Is STEAM The Real Deal or a Marketing Ploy?

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The Artist-Scientist is not a new phenomenon. Da Vinci springs to mind for obvious reasons but so do Johann Zahn the inventor of the camera, Botanist Anna Atkins and Samuel Morse who not only invented the telegraph but was a prolific painter. They were all people whose artistic and scientific pursuits merged creating something unique and innovative. But over the past decades, the Idea of STEAM education has taken hold as something new and novel. A lot of time, energy, and acronyms have been put into developing the next generation of artistic scientists. And it’s not all hype. Here is a short guide to STEAM and why it matters.

The educational philosophy of STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Math) started to gain recognition in the early ’90s in Washington DC. It was a government-supported and educator-guided response to the millions of new science and tech jobs that were springing up around the world and a generation of kids that would need to be prepared to step into a workforce with the skills to fill those roles. The initiative was focused mainly on high school students but as with most educational ideas, it began to trickle down to the lower grades. Not too long after educators started to realize that the arts- including music, theatre, language, and writing were a vital piece of the puzzle not only for teaching the technical subject matter but to help the next generation of scientists and engineers innovate and communicate those ideas to the broader public. The A was added and STEAM was born.

What does that have to do with early childhood education? Subjects like math and science are often highly abstract and require significant attention spans to begin to understand. Things like numbers and equations are nebulous and require a level of symbolic thinking and creative problem solving that is still developing in our youngest students. It’s why parents and some educators put off “real learning” until the child is better able to sit and focus for longer than it takes to swap your half-eaten cookie for your friend’s name tag.  The arts offer a way to physicalize an idea and they are fun and engaging so children are able to focus for a longer period of time. Once the focus is in place and the nebulous idea has a concrete tactile avatar children can not only grasp complex ideas, they can infer and expand upon them.

STEAM lessons are often collaborative music, art, or literature projects that require students to work together. The teacher helps the children to think critically about a subject or question, discuss options, plan and then create/build and finally evaluate their work. It is often very prep intensive on a teacher’s part and always a challenge for an educator to lead well because the outcome is not guaranteed. But, when done correctly it’s incredibly rewarding. I have personally witnessed a group of four-year-olds go from asking why family members often look like each other to a basic understanding of DNA.

As more and more ECE programs tout their STEAM curriculum parents are finding it harder to separate the wheat from the chaff. What makes an effective program as opposed to another school hitching their wagon to the catchy marketing scene? Here are few things you can look for that suggest a quality STEAM curriculum.

Process Not Product: I know you all are sick of me saying it but it’s truly important for this age group. Process-oriented play is scientific method lite! I try something and don’t love the result, so I try something else to see if I get a different result. That’s an experiment!

Teacher guided, student-led: Innovation requires a unique combination of creativity and discipline. It is a way of thinking and it can be learned. Make sure the teachers in the room are able to not only pose open-ended questions but encourage children to ask questions of their own. Then guide them thru the process (see what I did there) of discovering the answer for themselves.

Art should be unique: If you walk thru the halls and all of the work on the walls looks roughly the same, this is a school concerned with the product. I tell my staff I should be able to walk into their class and guess which child made which item because they are all so unique. If I can’t do that then I’m willing to bet the teachers “corrected” the artwork.

Ask about a recent project: Or at least have them tell you about one of their favorites. They don’t need to be complex. The children designed a butcher paper mural of the ocean floor in art because they were discussing sea life this week, that’s collaborative ecology. They raced matchbox cars down different degrees of ramps because they wanted to see which went faster. That’s a velocity experiment and if they built and designed the ramps, engineering! If a director of the program can’t off the cuff tell you about an awesome experiment, collaborative or creative literature project they did in the past few weeks it’s not a regular part of the curriculum.

Practical sciences: things like cooking and “why” question experiments should be pretty standard parts of a good early education STEAM program. That’s because children this age are observational learners. They want to know why ice melts and leaves change, and the bread turns moldy. If the classrooms don’t have a tactile bin and mixing bowls that are obviously well used they are missing a major STEAM opportunity.

The kids in the room: Are they interested, engaged, and asking appropriate questions? Not all of them all the time because…they are two. But do they want to know what is in the mystery bag today, are they excited to discover what is in the tactile bin? Do they look up, greet you, and want to share what they are learning when you enter the room? Challenged, engaged students are happy and eager to learn and then share what they have learned with others.

What you can do at home: I suggest everyday experiments. Why does the rubber ducky float in the bath but the ball sinks? What else will float? How does the TV know I’m pushing the on the button on the remote control? Will the laser that communicates work thru a pillow or a piece of paper? Your kids ask “why” a thousand times per day. Encourage that and then help them figure out the answers.

What you can do in Beijing: Education should be a lifelong pursuit so it shouldn’t start and stop at the classroom door. Try and find inspirational places to visit in your neighborhood. The current space exhibit here in Beijing is an exciting way to get kids’ imaginations fired up and show them that science can be a literal adventure. Beijing also has tons of great public art installations. Don’t just admire their beauty ask leading questions, what do you think that statue is made of, how do you think the artist shaped it?

STEAM isn’t the end-all and be-all of ECE. There are plenty of other methodologies and project-based learning styles but it can be one powerful and fun tool to help young minds blossom and develop. It just needs to be used effectively.

KEEP READING: Letting Kids Learn From the Process, Not Product

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