According to Commonwealth awardee for STEM education - then Bathinda based educator now settled in Jaipur, Dr Lalit Kishore, "In the age of technology, the integration of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) is required through the combined application of these study areas in daily life and work life situations. If school supported initiatives are taken up for STEM education through team teaching, they are able to lead to enhanced critical -creative thinking, creativity and design thinking essential for requisite innovating and solution-finding competence in fast-changing technological world and life-style."
Dr Kishore has been doing and documenting short-term STEM education projects and entering the CASTME award scheme since 2018 for his own professional growth and has won the awards consecutively four years from 2018 to 2021.
Unfortunately, in India, hardly any school has tried to integrate the academic disciplines as applied subjects though the research has indicated that STEM instruction is capable of enhancing critical thinking skill, design thinking skill, lateral thinking skill, creativity, inventiveness, problem solving skill, inter-personal skills, and new-age communication skills along with knowledge-areas related cognitive skills.
In his paper "State of STEM Education in Hong Kong: A Policy Review" Professor Muhammad Ali [1], The University of Hong Kong, says that many countries are promoting STEM education to face 'global competitiveness in innovations across the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics(STEM) that relies on 'hands-on learning activities' which enable students to 'integrate and apply' by using their 'prior knowledge and skills from different subject disciplines to address real-life problems.'
It is being advocated that STEM education can be introduced at the middle school level to get familiar with a fast changing world full of opportunities and technology use.
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