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Theoretical Suggestions for the Nature of Integrated STEM Education: Notes on a “Poietic” STEM - Science & Education

One of the factors determining the social value of science is its central participation in the development of processes and products necessary for humanity, but examples from human history demonstrate that this possibility of pure science and theoretical knowledge to be reflected on human lives results from productively combining the different sciences, together with technology, mathematics and engineering, as well as ethics and aesthetics. At the same time, the problems encountered in citizens’ lives become more and more complex to be solved from any single disciplinary viewpoint, an issue that has not yet been fully addressed in education. Against the usual disciplinary separation, in recent years more holistic approaches have come to the forefront in both science and science education. In this sense, integrated STEM education is now presented as a powerful initiative to disciplinary integration with educational value, but the search for concrete solutions to some of the theoretical and practical problems posed by it is still ongoing. In this position paper, we propose a philosophical framework that sheds some light on two crucial issues in STEM: disciplinary integration and a humanist vision. With input from authors from classical and contemporary philosophy, an approach labelled as “poietic STEM” is presented, which postulates a design-based “engineering centre” for STEM based on the ancient Greek notion of poiesis. The theoretical foundations for this philosophical approach advocated for integrated STEM education are provided and, under the light of these, some aspects of the nature of STEM are analysed. Our pragmatic definition of poiesis allows us to take into account different educational dimensions.