With the development of a STEM-competent workforce to sustain economic growth and national security, concerns have been raised about STEM education displacing humanities or liberal arts to the extent of marginalising these important areas (Horgan, 2018; Strauss, 2017). Despite the existing utilitarian orientation of STEM, STEM education has increasingly penetrated general school education under the umbrella of STEM literacy for all. Drawing on Bloom Taxonomy, Zollman (2012) summarised STEM learning as encompassing cognitive, psychomotor and affective domains. For the affective domain, Zollman emphasised the promotion of self-determination, self-regulation, collaborative social goals and the creation of an engaging classroom environment. The Committee on STEM Education (2018) defined a ‘STEM-literate public as one better equipped to handle rapid technological change and better prepared to participate in civil society’ (p.v). Bybee (2010, p. 31) spelt out the relationship between STEM literacy and society in more concrete terms by adapting the PISA 2006 framework. He proposed four components of STEM literacy, of which the last two have relevance to humanity:

• Recognising how STEM disciplines shape our material, intellectual and cultural worlds
• Engaging in STEM-related issues with the ideas of science, technology, engineering and mathematics as concerned, affective and constructive citizens.

These two components, particularly the latter, move beyond understanding STEM knowledge to recognising the effects of STEM by viewing STEM-related issues from a humanistic perspective. The two together, implying a humanistic perspective embracing culture and society, is important in guiding the development of STEM education and mitigating against the potentially adverse effects of technology.

In exploring reasons for learning through a STEM orientation, Chesky and Wolfmeyer (2015) focussed on the axiology of STEM education. They realised three fundamental views— the utilitarian view, which emphasises the utility of STEM; the cognitive view underscoring a higher level of understanding from progressive perspectives and a democratic view that advocates creativity, social justice and self-realisation through STEM. The last item echoes the humanistic components emphasised by Bybee.

Merriam-Webster defines humanity as the human attributes of being ‘compassionate sympathetic, or generous [behaviour] or disposition: the quality of being humane’ and ‘the quality or state of being human’. Peterson and Seligman (2004) have gone further to view humanity as a virtue comprising love, kindness and social intelligence on a par with other virtues such as wisdom, knowledge and justice. The social intelligence aspect of humanity emphasises interpersonal relevance and developing satisfying insights into one’s own motives without diminishing others (Peterson and Seligman, 2004).

Regarding tertiary education, the Committee on STEM Education in the US (CoSTEM) (2013) advocated the preparation of ‘a scientifically and computationally literate public able to critically evaluate societal issues as diverse as climate change, application of medical technologies, or alternative energy sources’ and the development of ‘a number of other competencies that are considered desirable, such as curiosity, creativity, tolerance of ambiguity, resilience in the face of setbacks and abilities to work effectively with people who have different perspectives, priorities, or intellectual approaches’ (p. 27). These competencies align well with the social intelligence aspect of humanity (Peterson and Seligman (2004).

Based on the foregoing arguments, a desirable approach to STEM education is seen as enabling future citizens to balance economic and human needs and develop technology with a caring attitude. This view can be integrated with a socio-cultural perspective on STEM education to complement the dominant cognitive perspective, focussing on creative, integrated applications of knowledge. The ultimate goal is to develop through STEM education a sustainable and humane educational orientation. This view not only comprises the notion of developing an informed citizenry, capable of critical thinking about STEM-related societal issues, but also exude a genuine concern for upholding humanity in our incessant quest for technological development. Given the many problems humans are facing, we believe a socio-cultural and humanistic perspective can help generate fresh insights into STEM education, not only to safeguard against potentially adverse effects of technology, but also to foster humans’ societal and cultural development.

On the basis of a transdisciplinary problem-solving approach (Vasquez, et al., 2015), three ways of bridging STEM and humanity are implied in the literature, though not explicitly stated as such. The first approach situates problem solving in general, or global contexts. For example, Bybee suggested six contexts for STEM education: health, energy efficiency, natural resources, environmental quality, hazard mitigation and frontiers of STEM. These contexts are further divided into three dimensions, namely, personal, social and global. In this -dimension matrix, a number of themes can be suggested that bear relevance to humanity. These themes include

• environmentally friendly behaviour;
• decisions about housing;
• quality of life, and
• distribution of food.

Although these themes have the potential for bridging STEM and humanity, the literature provides scant information as to how these ideas can be put into practice to arouse reflection, compassion and empathy— the basic tenets of humanity.

