My name is Cindy Maguire. I direct the BFA Art & Design Education program at Adelphi University and Co-Direct ArtsAction Group, an international community-based collective committed to facilitating arts initiatives with children and youth in conflict-affected environments. On this site you'll find processes, projects, resources, and materials to explore STEAM-based education and art making in formal and informal educational settings.
what is steam?
Innovation in education remains tightly coupled with Science, Technology, Engineering and Math – the STEM subjects. Art + Design are poised to transform our economy in the 21st century just as science and technology did in the last century. The +a in STE[A]M integrates art and design with STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) sparking the interplay between left-brain convergent thinking and right-brain divergent thinking. In a rapidly changing world, it is important that we educate well-rounded global citizens who have the imagination and skills to conquer new challenges. STEAM works with art and design as the central catalyst for fostering these knowledge, skills and dispositions with a focus on personal and collective creative exploration and expression.
STEAM is often inter-disciplinary in nature and uses a project, inquiry-based approach to thinking, problem solving, and creating. Themes and open-ended solutions are critical to how the curriculum is organized. Emphasis is placed on the creative process involved in tinkering and experimenting with ideas, i.e. inventing to learn rather than learning to invent. Art & design in STEM - STEAM - is often about addressing real world problems, such as energy, climate change, poverty, as well as the ability to envision and imagine different realities in service of human-kind and the planet. It’s also about the role of aesthetics and how artists and designers incorporate technology, engineering and science into their process and productions of artmaking. Think interactivity!
STEAM is often inter-disciplinary in nature and uses a project, inquiry-based approach to thinking, problem solving, and creating. Themes and open-ended solutions are critical to how the curriculum is organized. Emphasis is placed on the creative process involved in tinkering and experimenting with ideas, i.e. inventing to learn rather than learning to invent. Art & design in STEM - STEAM - is often about addressing real world problems, such as energy, climate change, poverty, as well as the ability to envision and imagine different realities in service of human-kind and the planet. It’s also about the role of aesthetics and how artists and designers incorporate technology, engineering and science into their process and productions of artmaking. Think interactivity!
Why steam?
Incorporating STEAM curriculum into an art and design program is in line with the new national art and media standards as well as the Common Core. It promotes deeper understanding and transference of knowledge across the subjects. It also addresses critical components of teacher evaluation systems including being able to design curriculum that moves beyond a focus on elements and principals of art, for example, to one of meaning making – big ideas and essential questions - helping students make connections between what they do in the classroom to their lives inside and outside of school. We know that the arts are linked to increase motivation levels as well as increased attendance rates with our students. It makes sense to bring together new technologies, meaning making, and interdisciplinary projects under the rubric of STEAM in our art and design classrooms.
