Call for papers for thematic issue on New Frontiers and Emerging Challenges in STEM Education: Inclusion, Technology, and Social Transformation
Call for Papers
Vol. 10, No. 19, July–January 2028
New Frontiers and Emerging Challenges in STEM Education: Inclusion, Technology, and Social Transformation
Introduction
Education and trajectories in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) are undergoing profound transformation. Although knowledge about the factors that foster interest, choice, and persistence in these fields has expanded considerably in recent decades, important questions remain regarding who has access to STEM opportunities, who persists, who is left behind, and which individual, educational, social, and institutional conditions explain these differences.
These persistent gaps are compounded by recent transformations driven by artificial intelligence, digitalization, changes in the labor market, and the transition toward more sustainable development models. These processes are reshaping the skills, professions, and environments in which STEM talent develops while simultaneously creating new inequalities and raising new research questions.
The gender gap in STEM remains particularly relevant. Although substantial evidence documents the underrepresentation of women in certain scientific and technological fields, further research is needed to understand the mechanisms underlying differences in interest, choice, persistence, identity, leadership, and professional development, as well as to advance the study of interventions capable of reducing these disparities.
The thematic areas of this Special Issue respond to these challenges and seek to promote research that moves beyond the description of phenomena toward their explanation, comparison, and transformation. The aim is to connect individual factors with the family, educational, institutional, technological, territorial, and labor contexts that shape STEM opportunities and trajectories.
A gender perspective is a cross-cutting dimension of this Call for Papers, and authors are encouraged to incorporate it across the proposed thematic areas, as well as to examine populations, territories, and contexts that have received limited attention in scientific literature.
Thematic Areas
1. Gender, Inclusion, and Persistent Gaps in STEM
Studies addressing gender inequalities in access, choice, persistence, leadership, and professional development in STEM. Topics may include gender stereotypes and biases, intersectionality, female role models, STEM identity, masculinities, and educational, social, and institutional conditions that facilitate or constrain the trajectories of women and other underrepresented groups.
2. Artificial Intelligence and the Transformation of STEM Education
Research examining the impact of generative artificial intelligence, learning analytics, automation, and other emerging technologies on STEM education. Consideration will be given to studies addressing new competencies, critical thinking, ethics, algorithmic bias, gender gaps, and transformations in the ways scientific and technological knowledge is taught, learned, and produced.
3. STEM Aspirations, Identity, and Trajectories
Studies aimed at explaining how STEM aspirations and career interests are developed, transformed, sustained, or abandoned from early educational stages through higher education and entry into the labor market. Topics may include interest, self-efficacy, self-concept, career expectations, career choice, STEM identity, and the influence of family, teachers, peers, and institutional support.
4. Contexts, Territorial Inequalities, and Access to STEM Opportunities
Research examining how social, economic, cultural, territorial, and institutional conditions generate unequal opportunities for participation in STEM. This area includes rural and urban contexts, social or economic vulnerability, the digital divide, educational infrastructure and resources, and comparative studies across regions and countries.
5. Emerging STEM Ecosystems: From Education to Work and Social Transformation
Studies focusing on emerging competencies, professions, and career trajectories resulting from technological, environmental, and labor-market transformations. Topics include future jobs, the green transition, sustainability, science- and technology-based entrepreneurship, STEM leadership, university–industry–government collaboration, and mechanisms through which STEM education can contribute to innovation and social development.
6. Methodological Innovation and Mixed-Methods Approaches to STEM Research
Empirical research employing mixed-methods and multimethod designs to provide a comprehensive understanding of educational, social, and organizational phenomena related to STEM. This area includes studies integrating quantitative and qualitative evidence, as well as longitudinal, multilevel, comparative, intervention, and program-evaluation designs. Consideration will be given to studies in which methodological integration contributes to explaining mechanisms, differences across groups and contexts, and phenomena that cannot be adequately understood through a single methodological approach.
This Special Issue seeks to bring together evidence that contributes to identifying what remains to be understood in STEM and where future research agendas should be directed. Interest will be given to studies involving underexamined populations and contexts, comparisons across groups or territories, gender perspectives, innovative methodological designs, and evidence on interventions.
Rather than merely documenting existing gaps, this Call for Papers aims to promote research capable of explaining why these gaps persist, identifying the mechanisms that produce them, and generating evidence on actions that can effectively transform STEM opportunities and trajectories.
Important Dates
Manuscript submission period: October 20, 2026 to March 15, 2027.
Issue publication: July 2027.
Special Issue Editor
Dr. Deneb Elí Magaña Medina
