STEM, STEAM, IDEA, GATE, PACER, TESOL – education is rife with catchy acronyms, but sometimes they come at us so quickly that we lose track of their importance. Today, we home in on issues related to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) education and why gender equity has to be a top priority in ongoing STEM efforts. 

Try: 'Wonder Woman,' 'Girls Trip,' 'Lady Bird' Among First Recipients of ReFrame Gender Parity Stamp

Think about the last movie you saw? Did it pass the Bechdel test? Hollywood now seems to realize that the Bechdel test – while useful – is a fairly low bar for equitable representation in the entertainment industry. There is certainly more to movies than the leading ladies, so the technology, crew, and production staffs must also represent women equitably. An initiative called ReFrame hopes to highlight the studios and films that capture diversity of gender and race on their production teams. Of the top 100 movies in 2017, only 12 were given the ReFrame Stamp. In order to earn this honor, films have to “hire women in at least half of eight key production positions – writer, director, lead actor, co-lead, speaking parts, department heads and crew – with double points for women of color in key responsibilities.” The Internet Movie Database (IMBd) maintains a wealth of data about how films are staffed and so film crews and producers can apply for the stamp and display it on their respective pages. This is a fascinating way to endorse films that include parity among people of different races and genders and may be a motivating factor as producers assemble their moviemaking teams. Can you think of movies not listed that would qualify? Could there be a similar recognition for schools, districts, state legislatures, or Fortune 500 companies that achieve equal representation among all genders?

Read: Countries with Less Gender Equity Have More Women in STEM--Huh?

On occasion, we love a longer, denser read and this opinion piece from Scientific American fits the bill. The article hypothesizes that countries with more gender equality have fewer women in STEM not because free choice leads women to choose non-STEM fields, but instead because of the ways in which country-level measures of gender equality miss the social factors that drive women out of STEM. Authors Adam Mastroianni and Dakota McCoy suggest layering two assessments rather than relying on one. The Implicit Association Test (IAT) “is a well-validated tool for measuring how tightly two concepts are tied together in people’s minds….Across the world, people associated science more strongly with men than with women.” The more typical measure of gender equality is the Gender Gap Index (GGI), “which tracks indicators such as wage disparity, government representation and health outcomes.” Mastroianni and McCoy compared the two tests and found no correlation between the GGI and IAT attitudes about science and women because the GGI fails to account for social factors like gendered academic expectations. The authors conclude with a charge to educators: particularly in developed Western nations, assuming that systematic differences in career choices are due to interest or ability is dangerous because it doesn’t account for influential social factors. Instead, all genders should be given safe and interesting opportunities to learn all content areas – including STEM – so that they make truly free, informed choices about careers they want to pursue.  

Share: Explainer: what’s the difference between STEM and STEAM?

While this might be old hat for some of you, the difference between STEM and STEAM (or STE(A)M) is more than just a vowel and certainly more than a parenthetical addition– it comprises an entire pedagogical approach. Essentially, STEAM includes the addition of the arts (humanities, language arts, dance, drama, visual arts, design, and new media) and integrates them with science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. STEAM tends to be collaborative, focus on problem solving, emphasize inquiry and creativity, and highlight the various strengths students contribute to group learning. In the ongoing effort for curricular cross-disciplinarity, STEAM offers ample opportunities for students to make connections that integrate rather than isolate content areas. I’m an advocate of STEAM because it does not require the purchase of expensive curricular tools or textbooks – a practice that often puts low income or hard-to-staff schools even farther behind their wealthier peers. In fact, STEAM promotes practices that we know are beneficial for school leaders, teachers, and students: collaboration, shared planning time, and emphasis on engagement rather than management. Even more importantly, STEAM values learning styles typically attributed to students of all genders, whereas STEM still typically appeals to boys and excludes some girls. There are more free STEAM resources here and more on gender bias in curriculum at our resources page!

Lead: Edtech Should Be Only A Means, Not An End, For Your Local Schools

Forbes contributor Adam Geller offers several new ways of thinking about education technology (edtech) that are particularly useful for education leaders. He suggests that treating technology like a consumable product fosters a number of undesirable outcomes: it perpetuates the faddish nature of trends in education, it frustrates teachers who may not have sufficient training to effectively deploy edtech in classrooms, and it fosters an interest in purchasing products rather than in achieving learning outcomes. There is a different possible perspective of edtech, which Geller presents after observing one classroom: “This classroom was memorable because of the learning visible, not because of the technology.” Perhaps instead of thinking first about apps, tablets, and 1:1 ratios, we can think about what problems students ought to tackle, what learning is essential, and what technology serves those aims rather than the other way around. Drop a comment below with your best practices for inclusive, expansive uses of educational technology!

- Lauren