The Structures of STEM Education

STEM education is shaped by interconnected macro, meso, and micro structures that impact curriculum design, teaching practices, and learning outcomes. This book explores three distinctive STEM programmes, offering practical insights for educators, researchers, and policymakers to design, plan, and implement effective STEM opportunities that drive meaningful, transformative education. The first programme, Code to Sew, showcases a university-industry-school partnership that bridges the private-public spaces to foster innovative learning. The second programme, EPIC-STEM, takes an ecosystemic approach to building students' STEM capital through the affordance of multiple epistemic infrastructures-hackathons, consultative STEM inquiry, symposia, internships, and learning journeys-providing a scalable model across local school clusters. The third programme transcends national boundaries, enhancing teachers' capacities for STEM curriculum development with cognisance and sensitivities to the partnering country's digital transformation, education reforms, and local needs. This book is an essential resource for readers from academic or scholarly policy-making backgrounds aiming to gain deeper insights into the interconnected Structures of STEM education and how they shape meaningful, transferable learning experiences for both educators and learners.

Tang Wee Teo, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor at the National Institute of Education (NIE), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. She is the Head of the Natural Sciences and Science Education department and also the Co-Head of the Multi-centric Education, Research and Industry STEM Centre at NIE (meriSTEM@NIE). Her research focuses on equity and sociocultural issues in integrated STEM education.

List of Figures List of Tables Foreword 1 Foreword 2 Foreword 3 Preface Acknowledgements Declarations SECTION A: INTRODUCTION 1. Introduction to STEM education 2. Theoretical Framework SECTION B: UNIVERSITY-INDUSTRY STEM PARTNERSHIP 3. University-industry partnership in STEM education 4. (Micro) vignettes: Developing understanding about materials 5. (Micro) vignettes: Digital coding and sewing 6. (Micro) vignettes: Digital embroidery and sewing 7. (Macro-meso-micro) Structures of Code to Sew SECTION B SUMMARY SECTION C: LOCAL ECOSYSTEMIC STEM EDUCATION 8. Building a local STEM ecosystem 9. (Meso and micro) Structures of the EPIC-STEM hackathon 10. (Meso and micro) Structures of the EPIC-STEM inquiry projects 11. (Meso and micro) Structures of the EPIC-STEM student symposium SECTION C SUMMARY SECTION D: REGIONAL STEM EDUCATION 12. (Macro) Structures of STEM education in Asia 13. (Meso) Structures of Indonesia's education system 14. (Micro) Structures of STEM teacher capacity building in Indonesia SECTION D SUMMARY SECTION E: IMPLICATIONS AND CONCLUSION 15. Implications and conclusion Index