A second transdisciplinary approach is to demonstrate the relationship between STEM and humanity from a cultural perspective. The National Science Teachers Association advocated the use of a place-based, problem-solving approach to connect science and technology with students’ cultures. They argue for the use of Science-Technology-Society programmes to engage students in identifying ‘problems with local interest and impact’, using ‘local resources (human and material) to locate information that can be used in problem resolution’ (NSTA, 1990, pp. 249-250). In promulgating the new National Science Standards for Americans, the National Research Council argued that educators need to enlist cultural perspectives in understanding nature as a means of enhancing science learning’ (NRC, 2012, p. 287). Similarly, STEM education programmes can be connected to local problems rooted in one’s culture, in addition to global problems to make them more engaging for students and foster a direct and immediate concern for enhancing people’s day-to-day lives.

Third, along a different line to humanise STEM education, Herrenkohl et al. (2019) conceptualised a model for ‘language humanities’. This model emphasised the importance of developing undergraduates’ ‘relational expertise’. Such expertise included the relationship among undergraduates as mentors and between mentors and students, common knowledge of the shared understanding of the work across disciplinary approaches and the relational agency that brought the former two aspects together to inform action in university–community STEM partnership projects. Such projects engaged the undergraduates in mentoring school students to solve problems. The mentors were expected to build STEM capacity in school students to address societal needs, develop meaningful relationships and empathy through these relationships and participation in civil action to change the community and foster educational equality (Herrenkohl et al, 2019). According to the authors, such an approach could help undergraduates to become more introspective about their understanding of STEM and society, as exemplified by the following remarks:

‘Mentors joined STUDIO with different stories, developed their own answerability and took wise actions through their collective experience. They also witnessed how diverse knowledge and experiences contributed to solving problems and transformed their understanding of themselves in relation to STEM, higher education and to other people across lines of difference’. (p. 345)

To foster a closer link between STEM and humanity, it is proposed that a more concrete and purposeful approach needs to be devised, integrating the three aforementioned strategies to realise the social relevancy of STEM. One feasible way is to couple STEM with community engagement or community service. This strategy is akin to the service-learning approach, which has begun to take root in tertiary education. Community engagement has been considered a viable platform for service learning (Farinde et al, 2014), allowing participants to understand social issues, a key component of service learning, in addition to personal insights and application of knowledge (Kolenko et al. (1996). Such engagement can be coupled with project-based learning with a democratic–humanistic motive (Helle et al, 2006), which is seen as having the potential to create changes in society (Papamarcos, 2005; Kenworthy U’Ren, 2007).

In recent years, efforts have been made by local universities to incorporate service-learning components into their undergraduate programmes, such as in science education (Martinez and Bravo, 2018), engineering education (Dent et al, 2018), language learning (Bettencourt, 2015) and entrepreneurship education (McCrea, 2010). Brand et al (2019) relates service learning to the process of engaging ‘students, with a community partner through projects for the benefit of the community, while learning course material’ (p. 1). According to a study on university science students who supported school STEM activities in public schools, through partnering with teachers (Martinez and Bravo, 2018), these science students, in this process, develop their ability to empathise with school students and other social and emotional capacities. Other studies relate service learning to the building of communication and teamwork skills (Brand et al 2019) and an enhancement of self-efficacy for job-related skills, interpersonal skills and life skills (Dent et al, 2018). Service learning is regarded as transformational in a sense that it can help reconstruct the relationship between the curriculum and stakeholders involved, through human-to-human interactions to which all stakeholders contribute an important part. Thus, when different disciplinary majors are involved, participants are likely to be exposed to different perspectives across multiple domains of knowledge and practices (Martinez and Bravo, 2018).

Ruth et al (2019) reported that engineering students exposed to human-centred service-learning projects, displayed nuanced views about engineering compared with their previous views. These views were concerned with community embeddedness and civic engagement, which were conducive to the development of empathy and personal connectedness, resiliency and a positive relationship with failure and engineering self-efficacy and skills. Brand et al (2019) reported that students engaged in projects on risk assessment of natural hazards moved from apathy to engagement. In integrating service learning with entrepreneurship education, McCrea (2010) concluded,

“…service-learning projects provided valuable research and analysis to nonprofit organizations, gave undergraduate business students an opportunity to increase their civic involvement, and supported the university’s mission of community engagement and servant leadership” (p. 52).

All these observations pointed to the benefits of service learning. Astin et al (2000) argued for the increased effectiveness of providing many chances for the learners to reflect on and share their service experience in group settings. However, as Farinde et al. (2014) pointed out, service learning was underexplored as a pedagogical strategy used in formal and informal science education. This under-exploration was even truer for integrated STEM education, which emerged relatively recently compared with well-established disciplinary areas.

Although HK is embracing technology to consolidate its position as a financial hub in the Far East region, the city has been plagued by a myriad of social and environmental problems spanning demographic changes to levels of pollution. Many of these problems, particularly housing and care for the elderly, are exacerbated by the limited size of the territory. With the supply of public housing perennially lagging behind population growth, small low-quality private apartments have become the lifeline for the poor waiting for public housing allocation. Many of these so-called nano-apartments, slightly larger than a hundred square feet, are sub-divided from larger apartments to satisfy overwhelming market demands. Such sub-standard housing conditions have considerably impaired the quality of life of many families and curtailed the development of children by depriving them of the basic conditions for studying and playing.

