STEM is often highlighted as a particularly important area in today’s education and research policy. There is a strong policy focus on encouraging more people to choose STEM programmes, improving results, recruiting more girls, and increasing diversity within the field. But what exactly is the problem these policies seek to address?
Structural change
Emelie Selberg is a PhD student at CLS, and her research will focus on precisely these issues.
“I have always been interested in how we try to drive structural change, and how policy is used to translate ambitions around gender equality and diversity into practice. Earlier in my career, I worked with these issues in a more practical way, but now I want to explore them theoretically: how are problems formulated, what is taken for granted – and what is made invisible?”
The first step in her project is to analyse Sweden’s national STEM strategy, along with the input provided by actors from industry, government agencies, and at EU level. The aim is to identify how the problems are constructed within the strategy. She will use an approach known as WPR – What’s the Problem Represented to Be?
“The point of this approach is to look at the measures being proposed and, from those, understand what kind of problems they assume exist.”
Where does the problem lie?
“Say one proposed measure is ‘We need to provide further training for teachers’. Then the unspoken assumption is that teachers lack the right competence. But is that really the case? Could the problem instead be the amount of teaching time available, or the material resources schools have – such as the design of laboratory facilities? By turning the perspective around, you can make visible what is taken for granted and what is being obscured.”
A common formulation is that we need to increase girls’ interest in STEM.
“Implicitly, this suggests that girls’ choices are based on misguided judgements that need correcting. If only we show how fun and exciting technology and science really are, girls will understand better and choose the ‘right’ path.”
An old problem in a new package
But looking at research historically, people were already talking about a ‘science crisis’ in the 1950s, and the focus on technology and engineers has returned decade after decade – not only in Sweden, but globally.
“With my research, I want to broaden the discussion. Is this really a new problem this time? What exactly is it that is supposed to be solved now? And why have previous initiatives not made the problem disappear? What societal resources are we investing in these efforts – and with what effect?”
As part of the project, she also plans to interview staff at universities and higher education institutions who work with widening participation.
“I am interested in how problem formulations move between the policy level and the level of practice. The question is whether, in reality, people do the same things that the strategies prescribe – or how much actually changes,” she says.
Questions?
- Doctoral Student, Engineering Education Research, Communication and Learning in Science