The sources on this specific page seek to “unpack,” or critically evaluate, common knowledge about STEM. Many of these critical conversations are happening outside academia, or start in non-academic spaces and aren’t fully reflected in the scholarly literature.
The inequity that shows up in the workplaces of scientists, mathematicians, engineers, technologists, etc, also impacts in the communities affected by these technologies and developments. The resources below use feminist and other political frameworks to question and go beyond STEM practices.
What We Do To Water… by Bec Young
License: CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
Brandt, M. (2014). Zapatista corn: A case study in biocultural innovation. Social Studies of Science, 44(6), 874-900.
de la Bellacasa, M. P. (2012). 'Nothing Comes Without its World': Thinking with Care. The Sociological Review (Keele), 60(2), 197-216.
Long before the acronym "STEM" came into use, women and other people studied science, technology, engineering and math. However, the frameworks grouping these together as a discrete academic and professional category come from a particular US political and social context. The resources below (as well as some of the books on this page) discuss how STEM became an academic category.
Image (Woman Teaching Geometry) is from the British Library digital collections and is in the public domain.
Smith, C., & Watson, J. (2019). Does the rise of STEM education mean the demise of sustainability education? Australian Journal of Environmental Education, 35(1), 1-11.
McComas, W. F., & Burgin, S. R. (2020). A critique of “STEM” education: Revolution-in-the-making, passing fad, or instructional imperative? Science & Education, 29(4), 805-829.
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Excerpt from "Science Under the Scope" by Sophie Wang. License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Shared with author's permission.
In her comic, "Science Under the Scope," Sophie Wang uses mining as an extended metaphor for scientific research in order to delve into both who is doing the digging (a question of representation) and also who is impacted. Her guiding questions, as pictured, are: who is digging, where are they digging, who benefits, who is harmed, and what is the product/whose knowledge are we using. Read the full comic here.