2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Imported from the US, STEM education has been introduced to and widely implemented in China for over a decade. Its priority is particularly promoted as China has come to a turning point called “the new development paradigm”, as the supply of high-end talents in hi-tech fields gradually lags behind and thus hinder economic development. In such context, STEM education has drawn high attention both from scholars and practitioners in China. However, while a number of academic papers and practical policy have been produced, two significant lacunae still exist. First, the exact connotation and constituent element of STEM education in the context of China remain blurred. On the one hand, as an increasing number of new buzzwords such as meta-discipline, design-based learning, and some other localized varieties emerge, the original conceptual boundaries of STEM education is fading. On the second hand, how STEM education manifests itself at practical level in the context of China is still a puzzle, as both scholars and policy makers find it hard to distinguish between polices and practices specific to STEM education and those that are not. For example, STEM education is often confused with or even equal to college-industry integration, maker education and etc., without a clear elaboration on their relationships. Second, as a scheme aimed at cultivating students’ scientific literacy and technical skills, whether STEM education has achieved its goal by improving the capacity of Chinese institutions especially at higher education level to produce quality innovative talents in hi-tech fields remains underinvestigated, as there is few empirical studies examining the effects of the implementation of STEM education on training quality of innovative talents in Chinese education institutions. Furthermore, as both the connotation and constituent element of STEM education are ambiguous, it is barely possible to reduce STEM education to lower dimensions and examine the effects of its different constituents on talents cultivation performance separately. As a result, policies tailored to a specific aspect of STEM education are hard to formulate and implement.
Based on above, this paper is committed to two research objectives, namely, to clarify the conceptual boundary and existential forms of STEM education in the context of China, and to examine the effects of the implementation of STEM education on training quality of innovative talents in Chinese higher education institutions. To achieve these goals, this paper adopts a two-stage study design; Study 1 uses content analysis based on word frequency counts to refine the accurate connotation of STEM education. By coding the archives including academic papers, policy documents, and news reports, which add up to more than fifty thousand words, it also identifies four major constituent elements - STEM education research, college-industry partnership, interdisciplinary integration, and maker education, which together constitute the very shape of STEM education in the context of China. Study 2 carries out empirical analysis. Using the sample of 36 first-tier universities in China during a five-year period and multiple data sources represented by annuals of statistics issued by each university, it investigates the effects of different constituents of STEM education on cultivation performance of innovative talents, separately.
This paper is expected to contribute to STEM education in China both theoretically and empirically. First, it delineates the boundary of STEM education and its relationships with other equally-popular concepts in the context of China, paving the way for STEM education to develop toward a indigenous theory. Second, as it examines the effects of the implementation of different STEM education activities on cultivation performance of innovative talents, it can also provide reference for policy making.