Bridging the Gender Gap through Problem-Based Learning in STEM Labs: What can we learn from Biotechnology?

This Research to Practice Work-In-Progress paper introduces LabSTEM North, a Danish design-based research project, which aims to explore central and contextual issues related to diversity and motivation in STEM and to co-create an integrated problem-based STEM-didactics with K-12 teachers across institutional and disciplinary boundaries in the Northern Region of Denmark. The paper presents the reasoning behind and initial phases of the project, its research design and methods and presents preliminary findings from a case study on biotechnology as an example of a subject and engineering program particularly successful in attracting young women to STEM. Interviews with students from general high school, technical high school and 1 st year university point to the inherent ‘meaningfulness’ of health-related subjects as a particularly motivational factor for education and career choices. This highlights the importance of ‘meaning’ and exemplarity in the content, context and complexity of the chosen ‘problem’ in problem-based learning. In the LabSTEM North project, these insights will inform the cross-institutional co-creation of problem-based and STEM-integrated teaching, emphasizing attention to the choice of meaningful problems to support diversity and motivation for STEM.