This study aimed to provide an overview of trends in STEAM education in Japan, identify the challenges and factors that make implementing STEAM education in schools difficult, and identify the challenges and factors that hinder effective collaboration between industry, government, academia, and the public. First, to understand the current state of STEAM education research in science education, related papers were extracted from a domestic journal database, and the research content was categorized into eight topics using BERTopic, a machine learning method. Next, we focused on research on practice within the topics and, based on the relevant papers, examined the factors that hinder the introduction of cross-disciplinary learning in schools, focusing on “theory,” “curriculum,” “practice,” “human resource development,” and “informal education.” STEAM education requires curriculum management that accounts not only for the school curriculum but also for informal learning outside it. It also requires improving teachers’ qualifications and abilities to set practical problems and design creative activities to solve them. Future science education research will address the need to enrich individual subject education and cross-disciplinary learning by integrating formal and informal learning.
