Brigid Freeman is Research Fellow at Melbourne Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne. Simon Marginson is Professor of International Higher Education at the Institute of Education, University of London, and Honorary Professorial Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Higher Education, Melbourne Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne. Russell Tytler is Professor and Chair in Science Education at the Faculty of Arts and Education, School of Education, Deakin University, Australia.
Offering a timely and comprehensive survey of global trends and major initiatives in countries across the globe, this book delivers a well-researched series of reports germane for anybody in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) policy, leadership, or research. The principal aim of the book is to promote understanding and learning through global perspectives on STEM policy, history and trends, practice, and data to both widen and deepen understandings of the potential for STEM to impact society...Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students through professionals and practitioners. --D. M. Moss, University of Connecticut, for CHOICE, July 2015 Every country pays attention to STEM, and also feels a sense of crisis. This is a very interesting book to know the ongoing global competition in the knowledge society. -- Akiyoshi Yonezawa, Associate Professor, Graduate School of International Development, Nagoya University, Japan This book provides an excellent global account of the importance and nature of STEM subjects. It is the first such coverage of key matters for policymakers and will be an essential guide to governments and others looking to encourage more innovative and creative economies and their facilitating education systems. -- Professor Roger King, School of Management, University of Bath, UK The result is a useful and quite comprehensive overview of the perceptions of the need for urgent action on STEM and the various national responses to these perceptions. The chapters are written to a high standard with a good deal of quantitative information in each. Tables and graphics are clear and sharply reproduced. The data are accompanied by detailed, insightful and well-written descriptions and discussions of developments in each country along with a copious reference list...It is hard to avoid thinking that the world's STEM worries, described so fully in 'The Age of STEM', might be a global re-run of the USA's STEM roller coaster ride of the last sixty-five years. Whether or not this is the case, Freeman, Marginson and Tytler have given us a welcome portrayal of STEM across the globe. -- Neil Mudford, Visiting Fellow with UNSW, casual specialist lecturer with the University of Queensland and a member of the Australian Universities' Review editorial board, in Australian Universities' Review (vol. 57, no. 2, 2015)