Journal for STEM Education Research (2023) 6:375–384

https://doi.org/10.1007/s41979-023-00113-w

EDITORIAL

How Can Emerging Technologies Impact STEM Education?

Thomas K. F. Chiu1 · Yeping Li2

Published online: 16 November 2023

© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023

Abstract
In this editorial, we discuss the affordances and challenges of emerging technolo-
gies in designing and implementing STEM education as a planned theme of this
special issue. We view that emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence
(AI) and virtual reality, have a double-edged sword effect on STEM learning and
teaching. Exploring the effect will help provide a balanced view that simultaneously
recognizes the benefits and pitfalls of the technologies and avoids overstating either
one. This themed issue highlights how immersive and AI-driven learning environ-
ments advance and transform STEM education in different contexts. It consists of
this editorial, three research reviews, and two empirical research articles contributed
by scholars from five different regions, including Australia, Hong Kong, mainland
China, Singapore, and the USA. They discussed the educational, social, and tech-
nological effects of emerging technologies. Each article discusses to various extent
about the current research status, what and how the technologies can afford, and
what concerns the technologies may bring to STEM education.

Keywords Artificial intelligence (AI) · Computational thinking · Emerging

technologies · STEM education · Virtual reality (VR)

Introduction

Emerging technologies can drive changes throughout the educational landscape,

leading to redefinition and reshaping of STEM (science, technology, engineering,
and mathematics) education. Connecting with and developing skills in technolo-
gies is invaluable for being part of the rapidly evolving STEM learning and teach-
ing environments. STEM education should utilize the capabilities and possibilities

* Yeping Li
[email protected]
Thomas K. F. Chiu
[email protected]
1
Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
2
Texas A&M University, College Station, USA

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of technologies to create innovative learning experiences, which enhances students’

learning with new tools and environments such as artificial intelligence (AI), bio-
technology, robots, virtual reality (VR), intelligent tutoring systems, STEM digital
tools, and the next generation of learning management system. Students will need to
develop new knowledge and skills to use appropriate emerging technologies to solve
contemporary STEM real-world problems. These emerging technologies bring great
opportunities for transforming the forms and ways of interactions and collaborations
among individuals and with environments. At the same time, those changes can also
be viewed as having the potentially disruptive power to interrupt our usual practices
and policies and either to ameliorate or exacerbate social and historical inequities.
Many questions remain in virtually every aspect of the learning and teaching pro-
cess with the use of that technologies, such as students’ engagement, learning pro-
cess, learning interest, outcomes, and instructional design. These questions call for
extensive research needed to examine the untapped potential of these technologies in
ways that can advance STEM education successfully. This collection of five articles
addressed some of these questions from eastern and western perspectives through
research reviews and empirical studies with a focus on AI and immersive technolo-
gies such as VR.

Overview of the Five Articles

These five articles cover a broad range of issues related to the educational, social,
and technological effects of AI and immersive technologies on STEM education.
The first three articles used a systematics review approach to explore the edu-
cational, pedagogical, and technological effects of emerging technologies on
STEM education. The first article, written by Chng et al. (2023), demonstrates
how AI and immersive technologies advance STEM education by identifying and
reviewing 82 journal papers. The authors analyzed the papers from two perspec-
tives—doing things better and doing better things. Their findings discovered that
VR and natural language processing were two popular technologies utilized in
STEM education, that their use intended to nurture science epistemic skills, and
that AI was used to forecast students’ future STEM careers. However, they argued
that it is not evident how these technologies may contribute to the advancement
of STEM education due to their pedagogical affordances and constraints.
The second article is an analysis of 17 empirical studies by Ouyang et al.
(2023). The purpose of this review was to examine the use of AI in STEM educa-
tional assessment from three areas—academic performance assessment, learning
status assessment, and instructional quality assessment. The findings showed that
deep learning was employed in most of the AI application’s algorithm and that AI
was mostly used for evaluating students’ academic performance. They suggested
that AI can assist students acquire the capacity to think across disciplines and
provide them the tools they need to solve real-world problems by integrating their
STEM knowledge and skills. Due to the rising development of AI-based applica-
tions for educational assessment, their findings also showed that digital literacy is
a requirement for students’ and teachers’ AI usage.

