The Rise of STEM
Imported science teaching model gains popularity among Chinese students
VEX Robotics, an educational program aimed at teaching young people robotics, has won widespread support from scientific institutions and corporations in its native United States and is becoming increasingly popular in China.
Xu Haoxuan, a 13-year-old middle school student in Beijing, said participating in the program has led him to think about his future career. “I want to become an excellent programmer in the future,” he told Beijing Review.
VEX Robotics is the brainchild of Innovation First International, a hi-tech company in the U.S. In cooperation with Carnegie Mellon University, the company runs international robotics competitions for primary and secondary school, as well as university students. Xu was a member of his school’s team, which won third place at the 15th VEX Asian Robotics Championship 2022.
The robotics kits used by students in the VEX Robotics program consist of over 850 parts, as well as programming software and a manual, helping students to learn and make use of computational and mechanical concepts. “I am taking extracurricular Python (a computer programming language) courses, and have joined science clubs at school,” Xu said. “I designed, programmed and built a car-shaped robot with my teammates, and we used a single-hand controller to control it.” According to him, attending the competition enriched his experience of working with others and applying the knowledge he learned in his Python classes.
VEX Robotics and its competitions are a typical example of STEM education. STEM, an acronym for science, technology, engineering and mathematics, has become a popular concept in the education field since its establishment by the U.S. National Science Foundation in the 1980s. China began embracing STEM education in the 2010s. In 2017, the Ministry of Education published new standards for science education in primary schools, including STEM education as part of them.
At the 42nd Session of the UNESCO General Conference on November 9, the organization announced the establishment of UNESCO IISTEM,
an institute for international STEM education in Shanghai, the first Category 1 UNESCO institute to be established in China.
IISTEM is now an integral part of UNESCO. The Shanghai facility is the 10th Category 1 Institute established by the organization globally, as well as the first of its kind established outside of Europe and the Americas. Its main functions include promoting inclusive, equitable, relevant and quality STEM education from early childhood to adulthood, and serving as an information exchange center, network hub, resource base and capacity-building focal point in the field of STEM education.
A booming market
According to research published by Gonyn.com, a third party industry consulting agency, in 2021, the STEM market in China exceeded 358 billion yuan ($49.4 billion), increasing 76.3 billion yuan ($10.5 billion) from the previous year. In October 2022, the average monthly active users of online STEM platforms in the country reached 32.6 million.
The rapid development of this market makes it easier for students to explore science at home, with many kinds of related educational products readily available at a click of a mouse.
Radio direction finding is the identification and location of radio wave sources. Zhang Bohong, a 13-year-old student in Beijing, has been learning the skill in class and making progress learning it on her own with the help of STEM educational products. “It’s exhausting and difficult at first, you have to keep running, searching for signals and taking down notes, which is a great challenge for one’s physical strength and tenacity,” she said. Zhang won third
place in the female pupil group of the short-distance radio direction finding contest for primary and middle school students in Beijing’s Haidian District in May 2021.
Participants in the radio direction finding competitions need to run through fields to locate concealed radios. The events began as orienteering competitions, but were transformed from a sports program to a STEM program in schools by adding electricity, geology and meteorology knowledge.
Inspired by her experience in radio direction finding, Zhang is trying to study other science subjects. “I’m interested in biology and I want to practice it more, rather than simply learning the theory. I think just theory can’t take me too far,” she told Beijing Review. In addition to experiments assigned by her teacher at school, the teenager also takes the initiative to cultivate fungi including yeast and oyster mushrooms at home.
“She bought STEM experimental products and books, and did several experiments at home ahead of studying them at school. She’s going to take chemistry next year, so she’s off to a great start,” Zhang’s mother told Beijing Review. “STEM programs are eye-opening. They have enlarged the scope of her knowledge and inspired her to explore more fields of science. Society requires talents who have mastered multidisciplinary knowledge and the ability to practice, and STEM education fits.”
More than subjects
“STEM education is not the simple sum of these subjects, but the combination and incorporation of many subjects,” Li Yongzhi, head of the National Institute of Education Sciences (NIES), said at a conference on the development of STEM education in Changchun, Jilin Province, on November 4-5.
Luo Bin, head of Beijing Haidian Teachers Training College, believes that the goal of STEM education is to promote students’ all-round abilities. “STEM education applies thinking and problem solving methods from multiple disciplines,” Luo said in her book Integrating STEM in Subject Teaching: Linking and Empowering. “It helps students build up the general views about the essence of science and macro engineering concepts, so that they can think like scientists and practice like engineers to work out complicated problems.”
As STEM education differs greatly from the traditional single subjectcentered science education in China, the process to adapt the imported teaching model to the Chinese context takes time.
“At first, there were few materials providing specific examples of STEM classes except for studies on theories and policies. But teachers want to know how to implement this type of education in the classroom,” Yin Huan, an editor at the Educational Science Publishing House, who has worked in this type of education for seven years, told Beijing Review. “So we borrowed samples from America. In 2018, we published STEM Curriculum Design Cases From America (for Elementary Students). It was a hit, with 3,000 copies sold in the first week of its release.”
Also in 2018, the NIES launched the China STEM Education 2029 Action Plan. The goals of this plan include more organizations to participate in related programs, making them accessible to students from underrepresented and underserved backgrounds, and adjusting the way they are evaluated. In 2019, it published How to Implement STEM Education, part of the 2029 action plan series of books, incorporating 16 typical cases and experiences from prestigious frontline teachers in China.
“The book draws together the fundamentals of STEM teaching in China, addresses the practical problems faced by teachers, and provides effective solutions to them,” Yin said.
On the video-sharing platform of Weixin, one of China’s most popular superapps, the official account of the China STEM Education 2029 Action Plan has uploaded 81 videos, of which 72 are examples of STEM classes. In these videos, primary and secondary school students from across the country exhibit different skills, including operating catapults, cultivating microorganisms, designing “sponge campuses,” monitoring water quality and building greenhouses. Other videos presented lectures on topics including standards for STEM classes, obstacles in implementing this type of education and student performance, aiming to provide insights and guidance for frontline teachers.
A long way to go
Although STEM education possesses undeniable potential and popularity, it is not without problems and challenges.
According to the State of Science Index 2022, an independent research study conducted by 3M Company that tracks and explores global attitudes toward science and reflects on its global impact, 93 percent of students surveyed in China said they were having trouble pursuing STEM education, compared to 84 percent globally. Having no access to related courses topped the list of complaints, cited by 89 percent of the respondents. Other reasons include unaffordable courses, students overloaded with other responsibilities and gender-based prejudice. Also, 96 percent of surveyed Chinese participants believed that diversity and inclusiveness in STEM education are critical, while 80 percent held the view that children from underrepresented and underserved backgrounds have less access to its programs.
“We call for more people to devote themselves to STEM education,” Wang Weina, an expert on product development at 3M Company, said. “The enlargement and diversity of this joint effort contribute a lot to the advancement of our society. To protect children’s dreams of becoming scientists is to protect our future.”