Image courtesy of Midway Elementary School.
Addition of art to STEM curriculum stimulates renewed interest, innovation in STEM fields
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As the year progresses, the debate concerning changing STEM to STEAM intensifies. Many people are already familiar with the term STEM education, which integrates science, technology engineering, and mathematics into the curriculum. However, what some may be unaware of is that a movement for the addition of “arts” to STEM curriculum is rapidly gaining momentum. STEM curricula is often thought of as a key factor in improving educational performance in America as well as maintaining American competitiveness on the world stage. In recent years however, both the public and private sectors, according to Education Week, have reported a lack of development in the STEM skills of today’s graduates, leaving them very unprepared to join the technology industries. Thus, a solution was devised to stimulate the advancement of these skills: incorporating the arts into the curriculum.
The main goal of STEM education is to establish connections between the science, technology, engineering, and math disciplines while developing students’ skills in critical thinking and problem solving, creativity and innovation, communication, collaboration, and entrepreneurship. The context of the curriculum is motivating, engaging, and real-world; students learn to integrate and apply relevant math and science concepts to their curriculum, and they are able to engage in solving engineering challenges using an engineering design process. Teaching methods encourage student participation and inquiry, and teamwork and communications are a major focus as well.
In the same way, STEAM advocates hope to achieve the same goals while including art in the mix. The arts are meant in a broader sense, including not only the fine arts, but liberal arts, language arts, social studies, music and physical arts as well. Their belief is that art will help spark curiosity and desire for knowledge in students, particularly those who don’t excel in STEM subjects.
Even with these benefits to adding the ‘A’ to STEM, some conservative STEM proponents have been reluctant to incorporate the arts, as they believe that placing too much emphasis on art would sidetrack students from the main goal of STEM education. Many educators fail to see the value in adding the arts to STEM mainly due to their belief that STEM lessons naturally include art through product design, language arts through communication, and history through giving historical background for engineering lessons. Contrary to this notion, assimilating the arts into STEM curriculum doesn’t necessarily equate to giving up the focus on STEM subjects for art. Rather, advocates argue that it will have a positive impact on students, encouraging them to integrate creative thinking into STEM projects and stimulate scientific creativity and imagination.
