The Role of Mathematics in STEM for Developing Twenty-First Century Skills

Twenty-first century skillsTwenty-first century skills are highly valuable in the workplace and for use in personal lives and citizenshipCitizenship. Internationally, school curriculum includes the development of critical thinkingCritical thinking, creativityCreativity, collaborationCollaboration and communicationCommunication as an expectation across all content areas, including mathematics. Integrated tasks across science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) are often seen as a vehicle to develop these skills, however STEM experiences in school often miss opportunities to engage mathematics in ways that enrich students’ mathematical understanding. It can be difficult to find strong examples of mathematically-rich integrated STEM tasksIntegrated STEM tasks. This chapter is divided into two parts. First, literature is reviewed that provides an overview of the specific contributions that mathematics makes in integrated STEM tasksIntegrated STEM tasks to each of the four main twenty-first century skillsTwenty-first century skills. Then, an overview is given of the three chapters in this section and how they each illustrate specific examples of well-designed mathematically-rich integrated STEM tasksIntegrated STEM tasks that have been used in classrooms to develop students’ twenty-first century skillsTwenty-first century skills, with implications for practice.