Arabia Saudí
Arabia Saudí
There has been a recent trend in research to integrate Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics (STEAM) into language education curricula to promote bilingualism and multilingualism, addressing the requirements of 21st century skills. However, this emerging issue remains insufficiently synthesized in the language education literature. To address this gap, this study aims to synthesize STEM literature in the context of language education, providing a comprehensiveview of how this issue has been researched and identifying trending research themes and hotspot research issues. Thirty-nine studies were selected from meticulously searched databases including Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar. To visualize the studies’ findings, we employed Python software to illustrate results obtained from the pool of studies and utilized Jupyter Notebook software to generate word clouds. Results reveal a rapid growth in STEAM education research since 2017, with a predominance of qualitative and mixed methods approaches, involving high numbers of participants in the studies’ interventions. Findings also indicated positive outcomes in students’ linguistic and STEM abilities, highlighting bilingualism, multilingualism, and translanguaging as emerging themes that enhance overall STEM literacy and engagement. Writing activities were more frequently employed in the target studies and more prevalent than reading, especially at the college level, while reading was more common in primary and middle schools.