Research Article
Reconceptualizing STEM-S Design Competence:
A Systematic Literature Review
Issue:
Volume 11, Issue 5, October 2026
Pages:
194-205
Received:
2 June 2026
Accepted:
26 August 2026
Published:
4 September 2026
DOI:
10.11648/j.ijecs.20261105.11
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Abstract: This study examines how STEM education integrating social issues (STEM-S) has been conceptualized in relation to teacher competence and instructional design. Although integrated STEM education has increasingly been connected with sustainability, socioscientific issues, citizen science, and socially relevant learning, the competence required for teachers to design STEM-S learning units remains insufficiently clarified in the literature. Guided by the PRISMA framework and complemented by snowball sampling, this systematic literature review analyzed 32 empirical, conceptual, policy-oriented, and theoretical sources published between 2005 and March 2026. The selected sources were examined through thematic synthesis to identify research trends, relevant competency frameworks, the role of social issues, design-related elements, and implications for teacher education. The findings indicate that STEM-S reflects a shift from interdisciplinary STEM integration and technical problem solving toward learning that connects STEM knowledge with social context, sustainability values, and responsible action. However, three structural gaps were identified. First, design competence is often treated as one component of broader STEM teacher competence rather than as a central construct in STEM-S teacher education. Second, social issues are frequently used as learning contexts or themes but are not fully embedded as structural components of competence. Third, the pedagogical mechanism through which real-world social issues, learner experience, interdisciplinary STEM knowledge, and sustainability values are transformed into curriculum-aligned learning units remains underdeveloped. Based on these findings, the study proposes that STEM-S design competence can be understood as an integrative professional competence connecting social context analysis, interdisciplinary STEM integration, pedagogical transformation, learning unit design, assessment, and reflection. This review provides a theoretical basis for further developing behavioral indicators, assessment tools, and teacher education activities aimed at preparing teachers to design socially responsive and sustainability-oriented STEM-S learning units.
Abstract: This study examines how STEM education integrating social issues (STEM-S) has been conceptualized in relation to teacher competence and instructional design. Although integrated STEM education has increasingly been connected with sustainability, socioscientific issues, citizen science, and socially relevant learning, the competence required for tea...
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Research Article
Re-imagining Intercultural Education in Higher Education: Recalibrating Practices and Meanings
Rania Boustar*
Issue:
Volume 11, Issue 5, October 2026
Pages:
206-215
Received:
20 August 2026
Accepted:
27 August 2026
Published:
5 September 2026
DOI:
10.11648/j.ijecs.20261105.12
Downloads:
Views:
Abstract: This paper re-imagines intercultural education in higher education by examining Moroccan university professors’ epistemic understandings and pedagogical practices of intercultural language education. It explores how the meanings and practices attached to intercultural education may both challenge and reproduce asymmetrical relations of power among cultures, languages, and knowledge systems. Adopting a qualitative research design, the study investigates university professors’ perspectives on the purposes, rationales, and pedagogical enactments of intercultural language education. Data were collected through email interviews with 25 purposefully selected university professors. The findings indicate that participants’ understandings and practices largely draw on mainstream conceptualizations of intercultural education, particularly those emphasizing cultural diversity, mutual respect, tolerance, and dialogue in language classrooms. At the same time, participants demonstrate an increasing awareness of the power relations underlying intercultural encounters and of the inequalities that can be reproduced through the privileging of Western cultures, knowledges, and perspectives in non-Western educational contexts. These findings point to a tension between established intercultural pedagogies and emerging critical understandings of culture, knowledge, and power. The paper therefore calls for a recalibration of intercultural education in higher education—one that moves beyond celebratory and essentialist notions of cultural diversity towards more critical, reflexive, and context-responsive practices that interrogate whose cultures, languages, and knowledges are legitimized in the classroom.
Abstract: This paper re-imagines intercultural education in higher education by examining Moroccan university professors’ epistemic understandings and pedagogical practices of intercultural language education. It explores how the meanings and practices attached to intercultural education may both challenge and reproduce asymmetrical relations of power among ...
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