Fostering 21st-Century Learning Skills Through STEM Education in the Schools of Specialized Excellence of Delhi: A Comparative Study of Problem-Solving and Digital Literacy
Keywords:
STEM education, Schools of Specialized Excellence, 21st-century skills, Problem-Solving, Digital LiteracyAbstract
STEM education has increasingly been promoted as a pathway for strengthening 21st-century competencies such as problem-solving, digital literacy, creativity, critical thinking, and collaboration. In Delhi, the Schools of Specialized Excellence (SoSE) were established to provide future-oriented and STEM-rich educational environments expected to move beyond conventional textbook-centered instruction. The present study examined whether this specialized model was associated with stronger student outcomes than those observed in Non-SoSE schools. A descriptive survey design with a quantitative approach was employed. The sample comprised 400 secondary school students from Delhi, with 200 students from SoSE schools and 200 students from Non-SoSE schools. Two self-developed instruments were used: a Problem-Solving Skill Scale and a Digital Literacy Skill Scale, each consisting of 100 items across 10 dimensions. The reported reliability coefficients were .881 for the problem-solving scale and .75 for the digital literacy scale. Comparative analysis indicated no statistically significant difference between SoSE and Non-SoSE students in problem-solving skills, t(398) = 0.3769, p > .05, or in digital literacy skills, t(398) = 0.2897, p > .05. The thesis also reported a positive relationship between digital literacy and problem-solving among SoSE students; however, the magnitude of the reported correlation (r = .009) was practically negligible. The findings suggest that the promise of specialized STEM schooling in Delhi has not yet translated into clearly superior measurable outcomes on the selected competencies. The study argues that the major challenge lies not in the vision of STEM reform itself but in implementation fidelity, teacher preparation, assessment alignment, and the tension between inquiry-based learning and examination-oriented schooling.
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