S.T.E.M. Education: Strategies for Teaching Learners With Special Needs (Education in a Competitive and Globalizing World)

Advancing education in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) in U.S. public schools has been at the forefront of educational issues and a national priority (President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, 2010). Although there is a need for this ambitious initiative, students with disabilities has been left out of the conversation. Individuals with disabilities have been underrepresented in STEM fields for many years. Traditionally individuals with disabilities in STEM careers lag even further behind discrepancies of race and gender in these areas. Therefore, the need to provide general and special education teachers practices and strategies to improve outcomes for students with disabilities in STEM areas is imperative.
The nation’s changing demographics and continued need to remain globally competitive makes it clear that general and special education teachers need strategies to support, instruct and engage students with disabilities in STEM education. Students in U.S. schools are academically behind their international peers in STEM areas. Currently, the United States ranks 17th in science and 25th in mathematics among other nations (National Center for Education Statistics, 2011). In the field of engineering, college programs in China and India graduated many more engineers than in the U.S. (Gerefii, Wadhwa, Rissing, & Ong, 2008). For example, in 2011, China’s engineering graduates totaled one million (Shammas, 2011), as compared to colleges in the U.S. which graduated 84,599 engineers (Deffree, 2012).
To address this pressing need to provide general and special education teachers practices and strategies to improve outcomes for students with disabilities in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, this book provides teachers and educational professionals the knowledge, skills, practices, and strategies to support learners with disabilities in STEM education. This book is intended for undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in methods courses in Colleges of Education, College of Arts and Sciences, and Institutes of Technology. More specifically, this book provides background information to prepare K-12 general and special education teachers and educational professionals in pedagogy for integrated inquiry-based teaching and learning for students with special needs in STEM concepts. This book will also help to provide: (a) ideas about adaptation to STEM content for learners with special needs to meet student learning outcomes and (b) general and special educators with the knowledge, skills and resources for effective STEM teaching and learning for students with special needs.