STEM Education in Mainland China

Abstract

Despite global attention on STEM policy and STEM education research, Asian-based STEM education studies are still in an emerging state. In the current chapter, we introduce the development of STEM education in Mainland China from its historical context, the understanding of the term STEM education and its variants, and the research and practice of STEM education. Specifically, we reviewed literatures on the STEM learner and learning, STEM teaching approaches and STEM teacher development. It is found that the theoretical research has been carried out thoroughly with the foundation of studying the mature experience globally, most of the research results about STEM education and its implementation published in Chinese are still theoretical models based on the existing problems. In STEM education implementation, a few actions have been taken to promote STEM in greater educational communities, including exploring the feasible model through international education exchange among schools and teachers, adopting the comprehensive practical activity as the course format in K-12 institutes, taking problem-based and project-based learning as the basic teaching approaches, integrating formal and informal education, and building the STEM education ecology. We briefly introduce these practices in the chapter, in order to share the experience and lessons learned. With the ongoing education reform, it is expected that more empirical evidence will emerge along with the wide and in-depth implementation of STEM education in mainland China.KeywordsSTEM educationTeaching strategyPeer collaborationTeacher professional development