STEM Education in Pakistani Schools: Teachers’ Awareness, Pedagogical Readiness, And Barriers to Integrated Practice—A Critical Narrative Review

Abstract

Integrated science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education is promoted for its ability to bridge science classroom learning with inquiry, design, and real-world problems. However, the acronym STEM alone is not sufficient to ensure teachers can plan, teach, and assess interdisciplinary lessons. This critical narrative review explores the relationship between teachers' awareness, pedagogical readiness, and institutional conditions in school education in Pakistan. It is based on a review of 78 publications completed in 2024 across multiple countries, including an in-depth literature search of empirical and descriptive studies relevant to Pakistan, as well as independent literature identified by the authors and policy documents. The evidence aligns with the following: conceptual understanding, teacher preparation, curriculum and assessment, inquiry and technological resources, leadership, and equity. Barriers to enacting integrated STEM can only be reasonably explained by the interaction between teachers' professional learning and the school environment's curriculum opportunities and supports. In response, the paper suggests a contextual STEM Readiness-to-Practice Framework that defines the elements of awareness, design competence, enacted practice (including evidence of student learning), and enabling conditions at institutional and system levels. The paper suggests practice-based teacher education and curriculum-aligned, low-cost tasks, collaborative teaching, assessing processes and products, and context-sensitive assessment. This is a narrative review that does not attempt to estimate national prevalence nor claim new field results. It offers a Pakistan-related analysis that is analytically explicit and contributes to how integrated STEM can be translated from policy into viable classroom practice.