What is it about?
While the four areas of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) have been extensively integrated into learning activities, arts (A) have often been considered merely an approach to improving the product’s aesthetics. This paper examines A’s roles in the STEAM acronym and the quality of each area of 62 selected STEAM learning activities from Taiwan.
Featured Image
Why is it important?
We define three different roles of A in the STEAM acronym, namely arts/aesthetic learning, contextual understanding, and creativity. We reveal the importance of incorporating more hallmark elements of art education to enhance STEAM activities. Three significant findings are that: a) most STEAM activities only engage the contents of science, mathematics, arts/aesthetic learning, and contextual understanding to a limited extent; b) few STEAM activities incorporate the socio-cultural context to pose more unique questions to humanity, and c) compared to individual authors, the collaboration of team authors enhances the qualities of STEAM activities.
Perspectives
It was a great pleasure to write this article with all my co-authors. I hope this article encourages people to think about what the arts in STEAM learning activities may stand for and also understand that arts could play more critical and inspiring roles, in addition to colors and appearances, to deepen individuals’ STEM knowledge in this interconnected socio-technical world.
Chao-Jung Wu
National Taiwan Normal University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Examining the quality of art in STEAM learning
activities., Psychology of Aesthetics Creativity and the Arts, August 2021, American Psychological Association (APA),
DOI: 10.1037/aca0000404.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
