Chapter 5: Reimagining Stem Education Framework Through an Emerging Synthesis

Our students face a future with increasingly complex and global problems such as pandemics and climate change. Their education will need to prepare students to be innovators and leaders to address complex problems in a context of rapidly changing social, demographic, and technological landscapes. Such education will be needed not only to prepare a more diverse population cohort, with more women and people of color in STEM fields, but also for all students and the general public who will need some STEM literacy (Carnevale et al., 2011; Langdon et al., 2011; National Academy of Engineering and National Research Council, 2014; National Science Board, 2020; Varmus et al., 2003).