Topic 1 STEAM LEARNING

STEAM LEARNING

STEAM is an educational approach to learning that uses Science, Technology, Engineering, the Arts and Mathematics as access points for guiding student inquiry, dialogue, and critical thinking. The end results are students who take thoughtful risks, engage in experiential learning, persist in problem-solving, embrace collaboration, and work through the creative process. These are the innovators, educators, leaders, and learners of the 21st century!

BENEFITS OF STEAM LEARNING

Students who participate in STEAM learning: 

• think outside the box
• feel safe to express innovative and creative ideas 
• feel comfortable doing hands-on learning
• take ownership over their learning
• work collaboratively with others
• understand the ways that science, maths, the arts, and technology work together
• become increasingly curious about the world around them and feel empowered to change it for the better.

STEAM LEARNING IS INQUIRY

In an authentic STEAM lesson, the path to knowledge is anything but smooth. Questions are driven by the learners, and failure is reframed as part of the learning process. Goals, decisions, and solutions are generated by the students within the limitations of their learning context (such as access to materials and tools, or achieving curriculum standards). They control their own investigations. As long as the inquiry results in a product that provides a solution to a real problem, the inquiry is authentically STEAM.

STEAM LEARNING APPROACHES

Design Thinking Process: Image from Wikimedia commons

Below are some of the learning approaches widely used as frameworks for guiding students through STEAM learning: 

1.    Design thinking 
Design Thinking is a design methodology that provides a solution-based approach to solving problems. It contains several different phases, including empathising, defining, ideating, prototyping, and testing.

2.    Engineering design process
The Engineering Design Process (EDP) is a step-by-step method of solving a problem by creating something tangible with a specific function.

3.    Project-based learning
STEAM learning fits in really nicely with the goals and aims of project-based learning. Perhaps the only difference is that STEAM has an engineering focus. 

4.    Computational thinking
Computational thinking enables a student to express problems, and formulate solutions in a way that means a computer (an information processing agent) can be used to solve them.

5.    Maker spaces 
A more relaxed and open-ended version of STEAM, Maker spaces are places where students can follow any kind of interest that involves making, creating, tinkering, programming, and designing. 

GETTING STARTED WITH STEAM LEARNING

DECIDE ON A VISION FOR YOUR STEAM PROGRAM

STEAM is more than building robotics. It is also more than coding, or doing a science experiment. STEAM is applied knowledge. It is using principles from multiple learning areas to solve real-world problems. To develop an authentic STEAM program, think deeply about how you can integrate maths, science, art, and technology into hands-on learning activities. 

ASSESSMENT FOR STEAM LEARNING

There are many aspects of STEAM learning that you may want to assess, including learning content knowledge, soft skills, or the design process. Ensure that your assessment is formative and summative; give your students goals to work towards while providing feedback on their progress. 

You could assess, for example:

• student persistence
• improvement progress
• meeting of curriculum achievement objectives
• collaboration and teamwork
• content knowledge
• content application
• design success.

Allow flexibility in your rubrics to account for multiple learning paths and project variation.

The STEAM Model

The pathway to STEAM is exciting, but can also be dangerous without an understanding of what STEAM truly means in both its intention and its implementation.  Like its STEM predecessor, STEAM can stop short of its best manifestation without several core components:-

• ·         STEAM is an integrated approach to learning which requires an intentional connection between standards, assessments and lesson design/implementation
• ·         True STEAM experiences involve two or more standards from Science, Technology, Engineering, Math and the Arts to be taught AND assessed in and through each other
• ·         Inquiry, collaboration, and an emphasis on process-based learning are at the heart of the STEAM approach.
• ·         Utilizing and leveraging the integrity of the arts themselves is essential to an authentic STEAM initiative 

Why is STEAM education important?

1. For far too long in education, we’ve been working with the presumption of teaching to ensure our students get a “good job”. But what does that look like?  We are preparing students for jobs that don’t even exist.
2. We are at a point where it is not only possible, but imperative that we facilitate learning environments that are fluid, dynamic, and relevant. None of us go outside and look at a tree and say, “that’s a tree, so that’s science” or, “the sky is blue, so that’s art.”
3. Our world is a beautiful, complex, and intricate tapestry of learning all in its own right. Why do we believe that we have the ability or the right to box it in behind brick walls and classroom doors in a place called school?
4. Integrating concepts, topics, standards and assessments is a powerful way to disrupt the typical course of events for our students and to help change the merry-go-round of “school.”
5. It takes what we do when we open the doors to the real world and places those same practices in our cycles of teaching and learning. So we can finally remove the brick walls and classroom doors to get at the heart of learning.