STEM Education Needs STEM Communication Lessons

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This is the first of a two-part series.

According to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics forecasts, employment in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) occupations is expected to grow by 8.8% from 2018 to 2028, compared to just 5.2% growth for non-STEM occupations. This growth indicates an increasing demand for STEM professionals in the job market. Schools are aware of the trend and are offering STEM and STEAM (STEM + Arts) courses to equip students with the skills needed for our evolving workforce.

We want this generation of students to make valuable STEM discoveries in the future. But those discoveries will not benefit them or society if students never learn how to communicate their discoveries. This is no easy feat.

The information deficit model of communication, which suggested that merely providing more information leads to understanding, has long been debunked. Consider climate change. Scientists’ conveyance of global warming findings has been considered one of the largest science communication failures in history, because an emphasis on catastrophe is significantly overwhelming for people to handle (Stoknes, 2015). An audience detaches from issues when presented with grim statistics and forecasts, and apathy plays an adverse role in behavioral change. Conversely, offering positive images of a greener future, attractive and meaningful stories, and fun ways for people to reduce carbon footprints better prompt people to conserve resources and curtail global warming (Brunhuber, 2016), a major aspect of climate change. For example, Jon Christensen reworked an environmental report that 50 University of California (UC) scientists shared with the United Nations (UN) so that it empowered students and staff with practical ways to contribute, such as through fun incentives to conserve water. The resulting report was solutions-oriented, straightforward, and successful in changing behavior across 10 UC campuses (Brunhuber, 2016).

Likewise, priming people before delivering a controversial message can help. For example, a Yale study revealed that priming an audience’s scientific curiosity is so powerful an approach to increasing acceptance of climate findings that it even overcomes people’s political predispositions against such findings (Kahan, Landrum, Carpenter, Helft, & Jamieson, 2017).

Knowing the best ways to communicate STEM findings to others involves understanding what causes people to resist fact, reason, or action. Sometimes this involves facing deep-rooted bigotry, and other times it involves working with mental mechanics innate in every person’s mind. The latter includes behavioral economics, cognitive dissonance, motivated reasoning, and more. For example, people often deny scientific evidence of climate change due to identity, confirmation bias, detachment, or other issues. When learning that resource use and pollution emissions are at unsustainable levels, many audiences will merely deny there is a problem, such as by claiming the market or technology will resolve resource limits, or by requiring additional research findings before accepting there is a problem, or by physically shifting the problem to another local (Meadows, Randers, & Meadows, 2005). Such resistance to fact prevents audiences from moving beyond the earliest stages in behavioral change models, such as the pre-contemplation stage of the Transtheoretical Model (TTM). Fortunately, teachers can teach students to understand and counter this resistance by embedding STEM communication lessons within STEM (and other existing) curricula.

To continue reading, see Part II.