Realising the promise of STEM education

Professor Jan Van Driel has written about the need to coordinate efforts to promote more kids to take up careers in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields.

It points to some of the initiatives happening in other parts of the world that we could learn from here in Australia, and makes a call for a true, national STEM body to fund and coordinate activities.

The stats continue to point to a strange situation where tech pervades our lives at deeper and deeper levels, yet student interest in tech-related careers is reducing. I've often wondered about tech becoming 'mundane' as the smartphone revolution took root.

How do we more clearly point to the truly amazing next generations of technology that are being researched today? I think there's a combination of problems. The media could be doing more to stop treating science and tech as the outlier interests of society. Most of the good news in the world today is coming out of research breakthroughs, and we could all use hearing more of the good news front and centre in the news, not just relegated to the novelty slot at the end of news bulletins.