Commentary The STEM/STEAM education from the theory to the practice applied in the general education today

Abstract

On May 4th, 2017, the Prime Minister issued Directive No. 16/CT-TTg on enhancing the capacity of approaches to the fourth industrial revolution, which emphasized the implementation of the STEM education in the general education curriculum. In addition, the new general education curriculum implemented in the orientation of integrating subjects in order to develop students’ abilities has set a requirement for teachers to have the integrated teaching competence, including the STEM/STEAM education. With a desire to learn from the theory to the practice of the STEM/STEAM teaching application in the general education over the past time, in this study, we used the qualitative research method at five middle schools and five public high schools in Ho Chi Minh City. The interviewees included 10 administrators and teachers (one vice principal of training affairs and one teacher from each school). The type of interview used in this study is the semi-structured interview. The research results show that teachers themselves still lack interdisciplinary knowledge and have not been fully equipped with modern teaching methods and the number of lessons, duration of lessons, as well as facilities are still limited, which are one of the factors that make it difficult to implement the STEM/STEAM education in schools.