Getting Ahead of STEAM
Critical discussions add meaning to arts-engineering collaborations.
By Nicola W. Sochacka, Kelly W. Guyotte, and Joachim Walther
Calls for STEAM (STEM + Art) education are anchored in two main arguments. First, art will increase the creativity of STEM students, which in turn will lead to greater economic growth and international competitiveness. Second, art can serve as an on-ramp to STEM, particularly for students from underrepresented groups. Yet when our team of engineering and art educators implemented and investigated an interdisciplinary design studio that enrolled students from engineering, art education, and landscape architecture, we found these goals of STEAM education to be both limited and limiting. And we were not alone. Despite a steady increase in STEAM schools and programs across the country, many artists and art educators are wary of STEAM as a mechanism to improve learning in STEM fields, especially when economic growth is heavily emphasized as an underlying goal.
Motivated by similar feelings of discomfort, we set out to develop an expanded view of how STEAM might enrich engineering education in ways that more closely align with the pedagogical commitments of the arts and lead to mutually beneficial outcomes for all parties. To this end, we engaged in a two-year, collaborative autoethnographic study—a methodological approach where two or more researchers write about and analyze personal experiences (auto) to gain insight into broader cultural (ethno) patterns. Drawing on our experiences and disciplinary perspectives, we critically reflected on several “aha” moments from the design studio that had a transformative impact on our understanding of STEAM education.
Our collaborative exploration was guided by the work of educational philosopher Maxine Greene, who discussed learning as an active, collaborative search for meaning, awareness of self and of others, and social change. Greene believed that when individuals cultivate imaginative ways of thinking, they become empowered to take action toward a more socially just world.
One of the “aha” moments we examined took place during a design challenge that invited students to consider a “Mission Zero Waste” target by 2030 in the context of their local town. When exploring different stakeholders’ perspectives and potential challenges, the teams were explicitly directed to focus on problem framing—not solution finding. Students presented their work in a gallery exhibit and described their design process. An artist then provided a critique and invited further discussion. We were especially impressed by one of the groups, which used a combination of trash collected from a nearby creek bank and chicken wire to construct life-size sculptures of a human and a blue heron—a bird endemic to the local area.
In stark contrast to their aesthetically evocative work, the group had difficulty articulating what they had done and why. However, the questioning and dialogue during the artist’s critique led the students to “dig deeper” as they began to develop an awareness of their personal and shared processes of creation and to make sense of the complex relationships between people, artifacts, and the natural world. Through a collective examination of the chicken wire arms filled with rusted soda cans, the students came to a shared understanding that they are not distinct from the challenges of waste management. The sculpture of the blue heron nudged them to empathize with other life forms that also are affected by engineered products and systems.
Beyond our satisfaction as teachers to see such profound student learning occur in front of our eyes, as researchers we were intrigued by the potential for STEAM to provide access to the affective, connected, and deeply human side of the “technical” problems our students might someday be tasked to solve. Surpassing limited notions of adding creativity to engineering design, we (students and faculty alike) were compelled by this experience to think more deeply and come to a profoundly different appreciation of the contributions that all of our disciplines can make to addressing society’s socio-technical challenges.
Nicola W. Sochacka is a research professional in the College of Engineering at the University of Georgia. Kelly W. Guyotte is an assistant professor of educational research at the University of Alabama. Joachim Walther is an associate professor in the College of Engineering at the University of Georgia. This article is excerpted from “Learning Together: A Collaborative Autoethnographic Exploration of STEAM (STEM + the Arts) Education” in the January 2016 Journal of Engineering Education. The interdisciplinary design studio described in this article occurred in the context of a research project funded by the National Science Foundation (Award No. 1160350) and was conducted in collaboration with co-investigators Nadia Kellam (Arizona State University), Tracie Costantino (Rhode Island School of Design), Bonnie Cramond (University of Georgia), and David Gattie (University of Georgia).