STEM education provides young people with an empirical understanding of the world. Moreover, it equips them with the tools they need to forge a career in these disciplines. It also plays a pivotal role in developing life skills and critical thinking in young people, necessary when applying their education to practical real-life situations. Below are examples of how STEM learning fosters emotional intelligence, creativity and interpersonal skills, to name just a few. 

1. Problem Solving

The STEM subjects can help a young person strengthen their problem-solving skills through harnessing their intuition and responding to problems in a pragmatic manner. They are presented with simple and complex problems that they can explore multiple solutions for, ousting linear thought patterns and boosting creativity. STEM education encourages young people to think outside the box when solving a problem. This is a transferable skill that they can utilise in a real-world setting. 

2. Critical Thinking

STEM education nurtures critical thinking through experiential learning. When conducting a science experiment, a student can make predictions based on the variables in the experiment and their observations throughout employing logic and reasoning to back up their decisions.The process of reflection following an experiment fuels critical thinking as students analyse why their predictions were correct or incorrect and what factors influenced this. They can use the data gathered to inform future experiments.

3. Communication and Interpersonal Skills

Developing strong interpersonal skills is instrumental in preparing for the working world. STEM education can act as a driving force in this journey for young people. During STEM activities, students will often work in groups and face the setbacks and successes of the learning process together. Through a shared experience such as this, a young person can communicate their thoughts and opinions in a collaborative environment and become more receptive to others’ emotions. Respecting the viewpoints and contributions of other group members is also an integral part of group working that helps young people build healthy relationships. 

4. Creativity

Despite what it says in the title, there is a lot of room for creativity in STEM education. When urged to use their imaginations, young people will often find creative solutions to complex problems and discover new ways of going about a task. A popular STEM activity that enables students to showcase their creativity is building a hanging mobile. Throughout this activity, students learn about gravitational forces whilst being able to design their own structure, choosing their own materials and shapes. Activities like this serve as an example of how creativity is naturally embedded in STEM. Students modelling a rocket in an engineering workshop will exercise their creativity when exploring different designs. The pair go hand in hand. 

5. Technology Literacy

The dawn of the Fourth Industrial Revolution demands a skill set from the global workforce that STEM education provides. Technological fluency is an elemental part of a STEM career in the modern age. Learning this at a young age can accelerate a young person’s journey into the field. From learning how to navigate search engines and extract relevant content all the way through to coding, digital literacy sets a solid foundation upon which a student can expand their skills and knowledge and ready themselves for their professional lives.