The Cultivation Of STEM Teachers In USA And Its Implications

The scores of mathematics and science that America students acquire in PISA,TIMSS and other international tests are a bit lower than the average scores. The proportion that university graduates obtain STEM-related bachelor’s degree is small. The people who have STEM backgrounds are not enough to fill the STEM job vacancies. All of these may endanger America hegemony in the world. In order to maintain the position as the world leader, America begins to pay attention to and give priority to the development of STEM education, which can cultivate large numbers of STEM talents to make America much more competitive in science and technology areas. In the process of cultivating STEM talents, America stresses the role of STEM teachers and regards them as an effective route to boost its competitiveness.This research focuses on STEM teachers in elementary and secondary school, using some scientific research methods, such as literature analysis, case study method and comparative study to describe the status quo and the development trend of STEM teachers, to diagnose the problem that STEM teachers facing, to analyse the reasons that cause the problem and finally to explore the effective actions and measures that America adopt to solve the problem.Through the research, America still lacks a lot of qualified STEM teachers, which hinder the development of STEM education. Lacking qualified STEM teachers are closely related to the social status of teachers, teachers’salaries, teachers’professional development opportunities, teachers’access standards and other factors. In order to solve the problem of the insufficient supply of qualified STEM teachers, the federal government strengthen legislation and use financial means to strengthen macro-control on the training of STEM teachers. The state government, universities, private institutions, professional associations and non-profit organizations all response actively, by creating a competitive salary system, constructing a national community of excellent STEM teachers, establishing teachers’training and professional development programs, implementing alternative certification programs, setting up teacher access standards,providing continuous support of financial resource, material resource and manpower, establishing accountability mechanism of teacher education programs, building exit mechanism of teachers and taking other measures, to ease the pressure of the shortages of qualified STEM teachers. These measures are valuable to our country on innovating the mode of teachers’preparation and training, expanding the source of teachers, optimizing the teachers’structure, guaranteeing the teachers’quality.