STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics) education, with foci on interdisciplinarity and engineering design, is argued to provide students with contextualized learning experiences to address real-life problems and situations. These foci can provide valuable spaces to support students to address socioscientific issues (SSIs) and STSE problems (i.e., problems regarding relationships among science, technology, society and environment). However, although conceptualizations of and approaches to STEM education vary, ‘supporting a qualified STEM workforce to compete in the global economy’ has been a main narrative in dominant STEM education forms, with vocational goals also tending to usually be prioritized. Some main critiques to these orientations in STEM education have brought forward concerns regarding apparent limited considerations to sociocultural and sociopolitical aspects in STEM education and risks of undermining spaces for engaged citizenship and student actions. These limitations are particularly alarming when considering severity of many SSIs/STSE issues and problems and for profit-influences on developments in STEM fields. While using action research through a series of collaborative educational workshops, this paper examines conceptions and practices of STEM education of secondary school STEM coaches in a school district in Ontario, Canada. We focused particularly on available spaces for addressing SSIs/STSE issues and prioritizing sociopolitical actions through STEM education. Here, we argue that coaches’ background experiences (including inter/transdisciplinary teaching/learning experiences and personal experiences) and their literacy about current events seemed congruent with their apparent prioritization of Roberts’ (Competing visions of scientific literacy: the influence of a science curriculum policy image. In: Linder C, Östman L, Roberts DA, Wickman PO, Erickson G, MacKinnon A (eds) Exploring the landscape of scientific literacy. Routledge, 2011) Visions I and II forms of science literacy. They seem mainly focused on identifying and educating potential STEM workers with useful STEM skills and knowledge, while generally limiting spaces for encouraging and enabling student actions in apparently problematic STEM with relationships with other societal members and environments. We discuss significance of our findings for action-oriented STEM education.