December 2024

On November 28, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy’s (OSTP)  National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) Committee on STEM (CoSTEM) released the new Federal Strategic Plan for Advancing STEM Education and Cultivating STEM Talent.

The updated strategic plan highlights three cross-cutting principles: access and opportunity, partnerships and ecosystem development, and transparency and accountability. The principle of transparency and accountability highlights the need for evidence-based practices.

In addition, the strategic plan focuses on five interdependent pillars: STEM engagement, STEM teaching and learning, STEM workforce, STEM research and innovation capacity, and STEM environments. Within each pillar are three objectives intended to meet the goals of the strategic plan. The STEM research and innovation capacity pillar includes the objectives of Advancing STEM Education Research, Advancing STEM Research Capacity (with a focus on HBCUs, TCUs, other MSIs, and ERIs), and Building STEM Innovation Capacity.

The strategic plan includes references to challenges and opportunities for STEM education research, noting that there is a need for education research and development (R&D) for evidence-based practice in STEM education and for broadening participation in STEM while also accounting for evaluating the efficacy of interventions developed through the federal investment in research. The strategic plan provides four approaches that CoSTEM and federal agencies could take to meet the objective of advancing STEM education research:

• Expand capacity, data/data systems, and resources to support the development and equitable scaling of evidence-based products and tools that help drive more discovery and innovation.
• Increase the use of STEM education research findings and use-inspired research to improve STEM education at all levels.
• Develop or expand the available infrastructure to share information on funding opportunities for federal R&D on STEM education, including outputs and outcomes of these opportunities.
• Increase awareness of the opportunities that exist to build STEM education and education R&D talent.

“We appreciate the attention to the important role that education research can play to advance evidence-based practice and to encourage engagement and persistence in STEM,” said AERA Executive Director Felice J. Levine.

CoSTEM is required to develop and update a five-year strategic plan for STEM education by Congressional mandate, including under the 2010 America COMPETES Act and the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act.