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The third article is a descriptive review by Zhang et al. (2023) on computational

thinking in Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics (STEAM)
early childhood education context. They identified and selected nine journal papers
for an in-depth investigation. The results indicated that young children had positive
learning experiences in a coding-as-playground environment (Bers et al., 2019), that
they should acquire reasoning, creative, and algorithmic thinking (Angeli & Vala-
nides, 2020; Bers et al., 2019), and that there were no gender differences in compu-
tational thinking utilizing educational robotics (Angeli & Valanides, 2020).
The last two articles in this issue addressed the design and implementation and
evaluation of STEM learning and teaching with the emerging technologies across
various educational levels—PreK-12 and higher education—as well as concerns
over the use of the technologies. Specifically, the fourth article is an Australian
qualitative study by Izadinia (2023). The author examined 23 Sydney high school
students to determine how VR may be used to create an engaging learning envi-
ronment that boosts girls’ confidence, engagement, and interest in STEAM. The
results revealed that while studying STEAM using VR, girls felt more comforta-
ble and secured utilizing the immersive digital technology. The apparent increase
in self-efficacy and confidence motivated girls to pursue jobs in the field of tech-
nology by increasing their engagement and interest.
The last article, written by Majewska and Vereen (2023), investigated how under-
graduate students and their instructors in the USA regard the use of VR for biology
learning. Examining the impact of VR on the biology learning of undergraduates,
they used a questionnaire and a test and instructors’ lecture notes to gain a deeper
understanding of the advantages and difficulties that immersive technology brings
to science learning. Their findings suggested that students perceived a positive atti-
tude toward STEM and immersive technologies when learning with VR. Instructors
developed a positive attitude toward VR because they were able to interact with their
students in more authentic ways. They were concerned, however, that the technolo-
gies might exacerbate the digital divide between rural and urban areas.
In sum, the key themes that emerged from the aforementioned studies concern
the affordances and challenges in the absence of adequately designed and robust
pedagogies, along with the need of developing instructors’ and students’ skills and
repertoires. These themes demonstrate that emerging technologies are two-edged
swords. It is a great chance to advance STEM education, but we are not prepared
for it. Students and teachers may find technology easy to use, but they will always
expect more from technologies. Technologies are evolving faster than ever before;
therefore, it is important to explore and understand the opportunities and challenges
they present for transforming STEM education.
Building upon these five articles, we perceive three key opportunities and three
key challenges that are relevant in an AI- and metaverse-driven STEM education
and beyond. In the next two sections, we discuss how emerging technologies can
advance STEM instruction (three key opportunities), followed by presenting three
challenges of using the technologies in STEM education. In the last section, we
make recommendations for future research direction in the hopes that they will
stimulate further discussions among researchers and practitioners about the roles of
emerging technologies and their impact on STEM education research and practices.

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In What Ways, and to What Extent, May Emerging Technologies

Advance STEM Instruction?

Providing a More Inclusive, Diverse, and Equitable Education to Improve STEM

Workforce Development

STEM educators prioritize inclusivity, diversity, and equity to ensure a comprehen-

