The term ‘STEM literacy’, while often used as a slogan for the goal of STEM education, is open to multiple interpretations and used without much research evidence to support its validity. The purpose of this paper is to review the research literature in science, technology/engineering and mathematics education to examine how literacy in each respective discipline has been defined, conceptualised and studied. The literacies across the disciplines are then compared to identify similarities and differences in order to determine on what basis these literacies can be conceptualised collectively, or not. Based on the similarities found in several language and thought processes of the disciplines, we conclude that there is presently a research basis for postulating a unitary STEM literacy that reflects the shared general capabilities required in all the STEM disciplines. At the same time, there are also substantial differences that support the retention of the existing literacy constructs (i.e., S.T.E.M. literacies) to reflect the specific linguistic, cognitive and epistemic requirements found in each disciplinary area. This distinction from the singular STEM literacy is necessary to highlight the skills and practices that are unique to each particular discipline, and therefore not applicable in all the other disciplines. Given the haphazard rhetoric regarding STEM education, what STEM literacy comprises requires analysis and clear articulation that is framed by literacy research and scholarship in each STEM discipline.

Natural rubber on the world market has had small increases in demand and big increases in supply. Therefore, demand and supply are imbalanced and this impacts the natural rubber price of the world market causing a decline. This study aimed: (1) to develop de-mand and supply models to predict the world natural rubber quantity using simultaneous equations;(2) to predict all explanatory variables in the demand and supply models using the simple moving average technique; and (3) to estimate the equilibrium quantity and price for world natural rubber during 2017e2026. First, in the demand model, there was a positive relationship of the explanatory variables of world natural rubber production quantity, synthetic rubber price, percentage year of year (%YOY) of gross domestic product (GDP), and the exchange rate, while the negative relationship variable was natural rubber price. In the supply model, the positive relationship variables were natural rubber price, mature area, rainfall, and crude oil price, while the negative relationship variables were world natural rubber stock and urea price. Second, the predicted variables indicated that production, %YOY of GDP, exchange rate, amount of stock, and the mature area tended to gradually increase, while the synthetic rubber price, urea price, rainfall, and crude oil price tended to slowly decrease from 2017 to 2026. Finally, the equilibrium quantity forecast tended to gradually increase from 953.75 to 957.15 thousand tonnes, and the equilibrium price tended to fluctuate and decrease from 169.78 to 162.05 thousand yen from 2017 to 2026. Consequently, this study may be helpful to the governments of the world's important natural rubber producing countries to plan policies to reduce natural rubber production costs and stabilize the natural rubber price in the future, such as by setting suitable areas of world natural rubber plantation in each country, and defining appropriate and sustainable alternative crop areas in each country.

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Throughout history various grand narratives have impacted on technology education. In the current post modern era of globalization, technology education continues to struggle for relevance and definition, and takes various forms in different countries, but none seem resoundingly successful. The current development of what some have termed a digital democracy (Web 2.0)-the explosion of a new type of information technology which has become an integral characteristic of young people's lives, is the starting point for this paper. Mainstream literacy theory was reconceptualised in the 1990's with the foresight of anticipating the significance of a range of literacies. Broad conceptions of Technological Literacy have always accommodated multiple literacies, but must now essentially do so in a dynamic way through the pre-existing pedagogy of design.

An increasing variety of professional educational and training disciplines are now problem based (eg, medicine, nursing, engineering, community health), and they may have a corresponding variety of educational objectives. However, they all have in common the use of problems in the instructional sequence. The problems may be as diverse as a mechanical predicament, an unexplained phenomena, or patient symptoms. Technology education in secondary schools is undergoing a period of significant change in many countries. It is therefore imperative that technology teacher education adopt not only the technologies that have been identified as being important, but also incorporate appropriate methodologies for the instruction of these technologies. PBL offers a number of relevant features to technology education and it is because of these that the project outlined in this paper has been developed