•There are a myriad of definitions for STEAM and the “Arts”.•Educators generally agree that STEAM enhances creativity and thinking skills.•Creativity is rarely, if ever, measured or assessed as part ...of STEAM education.•Educators often overlook the creative process for the final product.•There remains confusion about arts integration pedagogies.
This integrative review examines 44 published articles (empirical, descriptive, and pedagogical frameworks) on the topic of STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Mathematics) education from 2007 to 2018. Despite the emergence of STEAM as a popular pedagogical approach for enhancing students’ creativity, problem-solving skills, and interest in STEM fields, the definitions and purposes of STEAM education remain ubiquitous. Therefore, the review examined descriptions of the overall purpose of STEAM education, definitions of the STEAM acronym and the ‘A’ in STEAM, creativity as a learning outcome, elements of arts education, and arts education learning outcomes. The review found a myriad of definitions of the STEAM concept in general, a variety of interpretations for the “A” in STEAM, and an overall lack of reported learning outcomes in the areas of creativity, problem-solving, and arts education. The articles also differentiate in methods for merging STEAM disciplines, described in one of five ways: transdisciplinary, interdisciplinary, multi-disciplinary, cross-disciplinary, and arts-integration. Recommendations are provided to advance both research and practice in STEAM education.
Embodied eco-embroidery Janne Iren Robberstad; Randi Veiteberg Kvellestad
Nordic Journal of Art and Research,
11/2023, Volume:
12, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
The UN Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4) addresses equal access to quality education, focusing on literacy, numeracy and the science-field STEM subjects (Science, Technology, Engineering, ...Mathematics), - seemingly forgetting the importance of developing practical skills like craftsmanship. STEAM includes Arts into STEM, where the arts represent several independent artistic forms including music, theater, dance, visual arts, crafts and so on. In this article we focus on education for sustainable development through craftsmanship in embroidery. In a transdisciplinary collaboration that includes art, craftsmanship has its own innate value. Our research question is: In which ways can creative collaboration in embroidery enhance a sustainable STEAM education learning experience? We attempt to find answers to this by looking into how STEAM collaboration may affect the ways we teach craftsmanship, and the challenges and opportunities of doing so in a holistic transdisciplinary project, with a focus on ecological sustainability. Three groups of teacher-students help examine how crafts may contribute in building ecological awareness in themselves and an audience through conveying meaningful artistic narratives. Their embroideries were inspired by the UN’s Decade of Ecosystem Restoration. The results were shared through the Global Science Opera, an international STEAM-education initiative. Our analysis of the research data is influenced by posthumanizing creativity, which emphasizes ethically contributing world citizenship through embodied, collaborative creativity between creator and creation. This journey of making and being made shows a reciprocal relationship between humans and non-humans. The slow-art of embroidery invites the students into an embodied dialogue with the materials, tools, techniques and the scientific topics in the transdisciplinary context. As researchers we wonder how this dialogue and in-depth experience affected the students’ attitudes and actions towards sustainability. We found that the data supports the embodied, co-creative embroidery process, that it improved the students' craft experience, as well as increased the understanding and respect for the challenges in the new eco-reality. Cover image: Sewing in nature, on nature, with nature, about nature. Student work. Photos: Randi Veiteberg Kvellestad and Raquel Sans
Teaching and learning in the 21st century should equip students with critical and creative thinking skills to be ready to live and contribute productively to society. One suitable learning approach ...is integrating STEAM education and computational thinking—the STEAM-CT approach. The present study aims to describe students' critical and creative thinking skills in STEAM-CT integrative learning. The descriptive qualitative method was employed in this study. The current study included 26 eighth-grade students from a private middle school in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. According to the analysis, the students demonstrated critical and creative thinking skills during the integrative STEAM-CT learning process, particularly in planning problem solving, flexibility in providing problem solutions, and the aesthetics of their product designs. However, students must still be encouraged to conduct in-depth evaluations and use the results for improvement. For recommendation, to promote students' critical and creative thinking skills, feedback practices could be embedded in teaching and learning.
El enfoque educativo STEAM apuesta por las ciencias (S), la tecnología (T), la ingeniería (E), las artes (A) y las matemáticas (M) de manera transversal e interdisciplinar, para transformar los ...procesos de enseñanza aprendizaje, e impulsar vocaciones científico-tecnológicas. El objetivo principal de esta investigación es realizar un análisis de la legislación vigente que rige la Educación Infantil en Galicia, para clasificar los objetivos y contenidos en áreas temáticas atendiendo al enfoque STEAM. Para ello se desarrolla un estudio mixto, combinando el análisis documental y de contenido, con la clasificación de los diferentes objetivos y contenidos curriculares desde una perspectiva descriptiva. Posteriormente, se analizaron las relaciones semánticas dentro de cada disciplina, para averiguar las áreas temáticas de mayor influencia. Los resultados muestran que el 43% de los objetivos generales de etapa, el 61% de área y el 71,2% de los contenidos establecidos a nivel estatal están relacionados con STEAM. Mientras, en la legislación autonómica, el 56% de los objetivos generales de Educación Infantil, el 74% de área y el 78% de los contenidos están relacionados con dichas disciplinas. Estos resultados han propiciado una nueva reagrupación de los contenidos, atendiendo a criterios semánticos en 26 nuevas áreas temáticas, 9 de ellas en ciencia, 2 en tecnología, 4 en ingeniería, 8 en arte y 3 en matemáticas. En conclusión, se constata la poca presencia de la tecnología, la ingeniería y las matemáticas con respecto a las ciencias y al arte. Además, es posible y existe contenido curricular para diseñar y aplicar proyectos STEAM.
