Why stretch S.T.E.M with Art?
Colour me intrigued, but why all the hype surrounding the inclusion of Art in S.T.E.M?
What's the importance of S.T.E.A.M in the classroom?
An uneasy balance is created by unnecessarily separating the Arts and Sciences.
Restricting learners to think compartmentally by isolating curriculum areas narrows their holistic view of learning and in deed the world.
According to Nancy Atwell, winner of the Global Teacher Award, 2016; “Everyone’s children deserve a well rounded curriculum that invites them co-connect knowledge across subject areas,
uncover implications,
take initiative and exercise their imaginations.”
"Art education allows students to learn things in a more open-ended way and make them applicable to real life. Arts and creativity
are crucial to the sciences, technology and computer science. They are the tool that allows technology to be usable in real life!"
What does the research say?
An important notion has popped up:
Art-fusion vs Art-integration.
Espoused in many a staff room is the notion that arts-based learning deepens ones understanding of the academic subjects. Art integration has the power to dissolve the boundaries between subjects and support the learner to create a new cognitive space.
Transdisciplinarity and Art Integration, Julia Marshall (2014)
Are we using 'Art' to represent S.T.E.M or are we using 'Art' to raise the thinking functions of the learner and their effect on metacognition, conceptual and procedural thinking. It requires a great deal of metacognitive vision to explicate all that is Art integration. One such achievable strategy is transdisciplinarity practice:
(1) a coherent conceptual framework, lens, or a meta-disciplinary perspective;
(2) a critique of component disciplines;
(3) a distinct epistemology; and
(4) an array of particular methods and practices
(Klein, 2000).
Perkins (1988) argued that understanding is a matter of seeing something within its
web of associations.
He also maintained that art experiences build deeper understanding of topics and ideas by creating those webs. Art integration's conceptual framework aligns with Perkin's views and is founded on a two-pronged premise; that both integrated learning and arts based learning promote understanding.
How do I implement S.T.E.A.M in the classroom?
Watch this space, I'll be blogging about how my current collaboration integrate S.T.E.A.M into the classroom.
REFERENCE:
Klein, J.T. (2000). Voices of Royaumont. In M.Somerville & D.Rapport (Eds.), Transdisciplinarity: Recreating integrated knowledge (pp. 3-13). Oxford, England: EOLSS.
Perkins, D. (1988). Art as understanding. In H. Gardner & D.Perkins (Eds), Art, mind and education: Research from Project Zero (pp. 111-131). Chicago: University of Illinois.