White paper and advocacy plan development

The topic of education has sparked a contentious and polarizing debate within the United States and abroad. In particular, the United States is grappling with changes in education policy and regulation. These changes, as expected come with various issues and opinions from those within the industry. For example changes to a more hybrid education model where students are learning in both an in-person and online format has caused a fundamental change is how lessons are administered. Testing procedures that not longer rely simply on multiple choice questioning, but instead incorporate a much more comprehensive assessments of student learning, require a unique teaching skill set. Even strained government education budgets are forcing school districts to accomplish better education outcomes with less financial resources. All of these elements, and more coalesce to form a very exciting but also very antagonistic education environment. It is this juxtaposition between change within the industry and its overall resistance to it that requires an update to school curriculum. No longer can be schools use the same antiquated methodologies and hope to receive a better result. Instead changes will need to be made to curriculum to ensure students are competitive in the world place a can become productive members of society (Atkinson, 2012).

To begin, globalization has created an interesting dynamic as it relates to education. Many nations are catching up and even surpassing the United States as it relates to their ability to educate children. This is caused an arms race as it relates to talent around the world, which has grave implication for the competitive position of America going forward. Without question the future of society will be heavily dependent on science, technology and math. These areas will be critical inputs into industries such as artificial intelligence, data analytics, autonomous driving, and other innovations. To better position America to compete with its international counterparts investment in STEAM related curriculum is required. This document is thus a proposal to incorporate STEAM related classes in grades K through 8 as an elective for all elementary schools (Breiner, 2012).

STEAM, which stands for science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics, are the core competencies the form the backbone of the coming technological revolution. Research has shown that the jobs of the future will be heavily related to these fields. In fact, the department of education anticipates that STEM occupations will grow roughly 9% by 2030 as compared to non-STEM related positions that are forecast to grow at just 5%. Likewise the median annual wage of these STEM related positions will be roughly $87,000 by the year 2030 as compared to just $40,000 for non-STEM related positions. It is therefore important to prepare and expose children to these subjects early as to not discourage them from participating in the material later on in life. Not only will this improve learning outcomes, but it will properly prepare students for future job prospects by exposing them to a unique learning framework.

Of the primary benefits of STEAM courses is that it focuses on providing an adaptable framework for education that highlights relationships between subject areas instead of reviewing them individually within a silo. During older curriculums, subjects where often taught in a silo without much reference to how they relate to other disciplines. For example, the marketing discipline borrowers heavily from the psychology discipline. Through a STEAM process student would be better able to determine how each of these elements relate to each other. In marketing for example, many psychological concepts are at play that allows businesses to encourage purchasing behavior. These concepts such as social proof, reciprocity, or authority are all heavily based on psychology principles that are often are not taught in the marketing course itself. It is therefore difficult for the student to connect the two without having to take the two courses separately. STEAM attempts to alter this be providing a more comprehensive approach to learning that combines multiple disciplines (Weber, 2013).

Likewise, STEAM is much more inquiry based than traditional curriculum. This is a very critical element and skill students will need to have going into the future. For one, the antiquated approach towards education was one based on regurgitating information. Here, a teacher would lecture and provide facts or theory to the student. The student would then memorize the material to simple regurgitate it for a multiple-choice test. After the text, the student would often forget the material he learned as he would repeat the process for another course or chapter. In this instance, many students learn how to take a test as oppose to learning and committing the material to long-term memory. Instead, under the old curriculum, students would simply memorize information solely to pass a test without actually adopting the material for their own development. With STEAM, the course are based on inquiry and problem solving which a student can leverage for the rest of their lives if done properly. Here, students learn how to think critically as oppose to simply memorizing information (Wang, 2011).

I am in support for this curriculum change as it enables and empowers students with a much more comprehensive set of tools. These tools will prove invaluable during the learning process for students as they develop skills that will be essentially for the future. Teachers also benefit through this curriculum change as many will be forced to improve an antiquated approach towards teaching. For one, under the STEAM approach teachers will be better able to leverage a much more flexible and empowering method of instruction. This is critical element of the STEAM approach as this flexibility allows teachers to leverage their expertise with a given subject matter. Here, instructors are better able to cater lessons using their own unique strengths and delivery. Likewise, teachers are better able to learn from each other as they adapt and perfect new techniques for instruction. The ability to use a diverse array of techniques within the classroom provides students with a much more engaging classroom setting. This engagement is particularly powerful as it helps to improve overall student outcomes as they are much more active throughout the learning process. The underlying premise of STEAM course is to connect course content with real world application. This is done primarily be engaging with students in a much inquisitive and problem-solving manner. By using real world application in a dynamic manner, STEAM courses offer students with a much more robust and comprehensive learning experience. This learning experience, ultimately leads to better student outcomes (Sanders, 2009).