Research and trends in STEM education: a systematic analysis of publicly funded projects

Yeping Li,Jeffrey E Froyd,Ke Wang,Yu Xiao,Sandra B Nite

doi:10.1186/s40594-020-00213-8

Abstract

Taking publicly funded projects in STEM education as a special lens, we aimed to learn about research and trends in STEM education. We identified a total of 127 projects funded by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) of the US Department of Education from 2003 to 2019. Both the number of funded projects in STEM education and their funding amounts were high, although there were considerable fluctuations over the years. The number of projects with multiple principal investigators increased over time. The project duration was typically in the range of 3–4 years, and the goals of these projects were mostly categorized as “development and innovation” or “efficacy and replication.” The majority of the 127 projects focused on individual STEM disciplines, especially mathematics. The findings, based on IES-funded projects, provided a glimpse of the research input and trends in STEM education in the USA, with possible implications for developing STEM education research in other education systems around the world.

Highlights

The rapid development of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education and research since the beginning of this century has benefited from strong, ongoing support from many different entities, including government agencies, professional organizations, industries, and education institutions (Li, 2014)
We focus on the bolded portion of the flowchart, i.e., projects funded to promote STEM education
Concluding remarks The systematic analysis of Institute of Education Sciences (IES)-funded research projects in STEM education presented an informative picture about research support for STEM education development in the USA, albeit based on only one public funding agency from 2003 to 2019

Summary

Introduction

The rapid development of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education and research since the beginning of this century has benefited from strong, ongoing support from many different entities, including government agencies, professional organizations, industries, and education institutions (Li, 2014). Studies that summarized the status of research in STEM education have used publications as the unit of their analyses (e.g., Li et al, 2019; Li et al, 2020; Margot & Kettler, 2019; Minichiello et al, 2018; Otten, Van den Heuvel-Panhuizen, & Veldhuis, 2019; Schreffler et al, 2019). Another approach, which has been used less frequently, is to study research funding. Types of funding support to education research There are different types of sources and mechanisms in place to allocate, administer, distribute, and manage funding support to education. There are two sources of funding: public and private

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