On the cultural side, Hong Kong has become a melting pot of the East and West since becoming a British colony more than a century ago. However, many historical sites and architectures with Chinese and Western heritage have been dismantled to give way to urban development, turning Hong Kong from a fishing village to a cosmopolitan city. This change has resulted in the marginalisation of local culture. Only in recent decades has the territory become aware of the need to preserve its cultural heritage, albeit in fierce competition with economic development.

In Hong Kong, the goal of STEM education at the tertiary level is mainly to develop STEM professionals such as engineers, medical practitioners, architects and computer programmers. The connection of STEM with humanity can theoretically be made through the service-learning components recently built into these professional programmes (Siniawski et al., 2014). However, these components are largely restricted to individual major programmes, rather than transcending multiple disciplines.

Another concern for STEM education in the tertiary sector is that for STEM major studies, a lecture-based approach still dominates as a de facto approach to provide a strong disciplinary knowledge base. This approach is not likely to be conducive to the integrated application of STEM knowledge and skills for problem solving in real-world contexts. Although more innovative learning approaches have been implemented recently, they are, to a considerable extent, impeded by time constraints in covering the required subject content and students being accustomed to passive forms of learning (Bathgate et al., 2019).

To maximise the effectiveness of service learning in STEM fields, Siniawski et al. (2014) recommended several measures be put in place, including making service learning credit-bearing, integrating such learning opportunities with the formal curriculum and incorporating valid assessment measures. Although these measures were acknowledged, challenges such as the lack of time and pedagogical knowledge remained to be faced by the faculty (Shadle et al, 2017). Honey (2014) expounded on the importance of other factors such as teacher collaboration and the establishment of professional learning communities for implementing effective integrated STEM education.

The U-STEMist Scheme was a response to the call for developing young people’s capability to apply STEM to real-world problem solving, while embracing humanity. This dual goal was achieved by synergising different majors’ talents and expertise in STEM to make our society a more sustainable and caring place in which to live. The scheme was designed to overcome barriers impeding effective integrated STEM education, such as compartmentalisation of major disciplines and others discussed therein. Aside from improving undergraduates’ problem-solving abilities, such a learning experience was expected to help them develop interpersonal skills essential for teamwork and positive attitudes towards enhancing the well-being of society. Drawing on effective community engagement practices evident in other places (e.g. Martinez and Bravo, 2018; Farinde, 2014), this scheme was funded by the University Grants Committee to enhance inter-university collaboration. We coined the name ‘U-STEMists’ for the university undergraduates participating in the scheme. They included majors in either STEM fields or pre-service teachers undergoing teacher training in STEM subjects. The U-STEMists were organised into teams of four to six to undertake projects in collaboration with community partners, including non-governmental organisations, welfare bodies, schools and business enterprises, to render services to society. The scheme was developed as a joint venture of four universities in Hong Kong, namely, the Education University of Hong Kong (EdUHK), the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), the University of Hong Kong (HKU) and the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU).

Originally, we intended to align the U-STEMist Scheme with relevant on-going courses of the four university partners, all of which have recently incorporated service-learning components into their programmes. However, this initiative proved to be extremely difficult, if not impossible, because the courses of these universities varied greatly in terms of timetabling, assessment requirements and grading mechanisms. We finally decided to de-link the scheme from the universities’ curricula, allowing participants to enrol through open recruitment as a co-curricular activity.

To guide the planning and implementation of the scheme, we adapted, from Bettencourt (2015), a triadic model to depict the relationship among three stakeholders or parties in the scheme— U-STEMists, mentors and community partners— working in collaboration with one another to achieve the objectives of the scheme.

Figure. 1 Triadic inter-relationship of the three stakeholders of the U-STEMist Scheme

As an important stakeholder of this triadic relationship, the U-STEMists undertook a self-initiated project to meet the needs of the clientele of the community partners depending on the nature of the organisation. The U-STEMists worked in teams under the supervision of mentors from different faculty members from the four universities, participating voluntarily in the Scheme. They worked through a design-based, problem-solving cycle, in close collaboration with the community partners, to ensure their projects met the needs of the organisation and its clientele. Such interaction with community partners proved to be essential for service learning in STEM, because these partners would put the products to use (Brand et al., 2019). Through these projects, the U-STEMists were expected to develop the capacity for problem solving in real-world contexts through setting goals, exploring and applying knowledge, planning solutions, testing and redesigning and reflection as part of a co-created learning process (Kenworthy U’Ren, 2007).

On the basis of this triadic framework, five main features were identified throughout the scheme.

