**2.1 Why STEM education?**

The initial intent of STEM education was to build strengths in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics as a response to the declining number of students undertaking those relevant courses in high school or at university. This intent is underpinned by a perceived decline in STEM teaching quality and a high demand for STEM talents [4]. Thus, one major reason for advocating STEM education in school is to prepare the STEM workforce for the future. Nowadays, the STEM education has actually been evolving from a set of overlapping disciplines into a more integrated and interdisciplinary approach to learning and skill development [5]. This new approach enables and encourages a wider way of integration in STEM education, which includes teaching in a real-world context and combining learning in formal and informal sites. Therefore, it can be concluded that the advocation of STEM education will be beneficial to ameliorate the nation's economy and individuals' comprehensive abilities.

## **2.2 Various standpoints of integration**

People hold broad but different stances on the relationship between STEM integration and education. At the national macro level, policymakers regard STEM integration as a correlation between school education and the development of the social economy. That is, positive STEM education is perceived to contribute to staying economically competitive on a global level. At the individual micro level, educators view STEM integration as an educational approach which might help students become critically literate citizens and procure financially secure employment in their adult lives [1]. Despite different understandings of integration at the macro- and micro-levels, both policymakers and educators point to the interconnection between STEM integration and education. Actually, the literal meaning of integration is combining two or more things together. STEM integration naturally has this meaning; nonetheless, it is not equal to integration of four disciplines as the acronym of this term indicates. Thus, examining the integration on the STEM field should take a holistic and coherent view, that is, not only it comes to educational fields, but it also links to areas like society and economy.

The diversity of viewpoints of STEM integration is mainly due to different emphases on what to integrate into STEM. Some people narrowly defined STEM integration as interdisciplinary integration, with the characteristics of the blurry disciplinary boundary. Others, however, emphasize it on other facets like curriculum integration or workforce integration. Among all the views of STEM integration, the majority of its definitions are limited in curriculum integration, for example, see [6–9]. Until recent years, some scholars like Honey, Pearson, and Schweingruber have proposed a descriptive framework on STEM integration in K-12 education [10]. This framework focuses on discussing STEM integration under the background of K-12 education in a broad view, which involves a range of experiences with some degree of connection, and these experiences can be concluded into four features: goals, outcomes, nature and scope of integration, and implementation [10]. Under this circumstance, STEM integration is equivalent to integrated STEM education. In this chapter, we take this most extensive view of integration to analyze definitions or viewpoints of integrated STEM education in the mainstream literature.

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*Integrated STEM Education in K-12: Theory Development, Status, and Prospects*

Based on our literature review on various viewpoints of the integrated STEM education, four outstanding characteristics have been identified and they are counted as constituent elements of the integrated STEM education. In this section,

The first and foremost element is discipline knowledge, which involves scope and intensity. Scope refers to the range of disciplines involved in the integration, whereas intensity is the degree to which the integration has reached. As Drake and Burns pointed out, the most integrated curriculum refers to the alignment of content and context from different disciplines, considering both two main factors: the depth of knowledge within the discipline and the relationship across or beyond disciplines [11]. As it builds on the continuum ranging from within a discipline to across disciplines, it especially cares about the boundary between the disciplines. Two ends of this continuum are segregated disciplines at the beginning of the continuum and integrated disciplines at the end of the continuum. Between them is a gradual mixture of STEM education on the basis of disciplinary knowledge [12]. Some researchers conclude four increasing levels of integration: disciplinary, multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary [13–16]. Similarly, others propose three gradually complexed forms of integration: correlated, shared, and reconstructed, for example, see [17]. In the most advanced integration level, two or more disciplines are merged into real-world problems or ill-structured problems, which help students shape their learning experience. However, most teachers feel that it is the hardest one in class practice because it takes teachers' careful planning and enough time to execute [3]. Due to this consideration, other lower forms of integration in disciplines are also adopted in practice as they are more friendly to contemporary school settings, especially introducing STEM

The teaching strategies are the second element to be considered. As we have known, in regular schooling circumstance, the implementation of STEM education relies mostly on how to rearrange the existing curriculum. Teaching strategies may make great contributions to facilitating integrated STEM education in practice. Teaching strategies can be described in many ways. From the epistemological perspective, there are three broad categories: traditional, constructivist, and transformative; while from the perspective of the dominant role, there are two types: teacher-centered and student-centered. Among them, constructivist and transformative approach are common in integrated STEM education, and these teaching strategies are most students centered, including problem-based learning, project-based learning, science fairs, robotics clubs, invention challenges, or gaming workshops. Some of them are mature and widely used in educational fields because they have systematic methods, procedures, and even evaluation criteria. In practice, these teaching strategies can be seen as catalysts or lubricants in integrated STEM education as they have potentials to provide or construct an authentic experience for students to scaffold learning and develop skills or competencies. The project-based learning is one of these types of teaching strategies. It is an approach for students to construct knowledge through teamwork and problem-solving with scientific methods [18]. It has been used for years and involves a wide range of scientific areas where learners concentrate on group learning and presenting various outcomes [19]. Some scholars have attempted to introduce this approach to integrated STEM education to enhance students' attitudes and career aspirations in

The expectations are the third element, which is usually presented as a series of requirements (like skills and practices) for students to be future democratic

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.88141*

we will discuss these elements one by one.

education in the schools' already packed curriculum.

STEM, and their results are often positive [19–21].

**2.3 Elements of integrated STEM education**
