Is STEAM compatible with a Three-Dimensional, Phenomenon-Driven Approach to Science Education?

As the 2023-2024 school year comes to a close, district curriculum leaders will begin working with teams of teachers to develop the curriculum for the next school year. Some districts, such as those in Texas who are implementing new science standards in the fall, will require full-scale design of a new set of learning experiences for students in science. Other districts will be reviewing their curriculum to see what changes are needed for the upcoming year. In the STEM subjects, including science, many district leaders will consider using STEAM lessons, where students develop an artistic product as part of a lesson or assessment.

STEAM is an integrated approach to teaching STEM. For example, students may be asked to write a song about the quadratic formula or to make a painting showing photosynthesis. A quick google search for "STEAM lesson" returns over 50 million results in less than half a second. Clearly, STEAM is a popular approach to teaching and learning.

I think it is particularly important to provide students learning experiences in the arts, particularly in a climate where humanities are often pushed to the side in favor STEM courses (see also, Forbes, NY Times, The Atlantic, among others) . And, I wholeheartedly agree with the importance of students learning about and creating art--both visual and performing. The arts provide important insight into the human condition and the meaning of life in a way that STEM never can. K-12 students need exposure to the arts in order to become productive citizens in a global society.

A few years ago, I wrote an article for ASCD where I expressed concerns with the effectiveness of STEAM approaches to promote student learning in STEM or in the arts. One of my critiques in my prior article surrounded the different practices that scientists and artists use in their work. If students are engaged in artistic practices, they are likely not engaged in scientific practices as called for by the Framework for K-12 Science Education, the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), or many state science standards. Since my prior article was published, science education has seen an increased emphasis on having students explain phenomenon as the driving goal behind their learning. In fact, one of the main criteria on the EdReports review rubrics for science in K-5, 6-8, and high school is having phenomena and problems drive learning experiences. The focus on having students explain phenomenon as part of a three-dimension science education adds another reason to rethink if STEAM is a good approach to teaching science.

Defining Three-Dimensional, Phenomenon-Driven Science Education

The Framework for K-12 Science Education, upon which the NGSS are built, calls for students to engage in learning experiences that weave together three distinct dimensions:

1. Science and Engineering Practices: The activities and habits of mind scientists and engineers engage in as part of the scientific community. Practices are used to figure out and explain a phenomenon in science or design a solution to a problem in engineering. For example, carrying out an investigation or constructing an explanation are things a scientist does as part of the scientific community. In other words, what a scientist does when they do science.
2. Disciplinary Core Ideas: The important big-picture ideas along with the underlying facts, laws, models and theories that make up a body of knowledge within specific scientific disciplines. For example, a core idea in physical science is the relationship between forces and motion. Newton's laws underly the idea that there is a relationship between force and motion. Newton's second law is a mathematical model, F=ma, relating the acceleration (a) of an object with mass (m) to the net force (F) acting on the object.
3. Crosscutting Concepts: These are concepts that manifest across scientific disciplines and providing a unifying framework for all scientific disciplines. For example, tracking the flow of energy within natural systems is a part of all scientific disciplines. A biologist may track the flow of energy up the food web as part of understanding an ecosystem while a a chemist may track the flow of heat energy to determine if a chemical reaction is endo- or exothermic.

Effective approaches to science education will interweave students learning and using all three dimensions to investigate and explain a meaningful phenomenon. A new report from The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine defines a meaningful phenomenon as: "a circumstance or event that is interesting, puzzling, and connects to children’s experiences outside of school" (p. 6). The existence of the great pacific garbage patch is a circumstance that is interesting, puzzling, and likely connects to a students' experience outside school. Students might ask why ocean debris collects in certain parts of the ocean instead of being dispersed more evenly. The result of touching a 9V battery to steel wool is an event that is interesting, puzzling and may connect with students' experience outside of school. Students might ask why the mass of the steel wool goes up after the battery is touched to the steel wool.

To explain these phenomenon, and others, students must use disciplinary ideas (ocean currents or chemical reactions) and crosscutting concepts (tracking the flow of matter). But, students must also engage in scientific practices, such as collecting and analyzing data and arguing from evidence. Important to this approach is the philosophy that doing science and learning science should not be separate activities for students. The practices cannot be separated from the products of science, including the explanation of a phenomenon.

The Practices of Art

The National Core Arts Standards (NCAS) provide a set of 11 anchor standards grouped under what I would call 4 broad disciplinary practices:

1. Creating: Conceiving and developing new artistic ideas and work.
2. Responding: Understanding and evaluating how the arts convey meaning.
3. Connecting: Relating artistic ideas and work with personal meaning and external context.
4. Performing/Presenting/Producing: The sharing of ones artistic work. Artists in music, dance, and theater engage in performing, those creating visual arts engage in presenting, and artists in media arts engage in producing.

The authors of these standards provide further detail on how the anchor standards manifest in each artistic discipline. Students are expected to produce artistic creations, critique others creations and respond to critique of their own creations, and to make connections between their lives and the artistic product.

Similar to how disciplinary practices are viewed in science, the NCAS treat artistic practices as inseparable from the product of the arts. Part of appreciating an artistic work is understanding the practices that went into the creation of the work and drawing on the practices that are included in consuming the artistic work. For example, the visual arts standards include an expectation that students learn how "people develop ideas and understandings of society, culture, and history through their interactions with and analysis of art" as part of learning the artistic practice of connecting. Guernica is not just a "good" painting, it is an important painting because it conveys an understanding of the impact of war on our psyche.

The Incompatibility of STEAM with 3D, Phenomenon-Driven Science Education

In reviewing the NCAS in detail, nowhere are students expected to explain a phenomenon. Nor are they expected to analyze data or engage in argument from evidence, two practices fundamental to science. And, in reviewing the NGSS standards in detail, students are not asked to discuss nature's intent as part of understanding the natural world (in fact, this could be a very slippery slope toward intelligent design thinking). Nor are they asked to discuss their emotional reaction to an evidence-based argument. There are fundamental differences between scientific practices and art practices and very little overlap.

The heart of the three-dimensional approach to science education is the philosophy that the practices and products of science are inextricably linked. And, the heart of a phenomenon-driven approach to science education is the notion that students will explain how and/or why the circumstance exists or event happens. I argue STEAM education is not compatible with a three dimensional, phenomenon-driven science education as required by the NGSS (while outside the scope of this article, STEAM education is also not compatible with the vision for arts education put forth in the NCAS). STEAM is much more likely to reduce science to a set of facts to be recalled, detached from the practices scientists use to discover those facts.

To be clear, this is not a critique of the standards. I believe both the NCAS and NGSS standards are strong guides for what students should learn and be able to do. It is to point out art and science have different purposes. And, both purposes are incredibly important. Our students deserve exposure to both the artistic and scientific communities that shape the world we live in. In turn, students will be more fully equipped to participate in those communities should they choose to do so, and to shape the world moving forward.

There are multiple effective approaches to provide students with more exposure to artistic products and practices, both as creators and consumers of art. Forcing art into science is not the best way.