education in the US, prevented PCAST from thinking more innovatively about the challenges being faced by STEM education in an increasingly complex world.  In particular, I wonder to what extent the report overlooks the aspirations of the students it is aimed at, or new thinking on the relationship between science, technology and society coming from the social sciences.

For example, a different mix of working group members contributing to the report might quite legitimately come up with this alternative set of overarching ideas:

• Science, engineering and technology will be increasingly important in underpinning economic and societal sustainability in the future;
• An effective STEM education at the K-12 stage is essential to ensuring US citizens can contribute to and participate in the emerging science technology-driven economy;
• In the future, citizens will need to be better equipped to make informed decisions on the role and impacts of science, technology and engineering within society; and
• Everyone should have the opportunity to enrich their lives and experiences through a greater understanding and appreciation of science, technology, engineering and math.

These four alternative ideas reflect my own perspective admittedly.  But they also draw on broader conversations within the US, Europe and beyond on the roles of science in society.  More importantly, they place society and the individual at the heart of the issue, rather than economic growth.

Reading the PCAST report through the lens of these alternative ideas, it begins to look a little limited.  This isn’t really a criticism – the task at hand was clearly how to ensure US economic leadership through STEM education, rather than how to build a sustainable society.  But my fear is that if you take society too far out of the equation, economy-driven actions on STEM education will not be sustainable in the long run.

For example, the following four areas are not emphasized in the report, yet are areas I would consider are important to building a citizenship that is equipped at all levels to succeed in a technology-dependent and interconnected society:

Social enrichment through science and technology. The word “society” appears five times in the PCAST report (six if you include the executive summary).  Here’s the context in each case:

“[STEM education] will ensure our society continues to make fundamental discoveries and to advance our understanding of ourselves, our planet, and the universe”

“Although opinion polls show that most of the public believes science has a positive and significant impact on society, the general public’s comfort with STEM subjects is much more limited”

“ a basic understanding of technology and engineering is important if our children are to contribute to and compete in a rapidly changing society and an increasingly interconnected global community.”

“Technology has the potential to transform K-12 education, just as it has many other sectors of our economy and our society.”

“… teachers and schools must connect students with the dynamic world of STEM. In turn, this requires that teachers, schools, and school systems have a deep understanding of STEM activities in American society and business and that they maintain direct connections to appropriate STEM expertise.”

With the possible exception of the first instance, there is no sense of STEM education enriching and equipping society directly.  Yet if the US is to remain competitive in a science and technology-dominated world, science and technology will need to become part of the very fabric of society – and that means ensuring there is clear and personal social value attached to STEM education.  Students are not simply empty vessels waiting to be filled with a STEM education by smart teachers and fancy techniques (an idea that comes perilously close to the deficit model of science education, which assumes – erroneously – that filling people with more knowledge is the key to fostering “right” thinking).  Rather, they are individuals that need to be engaged in an education contract, where they see the value in what they are being offered.

Experiential science. For many people – myself included – the key to learning STEM subjects has always been experience.  By that I mean physical, messy, hands-on experience – where you try something, you see what happens, and you begin to get a better idea of how the world works and how you can use that knowledge.  This is lab work (or field work or kitchen science) – not book-learning, or even learning in a digital environment.  And it should be a critical part of any strategy for engaging and training students in STEM subjects.

The PCAST report does mention on a number of occasions the importance of individual experiences in STEM education.  But for an effective country-wide STEM education strategy, I would suggest that formal opportunities for experiential science need to be pushed much further up the agenda.

Here’s a quick example:  Going to a reasonably good but certainly not high-flying comprehensive school in the UK as a kid, I had physics, chemistry and biology labs every week.  Between three and six times a week I would be experiencing science in a very real and personal way.  Without a doubt this had a profound influence on my understanding and appreciation of science, and on my future career as a scientist.  As a result, I naively assumed that this is what science education is like for everyone.

Fast forward now 25 plus years.  My daughter recently graduated from ninth grade in a highly respected school in Northern Virginia.  She has an interest in science, but at the age of 15, she has never been taught in a proper lab, or had the opportunity to learn consistently through experiment and experience.  When I discovered this, I was deeply shocked.  Her science lessons consisted of book learning!  But the real tragedy is that my daughter could easily become engaged in science given half a chance.  This last year her class was scheduled to dissect a frog at the end of the year – she spent nine months anticipating the event (we had regular updates as a family on how long there was to go before the eventful day arrived).  This was pretty much going to be her experiential science-event of the year.  But when the day came, the teacher cried off with the excuse there were not enough rubber gloves to go around.

