The Right Tools for the Job: What’s the Role of Literacy in STEM Initiatives?

Abstract

Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines have the potential to advance secondary school knowledge and education beyond the borders of what is currently known or was believed could be possible. Projects that provide opportunities for interdisciplinary work that cross all the STEM disciplines are especially fruitful, yet knowledge is often taught in isolation, without consultation of how multiple disciplines are needed to create new understandings of the world. There are strategies and skills that might be utilized for bringing these disciplines together, especially in respect to inquiry and discovery. “Tools” of discovery and inquiry are frequently referred to as literacy tools that include reading, writing, viewing, and visually representing. Tools of communication also include speaking and listening. Regardless of the STEM discipline, these literacy tools can hold the STEM disciplines together within particular initiatives.

Many people consider technology as a tool, but it is actually content. It requires knowledge of the math and science behind it, as well as knowledge of how it is applied.

—A. Dean Fontenot, engineering educator

Learning science is a human endeavor. Scientific knowledge is an accumulation of the human pursuit, and it’s the same as history or writing novels as that accumulation of human experience.

—Helen Meyer, science educator