sive and impactful education that benefits all students (El-Hamamsy et al., 2023).
The inequalities in STEM education have negative effects on the inclusivity and
diversity of STEM careers, implying that students’ future employment prospects
may be harmed by a lack of an appropriate STEM instructional design. Since there
is a growing need for STEM professionals, not just the involved students but the
workforce and economy as a whole may be negatively impacted by the inequity in
STEM education. The inequity may be viewed in two ways—gender and digital
(Sevilla et al., 2023). Due to gender bias and stereotypes, girls are underrepresented
in STEM education and jobs. Gender stereotypes and a lack of female role models
are two important factors that discourage young girls from pursuing STEM fields
(Freedman et al., 2023; Herrmann, et al., 2016; Piatek-Jimenez et al., 2018). The
second point of view is digital inequity or divide. This is due to accessibility and
digital skills (Resta & Laferrière, 2015). Students who lack digital skills or reside
in remote regions are less likely to obtain a more comprehensive STEM education
because they lack access to the technologies and resources needed to participate in
STEM activities.
The special issue takes a new perspective at how VR and coding may encourage
more female and non-STEM students to participate in STEM activities. With the
advancement of user-friendly interface, many emerging technologies do not neces-
sitate the perceived need of acquiring specialized skills. They are designed for eve-
ryone. Students found VR beneficial and simple to use, establishing a more posi-
tive attitude toward technology and STEM learning (Izadinia, 2023; Majewska &
Vereen, 2023; Zhang et al., 2023). This is explained by Davis’ (1989) technology
acceptance model, which is a major paradigm for understanding the adoption of
new technologies in a variety of contexts. According to the model, technology self-
efficacy, perceived ease of use, usefulness to use, and attitude toward can predict
behavioral intention to, intrinsic motivation to, and actual usage of a technology.
This implies that students (boys and girls, computer enthusiasts and non-enthusi-
asts) are more motivated to use VR and coding in STEM learning (Yu et al., 2021).
This intrinsic motivation is also strongly associated with STEM interest and identity
development that can predict career choice (Chiu, 2023; Izadinia, 2023; Majewska
& Vereen, 2023). Emerging technologies empower and engage girls and computer
non-enthusiasts in STEM education, increasing their likelihood of developing a
stronger interest and identity toward STEM (Izadinia, 2023; Majewska & Vereen,
2023; Zhang et al., 2023). Furthermore, Ouyang et al.’s (2023) study revealed that
AI analytics can predict student STEM career involvement and that AI-based virtual
mentors may help students grow their STEM careers. To summarize, incorporat-
ing emerging technologies into STEM education reduces the likelihood of students

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falling behind in a way that permanently eliminates them from STEM-related fields.
It has the potential to open up the future STEM job opportunities and boost the
workforce development by offering a more equitable education.

Encouraging Other Fields to Be Included for Greater Transdisciplinary STEM

Learning

Interdisciplinary STEM education is an approach by which students learn the inter-

connectedness of the disciplines of STEM. Students analyze real-world problems by
gathering ideas from STEM disciplines and then integrating these ideas for conduct-
ing a more comprehensive analysis. This education needs to be carried out through
well-designed curriculum and innovative pedagogy. The interdisciplinary level is
affected by teachers’ perceptions and pedagogical content knowledge and students’
discipline knowledge in STEM (Margot & Kettler, 2019; Thibaut et al., 2018). For
example, teachers who have a positive attitude toward STEM and students who have
greater abilities are more likely to integrate STEM disciplines in problem-solving.
Teacher education is essential to the promotion of interdisciplinary STEM education
(Thibaut et al., 2018).
Instead of taking a focus on teacher education, in this special issue, we advocate
for the use of emerging technologies to create a learning environment conducive to
interdisciplinary learning. For example, Izadinia (2023) claimed that VR can involve
students in digital arts for STEM learning; Ouyang et al. (2023) revealed that stu-
dents may readily utilize AI to solve problems in integrated ways. These findings
could be explained by the theory of experiential learning (Fromm et al., 2021) and
interdisciplinary nature of AI (Casal-Otero et al., 2023). VR can enable experien-
tial learning, allowing students to learn via participant experience or by doing. Stu-
dents will be able to explore problems and utilize multiple discipline knowledge to
complete tasks in an authentic scenario in VR settings. AI is viewed as an inter-
disciplinary field that includes computer science, mathematics, physics, neurology,
psychology, and languages. Understanding how AI works requires interdiscipli-
nary approaches (Chiu et al., 2022). AI learning assistants also can help student to
gain interdisciplinary STEM knowledge (Carlos et al., 2023). These also imply that
emerging technologies—VR and AI—have advantages to include other disciplines
in STEM education. For example, both Izadinia (2023) and Zhang et al. (2023)
found that VR and coding can help students explore digital art and expand STEM
to STEAM. AI goes beyond STEM and often includes knowledge from other disci-
plines such as history and geography. Integrating AI in STEM would make STEM
more interdisciplinary and readily include other disciplines (Park et al., 2023).
Therefore, using emerging technologies could create a learning environment that
fosters more interdisciplinary STEM education.

