Disruptive innovation, labor markets, and Big Valley STEM School: network analysis in STEM education

• Published in: Cultural studies of science education 2018-03, Vol.13 (1), p.267-298
• Main Authors: Ellison, Scott, Allen, Ben
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Economic Development; Economics; Education; Education policy; Educational Policy; Educational Practices; Governance; Innovation; Innovations; Labor; Labor Market; Learning; Markets; Mathematics education; Network analysis; Original Paper; Power Structure; Science Education; Semiotics; Sociology of Education; STEM Education; Technical education; Technology education; Technology Uses in Education; Transformative Learning
• ISSN: 1871-1502; 1871-1510
• DOI: 10.1007/s11422-016-9786-9

A defining characteristic of contemporary trends in global education policy is the promotion of STEM learning in the primary, secondary, and tertiary sectors of education as a means to generate innovation and prosperity in the economy. Intertwined with common sensical assumptions about future labor markets and the transformative potential of technology in education, STEM has become a hegemonic discourse informing policy formation and educational practice. In Gramscian terms, the struggle over STEM as a discursive practice, between proponents of instrumental learning of marketable economic skills and those of education towards humanistic goals, reveals insights about the ideological characteristics of the push for STEM learning. This article explores the power dynamics behind the push for STEM learning as an ideological discourse propagated by global networks of elite policy actors and enacted by non-elite policy actors at the school level. The findings point toward a disjuncture between the discourse of elite policy actors in the US, the realities of STEM labor markets, and the actualization of this policy discourse into classroom practice. The implications of this study indicate that analyses of vertical power relations in network governance in STEM education should attend to the semiotics, materiality, and mutability of networked spaces.