So much for experiential science, and so much for inspiring kids to get into science!

What worries me is that this was a high-achieving school in a leading school district.  If this is what’s happening there, what is the state of experiential science elsewhere in the US?

If STEM education is to get better in the US, students have to have regular and meaningful experiences of doing hands-on science.

Engaging the marginalized. If the purpose of STEM education is to ensure economic leadership, you can get away with nurturing the best and forgetting the rest.  But if the aim is a stronger, more sustainable society, STEM education must be for everyone.

There is a STEM elitism in the US, reflected in the PCAST report, that focuses on the few that can excel in STEM subjects. To be fair, the PCAST report highlights the need to engage girls and minorities.  But I get the sense that this is more to tap into their economic potential.  Yet if society as a whole is to benefit from STEM education, there needs to be an emphasis on reaching out to the marginalized – those who aren’t turned on by science and technology, those who struggle with or are intimidated by it, those who don’t cope with conventional learning styles or opportunities; those who don’t have access to effective teachers and good resources; those who always seem to get overlooked.

Going back to my daughter’s experiences, until we moved to Michigan she was in the catchment area of Thomas Jefferson High School – possibly the country’s top STEM specialist school (and highlighted in the PCAST report).  TJ has a highly competitive and intense STEM program that is designed to equip the next generation of scientists and engineers – the subjects taught, the methods used and the experiences gained far surpass any other school in the school district.  Yet it is only the intellectually elite that manage to get into to TJ – everyone else has to put up with book-learning (at least until 10^th grade, unless they were lucky enough to dissect a frog!).  I can only imagine the impact TJ-like experiences would have on students like my daughter who aren’t in the highest tier, yet have the potential to become engaged in science and technology give half a chance chance.

Another example:  Neither of my kids are particularly competitive, but they do like doing stuff that interests them.  Both of them have had opportunities to get involved in competitive science and math at school – but have not taken them because they don’t get on well with the emphasis on achievement (and beating others) rather than experience.  They represent a huge community of kids in the US who are marginalized because they just want to do cool stuff, not compete with their peers.

And one final example.  Where do special education students fit in with the US STEM education strategy?  On the economic competitive front, there’s little incentive to engage them.  But from a societal perspective, there is every reason.  This was brought home to me in the recent highly innovative and successful UK I’m A Scientist event, where I found myself engaging with teenagers from a special education school.  It made me realize that there are groups of kids out there who tend to be forgotten, but who have as much right to be exposed to and engaged in science and technology as everyone else.

A socially-relevant STEM educations strategy must be capable of reaching out to students who otherwise fall between the gaps.

Fostering a culture of learning. Another PCAST report word-count:  How many times does the word “parent” appear?  Six.  How many times is the need to support STEM education through parent engagement and involvement mentioned?  None.

Many educators would consider parental support and involvement as a major factor in a child’s education.  Parents are one of the primary contributors to a culture of learning, and can have a strong influence on the subjects their kids gravitate toward or away from.  Yet many parents struggle with STEM subjects, leaving a gap in the tapestry of inputs that will help students explore and even excel in these subjects.

I would expect a comprehensive and socially-responsive STEM education strategy to emphasize engaging with parents and equipping them to support and inspire their children.  But this is part of a larger need to develop a culture within which children are given every opportunity to explore and excel in areas that are not only of interest to them, but important to the society they are a part of.

The PCAST report gets some of the way there to supporting a culture of learning.  The emphasis on inspiration clearly reflects this, as does the recommendation to create opportunities for inspiration through individual and group experiences outside the classroom.  But there is so much more that is needed here – in the classroom, in the home, within peer groups and in the places where kids go – if a culture of learning is to be developed that gives students the opportunity to explore and embrace science, technology, engineering and math on their own terms.

This assessment probably comes across as being more down on the PCAST report than is warranted.  Certainly, the Council has done a good job of capturing mainstream concerns in the US.  But I do wonder if this has been a lost opportunity to be more innovative in rethinking STEM education in the US, and to move way from a top-down approach to education and towards a more integrated and socially-responsive approach.

But then I guess it all comes down to whether you see education as an engine of economic prosperity that leads to a better society, or education as a means to a better society that leads to economic prosperity!