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Rethinking the Major Learning Outcomes

Emerging technologies, especially AI and the metaverse, have an impact on our

society. Some of the jobs will be replaced by technologies, while others have not
yet to be created. Skills for the future workforce have evolved. To better equip the
next generation, we need to refocus our education efforts and nurture student skills,
such as computational thinking, AI literacy, creativity, leaderships, and collabora-
tive skills. These are evidenced in various global educational initiatives like STEM
education and AI education for K-12 (Casal-Otero et al., 2023; Chiu et al., 2022),
as well as design thinking and global leadership programs (Kijima et al., 2021; Li
et al., 2019a). Our education needs to adapt to the shifting nature of working envi-
ronment in the future.
The major learning outcomes of interdisciplinary STEM education include
STEM knowledge, twenty-first century competencies, interdisciplinary thinking,
and STEM interest and identity (Anderson & Li, 2020; Li et al., 2019b). This special
issue suggests that, due to the impact of emerging technologies, we should rethink
the learning outcomes of STEM education. The “T” and “E” in STEM education are
directly influenced by emerging technologies, for instance, students would design
and create their own solutions to solve a real-world problem. The “S” and “M” are
the foundational knowledge of emerging technologies; for instance, computer vision
algorithms are derived from sets of mathematical equations. The findings of the five
articles in this issue show that algorithmic and computational thinking, as well as
digital, AI, and media literacy, should be core learning outcomes of future STEM
education. To strengthen the future workforce, STEM educators and research-
ers should thus incorporate the learning outcomes in their educational or research
projects.

What Challenges and Issues May Emerging Technologies Pose

to STEM Instruction, and What New Skills Will Students and Teachers
Be Required?

Widening Digital Divide

Emerging technologies are double-edged swords and have the potential to both
lessen and exacerbate the digital divide. As previously noted, emerging technolo-
gies designed for educational purposes are accessible to a wide range of students
and user-friendly (Izadinia, 2023; Majewska & Vereen, 2023; Ouyang et al., 2023;
Zhang et al., 2023), hence reducing the digital gap in STEM education. To build
more sophisticated solutions, students need to have a firm grasp of mathematics
and hard sciences, in addition to strong technical skills in developing technologies
(Majewska & Vereen, 2023). As emerging educational technologies become more
accessible to young kids, the technologies to be utilized by young kids depend on
the school’s resources and the digital competency of the teachers, including their
technical knowledge and skills, as well as attitude and value. Most schools and

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teachers are resistant to change (Chng et al., 2023); nevertheless, incorporating new
technologies into STEM education represents a significant change for both schools
and teachers. Consequently, emerging technologies may worsen the digital divide if
schools and teachers do not receive adequate resources and professional training and
support, respectively.

