Pathways to Progress and Practice: Leading the Way in STEM Education Innovations and the Workforce
A special issue of Education Sciences (ISSN 2227-7102).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 20 August 2025 | Viewed by 1564
Special Issue Editors
Interests: physics education research; STEM student success; STEM teacher education; engineering education
Interests: underrepresented students; access, resilience, retention, graduation, and workforce in STEM fields; HSI institutions; leadership and methodological issues in cross-language qualitative methodology
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Providing pathways for students to earn STEM degrees and move forward into STEM careers has been challenging for many decades, especially for those from underserved groups. Many programs aim to foster student interest in STEM at the K-12 level; however, the translation of these students to the post-secondary level continues to pose concerns for higher education researchers and administrators (decrease). With the national need for a diverse workforce to address technological and societal issues in areas including health care, cyber and national security, economic growth and stability, and climate change, it is pertinent that effective programming that spans across disciplines is shared and utilized to prepare future scientists and engineers that can directly contribute to the US workforce.
This Special Issue aims to provide higher education researchers as well as administrators with guidance on effective programs that can lead to an upward trajectory in the number of students pursuing and completing STEM degrees and moving into scientific jobs. Original research articles and reviews that provide insights to improve the current model for STEM education are welcome.
This Special Issue will provide various perspectives on programming approaches and outcomes that can be modeled at various institutions to increase the pool and success of students pursuing STEM degrees. Highlighting individual program successes may lead to an expansion of successes across institutions and/or disciplines. Research areas may include, but are not limited to, the following: recruitment and retention programs for students and/or faculty in STEM, research related to STEM teacher education programming that promotes best practices in teaching STEM to help students make connections to the content, effective informal education programs that engage undergraduates, K-12 students and/or the public in STEM activities, multidisciplinary programs that highlight faculty contributions that demonstrate effective practices, including mentoring, summer bridge programs, and teacher induction and support.
The collective works of this Special Issue may provide a variety of pathways for promoting student interest and persistence to completing a STEM degree and movement into graduate/professional schools and/or into industry jobs.
We look forward to receiving your contributions.
Prof. Dr. Donna Stokes
Dr. Elsa Gonzalez
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Education Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- STEM education
- STEM teacher education
- engineering education
- STEM student success
- resilience
- diverse workforce
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