Highlights of Issues Discussed at the MIT STEM Meeting Held in October 2011
From Megan Rokop
On October 27 and 28th 2011, we held a meeting at MIT entitled “STEM Education: What Works, What’s Broken, How Do We Fix It?” Committed members of the STEM community from across the U.S. – including teachers, school administrators and policy leaders – worked together to tackle the complex and thorny issues raised by the title of this meeting. Below is a sampling of some important matters that were discussed at this October gathering. We welcome your feedback on these – and other – issues you feel are important, when it comes to strengthening STEM education. We look forward to hearing from you with comments, questions and suggestions. Read more.

Highlights from the many fascinating themes we covered at this meeting:

• Sharing several vignettes about what is really working right now for specific STEM schools, STEM outreach programs, and teacher professional development workshops
• Gathering information about all of the successful STEM outreach & education programs currently being implemented, and comparing them to each other, to establish best practices
• Piloting initiatives (such as Florida’s CPALMS, and MIT’s BLOSSOMS) that provide databases of educator-vetted STEM lessons, that are searchable by the state standards
• Discussing the 2010 PCAST report “Prepare and Inspire: K-12 Education in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math for America’s Future” and the recommendations therein
• Shifting away from “technology in the classroom” translating to just purchasing gadgets for classrooms (since gadgets evolve so quickly, and many students have their own, already)
• Implementing successful programs to establish mentor/mentee relationships for students of STEM, and to train scientists & engineers before visiting K-12 STEM classrooms

Examples of topics we would like to focus on during future discussions:

• Comparing the state of STEM education in many countries, to see what works, and where
• Gathering data and evaluating STEM education programs, and potentially scaling up programs based on these findings
• How we can best fit engineering, technology & computer science into K-12 education

Megan Rokop is Educational Outreach Program Director at the Broad Institute of MIT & Harvard.

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