Purpose, Mission, and Values

Purpose, Mission, and Values

The STEM Education and Training TIG represents professional program evaluators who work within the fields of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) to improve the design, implementation, impact, and use of evaluation and research on programs, policies, partnerships, and priorities for STEM training, education, and workforce development.

Our Purpose

The evaluation of STEM Education and Training includes a broad range of disciplinary fields, professional contexts, and learning settings. We believe that evaluators working across a diverse span of fields and with a broad range of methods can benefit from a unique TIG that addresses their work within the topic of STEM. This TIG provides a professional home for evaluators who are looking for a community around STEM education evaluation.

Our Mission

To create a community of practice among STEM education and training evaluators that is forward-thinking in its approaches to evaluation and that is responsive to the needs and experiences of all evaluators working in this field. Through our efforts we hope to both improve the practice and status of STEM evaluation, and enhance our clients’ use of evaluation approaches and findings.

Our Values

We strive to create a unique space that welcomes evaluators from other TIGs and provides a professional home within AEA for this area of practice.

We strive to be inclusive, diverse, and constantly paying attention to, discussing, and responding to trends, regulations, and broader movements that have an impact on our practice in STEM evaluation.

We uphold the standards of excellence and guiding principles of the American Evaluation Association.

We support the development of a self-reflective community of practice that includes increased formal and informal communication, network building, collaboration among STEM evaluators, and the expansion of the STEM evaluation evidence base.

We highlight and promote rigorous, responsive, and transparent evaluation practice, including high quality, efficient, ethically defensible, culturally responsive, and linguistically appropriate evaluation that leads to program improvement, organizational effectiveness, and broadened participation in STEM for the public good.

We welcome evaluators who work in any sub-field of evaluating education in:

  • science, technology, engineering, and/or mathematics,
  • computer science, social sciences, health, applied mathematics and sciences, and other fields.

We include educational and training contexts ranging from:

  • integrative STEM education through an interdisciplinary lens,
  • STEAM (STEM + arts),
  • efforts focused completely on a specific STEM discipline.

We're open to STEM education initiatives in various settings from:

  • medical education,
  • STEM museum learning,
  • the Maker movement,
  • across the lifespan of learners.