Reframing Integrated STEM Education in the Philippines as a Policy Enactment
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Keywords
integrated STEM education, policy enactment, policy discourse, contextual condition
Abstract
Integrated STEM education has emerged globally as a policy response to economic competitiveness, workforce readiness, national innovation, and complex global challenges. In the Philippines, STEM education is positioned as a strategic response to national development goals, such as economic and skills development among its citizens. Across national policies, integrated STEM is frequently framed as a coherent pedagogical solution—often articulated through curriculum standards, competency frameworks, and education reports. However, despite strong rhetorical coherence at the policy level, research consistently reports variability, ambiguity, and fragmentation in how integrated STEM is understood and practiced in schools.Much of the existing integrated STEM literature emphasizes curricular models, instructional design, and teachers' pedagogical knowledge, often treating policy as a stable backdrop rather than an active social process. This perspective risks obscuring the ways in which integrated STEM is shaped by national agendas, institutional histories, resource conditions, professional cultures, and local interpretations. As a result, gaps persist between discursive policy intention and classroom practice, which are frequently framed as problems of implementation rather than as features of policy work itself. This concept note argues for a conceptual shift of integrated STEM education as a policy enactment process. This implies that integrated STEM is framed not as a policy to be implemented but enacted through complex interactions among policy actors, texts, and contexts. Drawing on policy sociology, particularly the policy enactment framework advanced by Ball et al. (2012), this paper
conceptualizes integrated STEM as a dynamic, socially mediated process. Policy enactment foregrounds the argument that policies are not simply delivered from the top down. Rather, they are interpreted and translated through sensemaking, negotiation, and recontextualization of policy actors within specific material and discursive conditions.
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