Mindset shift biggest barrier to STEAM ed in Jamaica, says physicist
Published:Friday | January 30, 2026 | 12:06 AMKaren Madden/Gleaner Writer
Award-winning physicist and founder of The Blackett Lab Family, Dr Mark Richards, has identified a shift in mindset from theory to solutions as the biggest challenge facing Jamaica’s education system in fully embracing science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STEAM).
The Blackett Lab Family is an initiative focused on advancing inclusive STEAM education and strengthening research culture.
The senior teaching fellow at Imperial College London was responding to questions during a public lecture and panel discussion held as part of National STEAM Education Week 2026. The event examined the role of STEAM in driving innovation, workforce readiness, and national development.
Richards, who is of Jamaican parentage, outlined the potential of STEAM to advance Jamaica’s development but stressed that both educators and students must rethink how they approach it.
“The most important thing is to shift the mindset. That’s it. Just a shift in mindset to know that you can do it, to know that it is possible. That, in itself, actually, will change the game. If you start, if you approach it from a viewpoint that ‘well, I am not sure if it is going to work’, then we are already slightly defeating ourselves,” he said. “It’s really the shift in the mindset, and I know that the young generation, they’re already born into that mindset, so they won’t even have to compare it to something before that.”
Reflecting on his own experience of struggling to find physicists who “looked like me”, Richards acknowledged resistance to change but argued that the purpose of education itself must evolve.
“I accept that there will always be some level of inertia when it comes to change, but ... let’s say you are an educator and you ask yourself, why are you educating a child? Maybe before, the mindset was to prepare them to be useful in the workplace or something along those lines, but I think even that mindset has to change so you are preparing them to be problem-solvers and critical thinkers.
“Yes, that will inevitably mean there is work to do, and they will get work, but it will not necessarily mean a traditional sense of, perhaps, when I was younger, where you might be working in a factory, or something like that. If you become an independent problem solver or critical thinker, there will be plenty
Educators in attendance noted that while schools often prioritise passing examinations such as the Primary Exit Profile (PEP) and Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC), STEAM offers a pathway to more holistic learning.
“In school, when we are pushing STEAM, we normally talk about invention, and so the teacher and the student feel the pressure as if they have to create something from scratch, and that’s what makes it feel so difficult to implement. But when we think about the creativity that fostered the innovation, you know that’s a different spin on it. So we don’t necessarily have to create something from scratch but look at something that already exists and amend it to fix some problem that we are having in society,” opined Shanille Bennett Edwards, a technology educator at Jamaica College in St Andrew.
Wendy Crawford-Williams, a science and technology educator at Four Paths Primary in Clarendon, described STEAM as a natural reflection of everyday life.
“If you are in the kitchen and you are cooking, that’s chemistry, that’s biology, that’s maths, that’s all of that. So when I look at it as an educator, the children in the classroom when you bring STEAM and you remove the boundaries of the subject, this child is going to learn (without the boundaries), and so it is like hiding the veggies in their favourite meal. They are not learning maths and social studies and science. They are solving a problem,” said Crawford-Williams.
As Jamaica continues to advance its national development agenda through innovation, skills development, and education reform, STEAM education has emerged as a critical driver of problem-solving, creativity, and workforce preparedness.
Wednesday’s public lecture was hosted by the National Education Trust under the theme ‘Creating Solutions/Driving Change’, and brought together education leaders, policymakers, and international partners to examine how STEAM learning is being translated from classroom theory into real-world application and national impact.