STEAM is an interdisciplinary educational approach. Based on the idea that different disciplines can meet on a common ground, the STEAM approach aims to give students the habit of working together, ...to provide rich learning experiences and to focus on real-world problems. This study investigates STEAM-based digital learning applications used in music education, their contents and age group suitability. For this purpose, the method of the research is the narrative review study. In this context, we analyzed the Chrome Music Lab, Scratch Music, Groove Pizza, earSketch, UPISketch and iMuSciCA applications. Studies have proved that digital-based STEAM applications used in music education increase students’ creativity, improve their music learning, and increase their interest in the lesson because they offer fun learning. With the development of technology, it has become necessary to adapt the methods and techniques used in music education to the age. By integrating art education, which has an important place in STEAM education, with other disciplines, music lessons can be effective and more permanent. The study shows that the more effective use of related applications by music teachers will contribute to music education and it is important in this regard.
STEAM education system is largely being incorporated within different countries to develop creativity and problemsolving skills among the students. This study has also focused on sustaining regional ...equality and interdisciplinary integration of arts and sciences via creativity research in STEAM education systems. For this study, the qualitative data was collected from 12 science teachers working in different Chinese high schools. Thematic analysis was used for analyzing the collected interview transcripts. Four important themes were formulated which include (a) STEAM Education System, (b) Creativity in STEAM Education System, (c) STEAM Education System Issues and (d) Recommendations for STEAM Education System. The results obtained from this study showed that STEAM education system helps in encouraging student engagement, following interdisciplinary integration of arts and sciences. However, regional inequality in China prevents effective accessibility and quality of STEAM education in rural regions of the country, emphasizing the development and implementation of effective educational and regional policies. This study has also provided different practical and theoretical implications within the context of STEAM education systems.
Through the application of astronomy didactic units, a project was designed that aimed to strengthen academic management from an interdisciplinary curriculum perspective and implementing Virtual ...Learning Environments (VLE) in the San Antonio de Prado Educational Institution. The foregoing was based on an analysis of the study plan and surveys applied to teachers and students, which evidenced that there was no interdisciplinarity or projects that linked different areas of knowledge. Subsequently, teachers from different areas were invited to participate in the construction of astronomy didactic units based on inquiry and the STEAM approach. Once the previous phase was completed, the design of the proposal was evaluated and improved through the application of Google Forms to the entire educational community that participated in the project, from the study of the records obtained from the participant observation and from the surveys analyzed using the Atlas.Ti 8.0 program, which contributed to improving academic management. Finally, advances in the interdisciplinary processes were evidenced, and it was shown that astronomy and the STEAM model made it possible to achieve the competencies proposed in the Institutional Educational Project.
Eleven mechanical engineering students participated in a STEAM (interdisciplinarity between Science, technology, engineering, Arts/Humanities, and Mathematics) drama activity of conceiving and ...performing a play which addressed their course. Following, we pursued a Thick Description of this project, including the meanings and intentions of the play. Accordingly, we interviewed the students so that this description could reflect their voices. As a result, we observed that the drama activity permitted learning about engineering and theatre. Moreover, it was a space to contrast the ideal and the real engineering toward society and to call students to play the role of subjects responsible for their personal, professional and political lives.
When arts curriculum is able to become transdisciplinary to reach fundamental understandings with other content areas, the level of transfer and thinking skills of the engaged students has the ...potential to be raised. This study investigated the implementation of transdisciplinary STEAM lessons across 14 classrooms in 7 states. Students (n = 318) in elementary (grades K-5) and secondary (grades 6-12) schools participated in transdisciplinary STEAM lessons. The results of this study indicate that the intervention was successful at increasing the understanding of creativity and that their engagement with thinking skills and habits was greater as compared to students who did not participate in the STEAM lessons. Thematic analysis of the open-response items revealed specific patterns in how students used critical and creative thinking across lessons. Overall, students showed increased creativity, application, problem solving, and collaboration, providing evidence of the effectiveness of the STEAM lessons to increase critical and creative thinking of students.
The suppression of Indigenous knowledge systems that accompanied the colonisation of Muslim lands from North Africa to the Asia-Pacific dismantled the Islamic science tradition, replacing it with a ...Western oppressive monoculture of secularised ‘modern’ science. Within this context, this article presents a theoretical framework for Muslim science educators, called Islamic Scientific Critical Consciousness. This framework aims to nurture Muslim students to develop the capacity to reinvigorate the Islamic science tradition by taking the positive elements of both the tradition and those of modern science. This entails the need for Muslim students to develop the critical consciousness to recognise colonial ideology being taught as ‘objective’ knowledge and the confidence and ethical orientation to pursue scientific research in harmony with an all-encompassing Islamic world view. This framework builds on Maldonado-Torres’s framework of decoloniality by adapting it to consider the sources of oppressive ideologies from an Islamic perspective in the monocultural school science classroom. The learning outcomes for this Islamic decolonial approach are then developed by integrating Paolo Freire’s idea of critical consciousness with Muhammad Iqbal’s idea of Khudi (selfhood). After building the theoretical framework, suggestions are made on how modern science education can be rethought in both multifaith and Islamic faith-based school settings.
