Encouraging students to study STEM

by ACARA CEO David de Carvalho

The below is an edited extract of an opening keynote address given on 26 July 2022 at the 9th STEM Education Conference in Sydney.

Developing STEM knowledge and skills in the Australian Curriculum learning areas of Mathematics, Science and Technologies enables students to model, analyse and improve solutions to real-world problems, and it supports students to access further study and a variety of careers and jobs within or outside of STEM fields.?

But how do we encourage students to take up STEM subjects, particularly higher-level maths and science subjects, in senior secondary schooling??The temptation here might be simply to say, as I have just done, “It will help you get a job.”?

But the response of the sceptical teenager is likely to be “Really? Is that it? Is that all you’ve got?”?The question is fair enough, and cannot be avoided by banging on about economic growth or technological progress.?

“Really? Is that it?” a sceptical teenager might ask.        

It is vitally important that education is not seen exclusively through a utilitarian lens, as just being about getting a job and being at the service of the economy or the national community more broadly. They are important outcomes of education, but, at its most fundamental, education is about the overall development of students as human beings and equipping them to fulfil those fundamental desires that are common to us all, our fundamental orientation towards what is true, what is beautiful and what is good.??

It’s important to note that in the Rationale section of the Mathematics curriculum, we state that “Mathematics has its own value and aesthetic.”?

?Aesthetics is associated with beauty.?

In the Rationale for Science, we say “Learning science is a valuable pursuit in its own right. Students can experience the joy of scientific discovery. They can nurture their natural curiosity about the world around them.”?

In the Australian Curriculum, the Rationale for Science says: 

“Learning science is a valuable pursuit in its own right. Students can experience the joy of scientific discovery. They can nurture their natural curiosity about the world around them.”        

Recently, students had a reminder of the beauty of the world around them, a world more than worthy of their wonder, when pictures from the James Webb telescope were published by NASA.?

Such images not only appeal to our aesthetic sense, but also to our sense of wonder, giving rise to a range of questions about the meaning of what we are looking at. These photographs present a wonderful teaching opportunity.?

Teaching seems to be most effective when the student actually enjoys learning. By that, I don’t mean that every class has to be fun.?Far from it.?Learning can be fun, but fun is not necessary for learning. Learning usually involves struggle, but the tension of inquiry can be a source of joy, particularly when it is resolved in the moment of insight and understanding.?

That joy is inherently private and the taste we acquire for more of it is intrinsically motivating. Yet STEM is generally promoted by reference to extrinsic motivations, such as employment and the economy.?Those are useful motivational tools, but if that is the extent of our advocacy, it ignores the personal learning experience of the individual student.?

So what is really on offer, say, in a physics class? As Matthew B. Crawford has written:?

“The math instils a taste for rigour, and through experiment one learns intellectual responsibility: facts often astonish theory and compel one to rethink one’s position, starting anew from first principles.?In its subject matter as well as its method, physics ennobles the mind by directing it to the permanent order of the world. One learns, first, that the world?has?such an order, and that it is intelligible. One can’t help but feel that there is some deep harmony between the natural world and our efforts to understand it, or understanding wouldn’t be so pleasurable.”?

But science and higher-level mathematics, which is its companion, are hard. 'Studying them could therefore be seen as inherently “elitist”, merely in this obvious sense: some will be demonstrably better at it than others. This sits ill with the current educational imperative of self-esteem.' (ibid).?

We might be tempted to promote science and maths because they underpin many of the technologies that make our lives more comfortable. This is a legitimate approach, but if that’s all we do, these efforts to popularise in a superficial way carry the implicit message that STEM subjects, and intellectual life more generally, must pass the test of financial and economic usefulness before we take them seriously.?

According to Crawford, one American textbook seeks to encourage the study of physics by describing, as an example of its usefulness, how modern razor blades give a smoother shave due to the use of ultra-thin films derived from plasma physics techniques. As Crawford says, “All true enough, but how drab, how utterly uninspiring.”?

Which is not to disparage the work of those razor blade engineers, but far from giving these subjects a wider appeal, this may have the opposite effect because it treats students as though they are insensitive to intellectual pleasures. This kind of anti-elitism seems, ironically, elitist, treating students as if all they are good for is - a la Charlie Chaplin in "Modern Times" - assuming their place as cogs in the economic machine.?

Perhaps the way to encourage greater uptake of STEM, particularly maths and science, is to focus on how difficult and enjoyable they are to master, how intrinsically interesting and wonderful.?

If that doesn’t work, then we are in worse shape, culturally, than we might think.?But it might be the approach that appeals to the optimistic and rebellious spirit of our young people who want to be inspired and liberated, not harnessed to the wheels of economic necessity. So why not give it a go??

Let’s make our classrooms places where students experience the interior and lasting joy of learning, regardless of whether we are having fun or whether that learning is “relevant” according to some utilitarian calculus.?

The new Australian Curriculum will hopefully make this joy a more common experience in relation to the study of STEM subjects.?