THE RESEARCH
This Innovation Collaborative, in partnership with Texas Southern University, has completed a two-year National Science Foundation-funded study of where STEAM (Sciences, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math) is in Out-of-School Time nationally in relation to serving all students and where it would be beneficial to head next.
Participants
70 leading STEAM Out-of-School Time researchers and practitioners from a variety of institutions and geographical locations across the U. S. participated. Participants also joined the project from Canada and Germany.
They Looked At
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The wide variety of Out-of-School Time learning experiences
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Youth aged early childhood through high school
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The various intersections of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) with the arts in a variety of learning settings
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In-person experiences that were a result of specific programming.
Topics InvestigatedParticipant surveys at the outset of the project determined the 7 leading topics. These were investigated in topic-based cohorts. The cohorts were:
Belonging and Identity
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Enhancing Professional Learning Capacity for Informal Educators
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Integrating the Arts with STEM to Promote Learning and Thinking
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Intersections of Formal and Informal Learning
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STEAM Creative/Innovative Thinking
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STEAM for All
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Understanding the Importance of Well-Being and STEAM
What Do You Mean by Interdisciplinary Learning?
In this project, interdisciplinary learning is the process of integrating disciplines and concepts in a variety of ways. Actions could include concepts’ interacting, blending, linking, synthesizing, or transforming. Examples of interdisciplinary learning could be:
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In an art museum, using the iterative engineering design process to create kinetic sculptures
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In a science museum, integrating a study of plants with explorations of landscape architecture and irrigation engineering that could be combined with an illustrated creative writing exercise.
How Will This Research Benefit Me as a Practitioner?
This project’s Final Report will provide the important findings, recommended next steps, and further resources to explore from each of these cohorts