Editorial: Invention Education and STEM: Perspectives and Possibilities

Joanna K. Garner^1*Shiri D Vivek²Adam V. Maltese³

• ¹The Center for Educational Partnerships, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, United States
• ²College of Business, Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, Michigan, United States
• ³School of Education, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, United States

Generating solutions for society's complex problems requires a diverse workforce dedicated to technological and social innovation and sustained efforts towards invention: the process of creating new, novel, and useful products to overcome challenges that affect quality of life and productivity (Couch, et al., 2019). Historically, opportunities for K-12 learners to develop inventive acumen have been rare and inequitably distributed, partly because educators were expected to provide such experiences without the support of professional development, curricular materials, and instructional examples. These issues have become the focus of an emergent field called Invention Education (IvE). IvE uses trans-disciplinary, equity-oriented pedagogies to promote students' knowledge and agency in habitual problem finding, solution design, prototyping, fabrication, intellectual property creation, and market sector investigation (InventEd, n.d.). This Special Topic, Invention Education and STEM: Perspectives and Possibilities, presents perspectives on IvE that coalesce around four questions.In The mind of a maker: a learning framework for a continuum of K-12 invention education, Scharon, Phillips and Jones-Davis ( 2024 (Patton, 2016), noting its utility in contexts that involve uncertainty, feedback loops, and novel solutions. On a practical note, the authors argue that rubrics and eportfolios can supplement discipline-specific assessments and allow students to document their inventive competencies.Two papers build on existing literature (e.g. Maltese and Cooper, 2017) to explore how social and cultural contexts and gender relate to students' perceptions that they belong in the STEM and innovation sector. Hernandez-Perez, Alonso-Sanchez and Hernandez-Castellano (2024) foreground Bandura's (1978) Social Cognitive Theory in The lack of STEM vocations and gender gap in secondary education students. They propose that students' "perceptions of gender roles, social expectations, and environmental influences shape individual educational decisions" (p.2). In this survey of Spanish students' STEM coursework motivation, the authors identify a need for students to feel supported by adults and other role models. More than half of their sample reported low perceived support, and more females than males stated that they "didn't like" or lacked "personal capacity" to pursue STEM.In Becoming an inventor: a young Latina's narrative, Saenz, Skukauskaite and Sullivan use a case study approach to reveal nuances within these sociocultural factors as they document the development of an "inventor's identity." They elevate the voice of Lesly, a first-generation Latina college student in the United States, who draws from her experiences of participating in invention competitions and programs to internalize the identity of "inventor." Her experiences and narrative are a promising exception to other findings that young individuals from historically marginalized backgrounds may identify an inventor as someone other than themselves (Kaplan, Garner, Rush and Smith, 2023).The paper iINVENT pathways and practices: prizing the process over the product by Rowe and colleagues (Rowe, Talamantes, Well, O'Neill, Nicholson, and Rowe, 2024) describes a connected invention pathway for rural students across K-16, where elementary students participate in a 6-lesson project, middle school students participate in summer camps, and high school students investigate local community needs. The authors identify sharing and receiving feedback, using technology, near-peer mentoring, and valuing inventive processes as factors that support motivation and engagement. Rowe and colleagues present an overarching model linking such experiences to students' "emerging inventor identity." Kalainkoff, et al (Kalainkoff, Bazouche, Couch and Ott, 2025) present Developing a useinspired school and community 6th through 12th grade research and invention ecosystem leading to STEM careers: An ethnographic study of the Science Coach program. The study, which draws on Social Cognitive Career Theory (Lent, et al. 1994), describes an organization that supports teachers to coach students in research projects and invention competitions. The program embodies an ecosystem approach whereby students integrate career exploration into their educational experiences. The authors identify factors that underpin program longevity and capacity to support students from historically underserved backgrounds, including access to information about research and invention opportunities, student incentives, and the development of university and commercial partnerships.Like inventions, IvE programs benefit from being refined over time, according to Jackson, Zhang, Asante, Semerjian, Barnett, Couch, Estabrooks, Kiel and Kulkarni (2024). In Inventors emerging in-school and out-of-school: six iterations of educational design to promote equitable student engagement, the authors describe iterations of curricula emerging from a research-practitioner-community partnership that aims to solicit equitable participation among diverse students. Reported outcomes include increased self-efficacy for inventing, lower anxiety, and strategies to support learning differences. Jackson and colleagues present a framework specifying individual and social dimensions that support affective, behavioral, and cognitive engagement.Finally, in their Systematic review of invention education research landscape: state of the discipline and future directions, Dalela and Ahmed (2024) uncover topics and approaches to IvE.They note an increasing rate of publications, programmatic emphasis on broadening participation, and attention to students' identity development as well as knowledge and skill growth. Their analysis also reveals a lack of IvE research in developing countries and a need to train teachers to incorporate IvE into the curriculum. Notably, it specifies the strengths of inschool and out-of-school IvE in ways that build on the other papers in this Special Topic to inform future research.