1. Strong personal and social orientation

Society only thrives with a citizenry committed to serve in the long run. At the same time, serving society enables citizens to learn and thrive as individuals, a belief fundamental to the motto of this project: ‘to learn, to serve, and to thrive’. The aim is to nurture STEM professionals and literates, such that they are capable of putting theory into practice, integrating STEM knowledge and skills through teamwork in solving community problems.

2. Dual emphasis on STEM and STEM education to meet the aspirations of the U-STEMists

Although the Scheme focused on solving problems that affect society and humanity, it emphasised the need to address these problems through education in the long term. Teacher professional development thus held the key to the realisation of this goal. However, transdisciplinary teaching could not easily take place within the present curriculum structure and school systems (Shernoff et al, 2017). Outreaching projects for schools, involving undergraduates, were perceived as a special type of service learning, as in the robotics outreach programme for secondary students (Ilori and Watchhorn, 2016) and the afterschool STEM programme for K-7 (Chittrum, 2017). Accordingly, we categorised the U-STEMist projects into two equally important types— STEM invention projects and STEM education projects— to cater to the needs of STEM majors and pre-service STEM teachers, respectively.

STEM invention projects

These projects engaged students in working with community partners, including NGOs, social service providers, businesses and government departments to address specific problems in the community. Table 1 lists some of the projects, indicating goals and community partners.

Table 1. Examples of STEM invention projects designed by U-STEMists

Apart from STEM majors, STEM education majors or pre-service teachers opting to join invention teams could benefit from authentic experiences gained from these engineering projects, thus bridging the gap in STEM teacher professional training (Shernoff et al., 2017). These experiences also fulfilled the quest for STEM teacher education to emphasise competency to address problems rather than mere mastery of disciplinary knowledge within their own disciplines (Bybee, 2010).

STEM invention projects

Kennedy and Odell (2014) argued that high-quality STEM education should, aside from the integration of technology and engineering into the curriculum, ‘provide chances to connect STEM educators with the wider STEM community’ p. 255). However, insufficient connections were observed in the curriculum to bridge scientific conceptual understanding, engineering practices, technology and mathematics in meaningful ways oriented towards real-world problem solving (Dickerson et al., 2016). Teachers, although interested in integrated STEM education, were not well prepared for implementing the system. A lack of understanding of how to teach STEM in integrated ways seemed to be a major obstacle; teaching outside their disciplines was another barrier (Shernoff et al., 2017). This challenge was especially true in introducing technology and engineering to the school curriculum, for which teachers generally lacked the expertise and experience (Bybee, 2010). Apart from pre-service teachers, outreach STEM education projects would also allow STEM majors to work as school STEM educators to develop their capacity to lead students to solve problems. Table 2 showed some examples of these type of projects.

Table 2. Examples of STEM education projects designed by U-STEMists

3. Authentic teamwork and cross-disciplinary collaboration

Current approaches to STEM education commonly involve students with a relatively homogeneous background in one or two major disciplines in a single academic institution. This practice deviates from the type of teamwork practised in real-world industries, characterised by a heterogeneous mix of people from different fields working together towards a common goal. The present situation may curtail students from developing the ability to synergise and leverage different expertise within the team and the skills to communicate with peers from different disciplines for collective problem solving. Developing an understanding of and experiencing the dynamics of teamwork in STEM problem solving is seen as an important goal for the U-STEMist projects, helping prepare STEM majors to enter STEM professions and prepare future STEM educators to develop the essential collaborative and interpersonal skills in school students.

4. Strong support from university faculties

The U-STEMists needed strong support in terms of expertise and resources to overcome the challenges they faced in addressing authentic problems with innovative solutions. Mentors from different university faculties were assigned to each team. Additional professionals were co-opted to the project team wherever possible and necessary. Furthermore, the project administrative team would also garner the essential logistical support, including the provision of laboratory or workplace facilities or essential equipment, such as computers, microcontrollers, 3-D printers and laser cutters, upon the request of individual U-STEMist teams.

5. Engagement with the community through partnership with community organisations

Engaging students with STEM-related community service can potentially bridge STEM and humanity by applying STEM knowledge to serving the community. At a practical level, U-STEMists and their community partners gain mutual benefits. The U-STEMist can gain knowledge and experience in designing and implementing integrated STEM projects for solving real-world problems or STEM education activities for promoting school STEM education. The community partner can reflect deeply on how their service to their clientele or community may be improved with the stimulations and insights brought forth by the U-STEMists. Furthermore, school partners may use this opportunity for on-site teacher professional development as the U-STEMists introduced new STEM knowledge and ideas for promoting STEM. To illustrate how the two types of U-STEMist projects have helped to engage U-STEMists with the community, three examples are presented in Boxes 1 to 3.

Box 1