CHALLENGES TO STEM EDUCATION IN PRIMARY SCHOOL IN ETHNIC MINORITY AREAS OF CHINA

The development of modern education increasingly relies on the advancement of science and technology and STEM education has quickly occupied a place on the educational stage. STEM education brings opportunities, but due to its different teaching methods from traditional subject areas, it also brings many challenges. This study investigates the challenges to STEM education from a unique perspective of ethnic minority areas in China. The majority of the population in China is Han. The remaining 55 ethnic groups with smaller populations are called ethnic minorities. The areas where these ethnic minorities gather alone are ethnic minority areas. There are 12 ethnic minority areas in China, and all of them are relatively backward in economy and education. This study took Yunnan Province, one of the ethnic minority areas, as the research object. Semi-structured interviews were adopted and according to the purposefully sampling method, 10 teachers of STEM courses from 5 public primary schools in this area were selected. The data were analyzed through topic coding. It was discovered that there were challenges in this ethnic minority area, such as insufficient professional quality of teachers and the teaching content not conforming to the local culture. The research results were discussed in combination with the local characteristic culture. Among them, the most notable one is the C-STEAM education concept: Based on STEM, A (Art) and C (Culture) have been added. This concept is to guide with the culture of ethnic minorities and design STEM courses with the humanities and arts familiar to local students, providing a new approach for the development of STEM education in ethnic minority areas in the future.