The Role of Technology in STEM Education: Opportunities and Challenges

Dear Colleagues,

Recent research suggests that the “T” in STEM, meaning “technology”, has been the main field of STEM education that appears in fewer scientific studies compared to science and engineering (e.g., Kozan et al., 2023). In other words, research shows that STEM fields have been integrated into STEM education at various levels, with science and engineering being the most popular fields (e.g., Kozan et al., 2023). This raises questions about the status quo of the role of “T” in STEM education and how to enhance it, and these questions are becoming increasingly important, given that technology may not only be tools or artifacts, but also entire systems and processes that produce these tools or artifacts (Honey et al., 2014). Likewise,  technology also includes the use of scientific and professional knowledge to solve performance (Stolovitch and Keeps, 2004) and engagement (Anwar et al., 2025) issues.

Accordingly, this Special Issue focuses on the current and future opportunities and challenges of the role of technology in STEM education, as well as how to enhance this role further. To this end, we invite various scholarly works including, but not limited to, systematic reviews, meta-analyses, meta syntheses, case studies, theoretical/conceptual papers, design-based research, action research, evaluation research, and empirical studies.

These submissions should also address the following themes:

• Design, development, and integration of technologies in STEM education;
• Technology-enhanced learning experiences in STEM;
• Technology-enhanced assessment and/or evaluation in STEM;
• Technology in informal/formal STEM education;
• The relationship between technology and other STEM fields;
• Systems and processes leading to technological tools for STEM education.

Submissions should also address one or more of the following overarching questions:

• Can technology include more than tools or artifacts in STEM education? If so, how?
• Does context (e.g., formal vs. informal STEM education) matter for the integration of technology into STEM education?
• How can technology relate to other STEM fields in different learning contexts?
• How can the integration of technology enhance learning in other STEM fields?
• What does technology integration mean for STEM curriculum design and development?
• What is the relationship between learning with and learning about technology in STEM?
• What are the current and/or future opportunities and/or challenges around integrating technology into STEM education?

Our goal is to contribute to an increased understanding of identifying and/or testing present and/or future opportunities and/or challenges in relation to the role of technology in STEM, as well as how to enhance its role further in STEM education in relation to science, engineering, and mathematics.

References

• Anwar, S., Butt, A. A., & Menekse, M. (2025). Utilizing an NLP-supported mobile reflection application to explore academic engagement, application engagement, and performance in engineering and physics courses. International Journal of STEM Education, 12(1), Article 41(2025). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40594-025-00551-5.
• Honey, M., Pearson, G.,& Schweingruber, H. (2014). STEM integration in K-12 education: Status, prospects, and an agenda for research. National Academies Press.
• Kozan, K., Caskurlu, S., & Guzey, S. S. (2023). Factors influencing student outcomes in K-12 integrated STEM education: A systematic review. Journal of Pre-College Engineering Education Research (J-PEER), 13(2), Article 1. https://doi.org/10.7771/2157-9288.1315.
• Stolovitch, H. D., & Keeps, E. J. (2004). Training ain’t performance. ASTD Press.

Dr. Kadir Kozan
Dr. Ahmed Ashraf Butt
Dr. Saira Anwar
Dr. Nathaniel Taeho Yu
Guest Editors

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