What actually is STEM? The Importance of Clear Definitions in Research and Policymaking
“STEM” – which stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics – has become a buzzword among British politicians. There is no consensus regarding its exact definition, however, and certain fields and occupations, such as architecture and medicine, are included in some definitions of STEM but not others. This is problematic given that STEM fields are not a homogenous group. Including different fields in the term can lead to drastically different research findings, and therefore also different policy needs and outcomes.
Data from Google Trends. Scale: “Numbers represent search interest relative to the highest point on the chart for the given region and time. A value of 100 is the peak popularity for the term. A value of 50 means that the term is half as popular. A score of 0 means that there was not enough data for this term.”
Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) is increasingly being talked about in the UK (figure 1). Given that the concept of STEM has only been around since the 1990s (Blackley and Howell 2015), it is remarkable to see British MPs agreeing that “all children in the UK should be encouraged to study [STEM] subjects” and that “[i]ncreasing the number of women in STEM industries is vital for economic growth and to eliminate the gender pay gap”. Over the past 5 years or so, the UK government has funneled millions of pounds into schemes designed to encourage students into STEM (e.g. the STEM Ambassador Programme). All of these schemes are in place to address perceived societal issues, such as an underrepresentation of women in STEM. Whether these issues are actually found in research depends on how STEM is defined, however. This is problematic because there is no consensus regarding the definition of the term “STEM”.
What is STEM?
The simple answer to the question “what is STEM?” is – “it depends” or “nobody really knows”. Although increasingly an object of discussion, STEM and STEM occupations have been defined in numerous ways, depending on the perspective chosen (UNESCO 2017). For example, in the US, subjects such as sociology and political science are often included in the term, while this is uncommon in the UK. Definitions of STEM do not only vary by country, however. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) used different definitions in reports of consecutive waves of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) (OECD 2016, 2013), for instance. There is even disagreement about the subjects and occupations included in STEM between different bodies within the UK government.
While “Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics” sounds quite straight forward, looking at individual cases can illustrate the difficulty of defining which fields should fall into STEM. Take architecture, for example; it is certainly not the first subject that springs to mind when hearing “STEM”, and some public bodies such as the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), which distributed funding for teaching and research to universities and colleges until 2018, indeed exclude it from their definition of STEM. Architecture is nonetheless part of many definitions of STEM, including that of the House of Lord’s Science and Technology Select Committee, with proponents arguing that the field encompasses all aspects of STEM; science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
STEM Fields are not a Homogeneous Group
Even the fields that are frequently grouped into the category of STEM fields are quite different from each other. Hence, patterns and dynamics which tend to be attributed to STEM as a whole, such as the underrepresentation of women, often only affect certain STEM sub-fields. These sub-fields in turn may affect research findings regarding STEM on the whole.
To demonstrate this, I will use another contested STEM field as an example: health-related fields, such as medicine. It cannot be denied that health-related fields are scientific, with biology and chemistry featuring heavily. Nonetheless, due to the unique set of skills taught to practitioners in these fields, it is debated whether they “count” as STEM fields (Breiner et al. 2012). Therefore, health-related fields are often included in STEM, but equally often not included.
The in/exclusion of health-related fields has drastic consequences for research findings. In my MSc thesis, I examined STEM career aspirations of 15 year olds using PISA 2015 data. I did so using two definitions of STEM occupations, one including health-related professions, and one excluding them. My results emphasised the importance of clearly (and consistently) defining STEM. Boys were more likely to express STEM career aspirations in every single one of the 49 countries I analysed if (and only if!) STEM was defined in a way which excluded health-related professions. Including these professions changed my results considerably. Now, boys were more likely to express the wish to go into STEM in only 15 out of these 49 countries. In 20 countries, including the UK, there was no gender difference, and in 14 countries girls were in fact more likely than boys to express STEM career aspirations. These findings clearly highlight the importance of defining STEM concisely. Without doing so, one could conclude that there is a large gender gap in STEM career aspirations in the UK or, alternatively, that there is no gender gap at all.
Why does this matter for policy?
A common understanding of STEM is crucial for informed policy making. At the moment, two policymakers saying “we need more women in STEM” may be addressing quite different issues. Without defining STEM, it is unclear whether the millions of pounds spent on encouraging young people into STEM education are even necessary. If the UK does not have a gender gap in career aspirations if including health-related professions in the definition of STEM (which is often done, especially by MPs in the House of Commons), then why are we constantly talking about encouraging girls into STEM?
Of course, greater gender diversity in STEM fields (however defined) can only be a good thing. Women are indeed underrepresented in many science/technology/engineering and mathematics fields and professions, and more needs to be done to remedy this. However, the above serves to highlight (a) that we often don’t know what we’re talking about when we talk about STEM, and that (b) STEM might not be a useful concept when speaking about the underrepresentation of women in male-dominated fields (and other topics). The sub-fields which are often in/excluded in the concept of STEM simply differ too much to be grouped together.
References
Blackley, Susan, and Jennifer Howell. 2015. “A STEM Narrative: 15 Years in the Making.” Australian Journal of Teacher Education 40 (7):102–12.
Breiner, Jonathan M., Shelly Sheats Harkness, Carla C. Johnson, and Catherine M. Koehler. 2012. “What Is STEM? A Discussion about Conceptions of STEM in Education and Partnerships.” School Science and Mathematics 112 (1):3–11.
OECD. 2013. PISA 2012 Results: Ready to Learn (Volume III): Students’ Engagement, Drive and Self-Beliefs. Paris: OECD Publishing.
———. 2016. “Annex A1: Indices from the Student and School Context Questionnaire.”
UNESCO. 2017. “Measuring Gender Equality in Science and Engineering: The SAGA Toolkit.” 2. SAGA Working Paper. Paris: UNESCO Publishing.
Inga Steinberg is a DPhil candidate in Social Policy. Her research investigates the labour market returns to a Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) degree in the United Kingdom. She is investigating whether studying STEM truly "pays off" as so often assumed by British politicians. As part of this research, she will look into both gender inequalities and inequalities based on social origin. She will also trace returns over time, to see whether the increasing focus on STEM over the last two decades or so has affected the labour market outcomes of those studying STEM subjects.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect any editorial policy.