Conceptualising and framing STEAM education: what is (and what is not) this educational approach?

Abstract

STEAM is a recent educational approach intending the interdisciplinary teaching of science, technology, engineering, arts/humanities, and mathematics. The literature reports conceptual confusion that frequently diverts STEAM practice and research to issues concerning particular activities or contexts. Therefore, we carried out a narrative review of articles indexed in the Web of Science (WoS) to elucidate STEAM education’s history, epistemology, and divergences. As a strategy, we first focused on documents that could offer a panoramic view of the object of study – literature reviews and articles about STEAM frameworks. Through them, we identified essential discussion points and further expanded the review. As a result, we articulated rationalities about why STEAM is not a mere evolution of STEM, a teaching methodology, or just a synonym for interdisciplinarity. Furthermore, we discussed the appropriateness of interdisciplinarity in STEAM – since it is strongly supported by the disciplines and their intersections – instead of pursuing transdisciplinarity, meaning knowledge remains undefined in a holistic whole. We differentiated STEAM disciplines (list of the five knowledge areas), STEAM activities (interdisciplinary teaching unity of at least two STEAM disciplines), and STEAM education (educational approach of interdisciplinarity between all five disciplines). Finally, we defined and proposed a framework for STEAM in a table format that stresses two necessary and sufficient conditions – interdisciplinarity and the five acronym areas. The framework permits envisioning the plurality of teaching methodologies and educational objectives consistent with STEAM.

Concepciones del alumnado sobre ingeniería y sus conexiones con las matemáticas y las ciencias

“…Los estudios sobre las concepciones del alumnado acerca de la ingeniería están motivados por el creciente interés de esta área del conocimiento en las etapas preuniversitarias (Capobianco et al, 2011;Moore et al, 2014). Al respecto, destacan los enfoques educativos STEM (interdisciplinariedad entre ciencias, tecnología, ingeniería y matemáticas) y STEAM (adicionalmente, considerando también las artes o humanidades) (Marín-Marín et al, 2021;Rodrigues-Silva y Alsina, 2023a). Entre otras transformaciones curriculares, estos enfoques educativos impulsan la inserción de la ingeniería en el currículo y su práctica desde la educación infantil (Cabello et al, 2021;Rodrigues-Silva y Alsina, 2023b), siendo STEAM más amplio respecto a aspectos artísticos y humanísticos (Guyotte, 2020).…”