Introducing the STEAM approach in education

What is the STEAM education model and why is it important?

In this article, we take a look at the benefits of STEAM education and compare it with the more mainstream STEM approach.

Most educators by now are familiar with the STEM approach to education. STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. The STEAM approach takes the focus on these subjects; and adds special attention to the Arts.

According to Susan Riley, an arts integration specialist, the STEAM education model uses these subjects as acces points for guiding student inquiry, dialogue, and critical thinking.

While the STEM education model has been widely implemented in schools and has many benefits. However, according to the experts at the Institute for Arts Integration and STEAM, our economy requires so much more than an understanding of these areas – it requires application, creation and ingenuity; and STEM alone does not foster these essential nutrients.

Integrating the arts into a more traditional STEM education allows us to take its benefits and elevates it onto the next level. It allows students to connect their learning in these critical areas together with arts practices, elements, design principles, and standards to provide the whole pallet of learning at their disposal. STEAM removes limitations and replaces them with wonder, critique, inquiry, and innovation.

Here is what the studies say about STEM education: 🤓

✅ In 2016, researchers Brouillette and Graham tested the hypothesis that the arts might provide upper-elementary students, who were still concrete thinkers, with a powerful means of envisioning phenomena that they could not directly observe. In their study, they investigated the impact of STEAM lessons on physical science learning in grades 3 to 5. They found that students who received nine hours of STEAM instruction made improvements in their science achievement. When controlling for all other factors, students who received the STEAM instruction from a well-trained teacher went from the 50th percentile to the 63rd percentile in the district science assessment.

✅ Another 2014 study, published in the Journal for Learning through the Arts demonstrated the impact of arts integrated instruction on visual arts, math and ELA skills. According to the researchers, their results indicate that rigorous interdisciplinary instruction that links visual arts, literacy and math skills, and supports cognitive skill development, can increase students’ literacy and math learning while nurturing their art making skills and enhancing their ability to meaningfully reflect on their own work and that of their peers.

✅ These findings are supported by a study on the relationship between theater arts and student literacy and mathematics achievement, published in 2014 by Inoa, Weltsek and Tabone. That study found that students whose language arts curricula were infused with theater arts often outperformed their control group counterparts, who received no arts integration, in both math and language arts. Students in the theater arts program significantly outperformed their control group counterparts in a number of cases: math achievement among sixth grade students, both language arts and math achievement among sixth grade males, and math achievement of sixth grade Hispanics.

To summarize: studies show that integrating the arts into a more traditional STEM education has a positive impact on student performance in key disciplines, such as literacy, English language, and mathematics.

At ABI School, we prioritize the STEAM approach and prepare students for a future that requires both creativity and innovation.

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