Journal article
Promoting STEM literacy in K-12: a position statement
- Abstract:
- Despite international enthusiasm for STEM education, currently there are no commonly agreed upon goals of STEM education. STEM education research and practice would benefit from a common conceptualization of the goals and outcomes of STEM education. This conceptualization could guide the coordinated development of STEM curriculum, instruction, and assessment and facilitate research and communication on the systematic development and evaluation of STEM education from elementary through high school and beyond. Based on a systematic literature review, in this position paper, we propose that STEM literacy be used to conceptualize STEM education goals and outcomes. STEM literacy can be defined as a capacity for using multidisciplinary knowledge of science, technology, engineering, mathematics as well as others to solve real-world problems, forming a STEM identity, and demonstrating an understanding of how STEM works. Specifically, STEM literacy comprises three dimensions: (1) acquiring and applying science, technology, engineering, and mathematics to solve real world problems; (2) possessing a STEM identity; and (3) understanding how STEM works. Beyond the above competences, integrated STEM literacy is systems thinking, collective participation, and equitable and inclusive. We end this position paper by calling for a research agenda on STEM literacy.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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- Files:
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 1004.8KB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1007/s10956-026-10296-7
Authors
- Publisher:
- Springer Nature
- Journal:
- Journal of Science Education and Technology More from this journal
- Publication date:
- 2026-03-26
- Acceptance date:
- 2026-02-01
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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1573-1839
- ISSN:
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1059-0145
- Language:
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English
- Pubs id:
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2376842
- Local pid:
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pubs:2376842
- Deposit date:
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2026-02-17
- ARK identifier:
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Liu et al
- Copyright date:
- 2026
- Rights statement:
- ©2026 The Authors. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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