Enhancing Prerequisite Skills Needed for Emerging Technology‑Enhanced STEM

Education

Emerging technologies come with the benefit of fostering new learning skills, but
they also call for the development of new prerequisite skills in order to make more
successful use of the technologies in STEM education. Despite the fact that the
educational technologies are simple to use, a strong foundation of necessary prior
knowledge is required for more effective and safe learning and teaching. Articles
in this special issue suggest that the required skills include computational thinking,
digital literacy, and AI literacy (Chng et al., 2023; Ouyang et al., 2023; Zhang et al.,
2023). We believe that it shall be beneficial for students if these skills are taught to
them in elementary or middle school. Consideration ought to be given by educa-
tional institutions to the development of basic curricula for learning and teaching
these skills.

Encountering Technical and Health Concerns

Emerging technologies in STEM education may cause technical and health concerns
in implementation. It is time-consuming for teachers to experiment with emerg-
ing technologies or design-related materials prior to STEM classes (Majewska &
Vereen, 2023). Less-well-prepared teachers are more likely to experience techni-
cal issues in STEM lessons with emerging technologies. When technological issues
arise, it is difficult or impossible to deliver an emerging technology-driven STEM
lesson. In addition, some technologies, such as VR, may pose health risks (Izadinia,
2023; Majewska & Vereen, 2023). Teacher’s knowledge of the technologies will
help lessen the incidence of these technical and health concerns. Providing relevant
professional training and support is necessary for using emerging technologies in
STEM education.

Concluding Thoughts and Future Research Directions

With the inclusion of a limited number of articles, this special issue indicates the ini-
tial stage of research in this topic area. There are still many research areas regarding
the use of emerging technologies in STEM education that are exciting but remain to
be explored. For example, a line of possible research work is the provision of safe
learning environments when employing emerging technologies in STEM education.
For the purpose of optimizing learning, emerging technologies such as AI and ava-
tars in the metaverse may capture students’ personal information such as learning

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data, body movement, and face and voice data. How the technologies collected and
used the data can associate with privacy and ethical concerns. Another issue is the
psychological safety of students. Some students may become addicted to VR and AI
and find it difficult to leave the virtual and chatbot environments. Their emotions,
such as fear or anger, may be elicited by the environments, influencing their deci-
sion-making. Even in the digital environments, maintaining psychological safety is
still very much relevant and important to promote STEM learning. Therefore, we
suggest that future research should focus on how to create safe learning environ-
ments while incorporating emerging technologies in STEM education, taking into
consideration of those ethical, privacy, and psychological concerns.
Teacher professional learning is another area that is underserved. Even though
four of the five articles addressed teacher involvement in STEM education, none of
them examined what and how to provide professional learning for the use of emerg-
ing technologies in STEM education. To successfully employ emerging technolo-
gies, teachers must have sufficient pedagogical knowledge and skills as well as digi-
tal literacy (Chng et al., 2023; Ouyang et al., 2023). Policy on ethical, privacy, and
psychological considerations necessitates the engagement of educational leaders.
We encourage future research should focus on how to design, develop, and deliver
professional learning for both teachers and leaders.
Concerning theoretical perspectives, Ouyang et al. (2023) brought up the last
line of work. Theoretical support is missing from most studies that use emerging
technologies in STEM education. According to those studies, emerging technolo-
gies for STEM education were developed and used in new ways. They discussed
how teachers and students can use technologies to teach and learn STEM sub-
jects. Most of those studies did not utilize a theoretical framework to examine and
interpret their findings. Therefore, future studies should look at their designs and
findings from certain theoretical point of view of learning and development.
We hope that the publication of this special issue will inspire researchers to
further explore and broaden the field’s knowledge of how emerging technologies
transform STEM education, as well as how theories may be developed and used to
explain and support the key role of the technologies in STEM learning and teaching.
Finally, we encourage researchers and educators to consider possible benefits and
difficulties that emerging technologies can offer to STEM education and to envision
what a bright future STEM education can be.

Funding The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article.

Data Availability The data and materials used and analyzed for the editorial were articles published in
this journal. Journal article information is accessible at the journal’s website (https://​www.​sprin​ger.​com/​
journ​al/​41979).

Declarations
Competing Interests The authors declare no competing interests.

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